My new essay at The Hill is about Ron DeSantis’s appalling ignorance of American slavery – even as he promotes so-called “objective” history under his Stop WOKE Act – and how best to respond.
Here is the gist:
What Ron DeSantis doesn’t understand about slavery
Consider Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-Fla.) campaign against critical race theory (CRT).
There was hardly a ripple from DeSantis’s supporters when he bragged that the Stop WOKE Act would empower students with “more historically accurate knowledge,” including the claim that “It was the American Revolution that caused people to question slavery. No one had questioned it before we decided as Americans that we are endowed by our creator with unalienable rights.”
There are two possible ways to rebut DeSantis’s false account. The first approach, although less effective, would be simply to provide contradictory facts, pointing out the many prominent American and British figures who questioned slavery before 1776.
A second and much more compelling approach was taken by the liberal political commentator Van Jones in an interview on CNN. After watching a clip of DeSantis’s statement that “no one had questioned slavery” before the American Revolution,
“You reveal a lot when you’re speaking about something you don’t know anything about,” Jones said.
“You know who questioned it? The enslaved people questioned it the whole time. And that’s the thing,” he continued. “It’s like you have a world view that so centers and so privileges a particular ideological agenda [and] a particular set of people that you say things that are just patently ridiculous. He’s the governor of a state, and there are kids in that state of all colors, all faiths, all hues, and he’s got to do a better job of representing all of them.”
Without a single reference to history books, Jones’s story effectively characterized DeSantis as someone unable to recognize enslaved people as human beings capable of questioning, much less resisting, their enslavement. DeSantis was not simply mistaken on the facts. Jones showed that he was blind to or dismissive of the true history of racial subjugation.
You can read the entire essay at The Hill.
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