>>This week on NewsNight, the Florida Board of Education approves a revised black history curriculum that the state calls in-depth and comprehensive, but that some critics say whitewashes history.

A look at the reaction to the new standards and the political fallout.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort, and welcome to NewsNight, where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in central Florida and how they affect all of us.

Tonight, Florida's revised curriculum standards on African-American history.

The Florida Board of Education approved the new standards to align with HB 7, also known as the “Stop Woke Act, ” which the DeSantis Administration says, quote, protects Floridians from discrimination and woke indoctrination.

The board, mostly appointed by Governor DeSantis, approved the language unanimously, which includes, quote, instruction includes how slaves developed skills, which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit.

It also says instruction must include, quote, acts of violence perpetrated against and by African-Americans when discussing events such as the Ocoee or Rosewood massacres.

Well, let's hear from both sides on this issue.

NewsNight spoke this week with Democratic State Representative Lavon Bracy Davis, who wrote an op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel on this issue.

But first, let's hear from the chair of the Commission for Education's African-American History Task Force, Glen Gilzean.

>>Governor Ron DeSantis once said, Black history is American history.

And we've heard that repeated time and time again this morning.

The actions taken today by this board will reinforce this by ushering in Florida's first ever standalone strand of African-Americans standards.

Let's be clear.

Florida already requires the teaching of African-American history, but the new standards align these requirements and will hold teachers accountable to ensure that the complete and accurate African-American history continues to be taught.

>>There weren't benefits to enslavement.

There my ancestors were stolen from Africa.

They were beaten.

They were raped.

They were starved.

They were treated like animals.

They were sold as chattel.

And there were no benefits to that.

So the fact that within the standards and within the curriculum, the word benefit and enslavement are even used in the same text is concerning.

It's it's another example of privileged white America attempting to rewrite history and rewrite the very bad things that have happened in America.

>>Well, you can find Representative Lavon Bracy Davis's full interview with NewsNight on our website wucf.org/newsnight.

Well, to find out how this issue is being received in the wider African-American community, I talked with Saundra Weathers, who covers social justice issues for Spectrum Bay News 9.

>>One word that I heard recently when I was talking to someone about this was repulsive.

People are outraged.

They feel like they are being taken advantage of in a way that they don't have control over what they know to be true.

So the overall overarching theme amongst the people who I've been speaking with and I talked to a lot of people in the community about this, either online or in person, and they are all very displeased and feels like this is setting an entire race of people back decades.

>>In our reporting, we often tend to immerse ourselves in politics and policy.

But I wonder if on this issue you think the broader black community is paying close attention to this revised curriculum and what it means for how their children are taught in schools?

>>Oh, 100%.

And I can tell you that I knew that before with a lot of the social justice reporting that I'll do, I'll put up numbers online or certain numbers in the stories, and people pay attention to those numbers and they will screenshot those numbers and share them with their family and friends to show, look at these stats, look at these things that we've been complaining about.

There is actually documentation to back up the things that we've been feeling.

So people are paying close attention and they have been for quite some time.

After the death of George Floyd, it kind of gave people a shake as to, hey, listen, we need to speak up about this and make our voices heard.

So I think even more so now, people are paying attention.

And you see that in so many areas and so many stories that I've done, these things that are coming out, I'm like, why don't I know about this?

And some of the older people will say, well, we didn't feel comfortable talking about it before, but we do now.

>>How do people that you talk to feel about the argument that the revised curriculum, including the part that says, quote, slaves developed skills, which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit, is factually accurate and should be taught.

>>There was a professor who was on a statewide call that listened in on the other day, an initiative that they were taking to try and combat this issue about these changes being made.

And there was a professor on there.

And one of the things she talked about was Africans, before they were kidnaped and brought over in slave ships.

They were skilled workers.

That's the reason why they were sought after.

They already had skills.

So to say that they came over here and learned those skills by being a slave.

No, they had those skills before they even left Africa.

So to insinuate that they gain this just by being a slave is insulting.

To say that they had no skill and no knowledge prior to being brought over on slave ships.

>>Saundra Whether there from Spectrum Bay News 9.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

Joining us in the studio this week, independent investigative journalist writes the Substack “Seeking Rents ” Jason Garcia, thanks so much for being here in the studio today.

>>Thanks for having me.

>>Talia Blake from 90.7 WMFE News hosts Morning Edition over there.

Thanks for being here, Talia.

>>Thanks.

>>And for the first time, Leslie Postal from the Orlando Sentinel, you cover education at the Sentinel.

Thanks so much for, for your time today.

Really appreciate it, guys.

Leslie, let me start with you on this one.

What exactly does this new language require?

And what about the sort of the rest of the document to people?

Is the criticism mainly about those sort of specific passages that we were talking about there?

