Earlier this year, Florida rejected an Advanced Placement African American studies, with Gov. Ron DeSantis accusing the designers of “trying to use that for political purposes.” The Florida Department of Education went on to write its own guidelines, released just in time for the upcoming school year.
Vice President Kamala Harris says it’s racist — but even CNN pushed back on her lies.
The state’s Education Department used the term “benefit” 31 times across the guidelines 216 pages. “Benefits are things that a decision maker gains,” it defines.
“Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation),” the state’s Department of Education said in the guidelines posted on its website. “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Harris seized on the use of the term “benefit” in a Thursday speech.
“Extremists pass book bans to prevent them from learning our true history — book bans in this year of our Lord 2023. And while they do this, check it out, they push forward revisionist history. Just yesterday, in the State of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” Harris told a sorority.
“They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it. We who share a collective experience in knowing we must honor history and our duty in the context of legacy. There is so much at stake in this moment: our most basic rights and freedoms, fact versus fiction, foundational principles about what it means to be a democracy.”
Harris repeated the lie in Florida the next day.
“They want to replace history with lies. Middle school students in Florida to be told that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” Harris said Friday. “Book bans in this year of our Lord 2023!”
CNN analyst Scott Jennings pushed back and slammed Harris for her lies.
“This is a completely made-up deal,” Jenning said. “I looked at the standards. I even looked at an analysis of the standards in every instance where the word slavery or slave was used. I even read the statement of the African-American scholars that wrote the standards, not Ron DeSantis, but the scholars.”
“Everybody involved in this says this is completely a fabricated issue,” he said. “And yet look how quickly Kamala Harris jumped on it. So, the fact that this is her best moment, a fabricated matter, is pretty ridiculous, in my opinion.”
“Well, it’s amazing to me that how little Kamala Harris apparently has to do, that she can read something on Twitter one day and be on an airplane the next to make something literally out of nothing,” Jennings said.
Take a look —
CNN contributor DRAGS Kamala Harris for LYING about education standards in Florida. pic.twitter.com/HjkwdrMtfo
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 24, 2023