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Enraged members of Florida’s original task force on African American education say they were purposefully kept in the dark about the state’s new academic standards—which now include the wild revisionist claim that skills used during Black enslavement provided “personal benefit”—in a shady move that echoed plantation politics.
The Florida Commissioner of Education’s African American History Task Force was created in 1994 to implement “the teaching of the history of African peoples and the contributions of African Americans to society,” according to the group’s website.
However, three members now claim they were neglected to be informed about Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new mission to restructure how Black history was taught. Instead, a totally different “work group” was quietly formed—and stacked with the Department of Education’s own appointees—to advise on the new standards and pass an agenda.