>>I mean, those have certainly gotten the most criticism, but I have heard criticism about the overall document, which kind of lays out what kids in kindergarten through 12th grade should learn about African-American history.

There is concern that there's a lot of focus in the early grades on just recognizing people, you know, who is Rosa Parks, who is, you know, George Washington Carver, you know, but without really understanding the context in which they lived or how racism might have impacted the lives that they lived, lived, even if they did, you know, recognizable things.

So I think there is a concern that it's like someone said, it's like an encyclopedia, you know, just little entries, but not an overall context.

But clearly, the section for middle school students that talks about a personal benefit from slavery has gotten a lot of people upset.

And also the section that mentions, you know, incidents like the Ocoee massacre and the Rosewood massacre in Florida or the Tulsa race riot in Oklahoma, and then says violence perpetrated by by African-Americans as well as against.

And that has upset a lot of people as well.

>>Certainly that's what seems to have galvanized-- >>And a lot of historians will say that is not what happened.

You know, there may have been black resistance, but, you know, it was armed white mobs attacking these communities-- >>And destroying those communities.

>>And destroying and destroying those communities.

And not not something, you know, instigated by by black residents.

>>Yeah.

Talia, WMFE and NPR have covered this story extensively as well.

Does what Saundra Weathers from Bay News 9 told me there, does that sort of comport with what you're hearing in terms of response?

>>Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So we're already seeing some conferences get canceled.

A prominent national black fraternity, Alpha - Alpha Phi Alpha actually already pulled out and said they're not going to have their convention in Orlando like they do.

So there's been a lot of backlash for these standards.

>>What do we know about this working group, though, that drew up these new standards and what are they on agreement about them?

Do we know?

>>Well, NBC News had a very interesting story that said, no, they were not the most prominent people in the ones that the state has kind of pushed.

Are they are all African-American in one, but they are very involved in Republican politics.

So there is a feeling that they are all of a certain political persuasion.

The other people that I've looked at and tried to find seem to be teachers and educators, which is typically when the state does standards, there's kind of a group of teachers and there's a group of outside experts who work together to devise standards.

So you might have, you know, physics professors and chemistry professors, but also physics teachers and, you know, chemistry teachers on the science panel.

But this seems to have been skewed towards political folks rather than historians.

>>Morning Edition, the show that you host locally here, had one of the members, William Allen, defending that revised curriculum.

What did he say his reasoning was?

>>Oh, he said that this is fact.

This is not controversy.

He said that if you talk to the people who lived through that history, that their tales sustain these facts, that it was beneficial.

And he tried to cite, I believe, Frederick Douglass throughout that interview.

And then he also to what Leslie was saying earlier, he also was talking about that this was a volunteer group.

He volunteered his time to do this.

And what, he wasn't asked to do this.

>>Yes, that is the point that's being made.

Jason, let me come to you now on this.

This controversy sort of follows on from an earlier controversy in the black history education area where the state rejected the AP African-American studies course has the College Board said anything about this?

And this sort of just highlights that broadly sort of the broad politicization of this issue.

>>Yeah, Yeah.

The college board was very critical of the Florida standard.

And part of that comes from, you know, the governor's office just tried to make an equivalency argument that it's similar to something the College Board has in its own sort of AP black history courses, except if you actually read them, they're quite different.

Right?

That the Florida standard part of the reason it's become so controversial is it robs enslaved people of any agency or any of their own involvement or the sort of the challenges they overcame themselves.

It makes it as if the slave owners were the ones that taught these skills rather than the enslaved people learning these skills in the midst of these conditions.

Right.

So and when you compare that to what the College Board standard is, it is much more a story of how the enslaved people overcame this sort of stuff.

And so the the state of Florida standard is, I think, the fact that it sort of cast this as like a benefit of slavery rather than something that enslaved people accomplished despite slavery, is a big part of the controversy.

>>Leslie, before we move on, I did want to ask you about Prager U.

The state says it now will allow what it calls a supplemental curriculum by Prager U, which says it seeks to offer an alternative to, quote, dominant left wing ideologies.

You've written about efforts broadly to promote sort of conservative voices in Florida education.

What have you learned?

>>Well, there's a couple of things.

I mean, there's this new office and the Florida Department of Education that sounds like it's meant to help all school districts.

But emails that we that someone else obtained and shared with us show they're really only reaching out to certain school board members who are, you know, conservative, who are part of Moms for Liberty or other groups like that.

In the past, you know, the state has encouraged Hillsdale College private Christian school in Michigan that's been, you know, tied to president done work for President Trump as well.

You know, they brought them in to look at civic standards, even to review math books so that there is when they did civics standards, they brought this conservative evangelical group to weigh in on Holocaust standards.

So I think there has been this pattern of that's who they're looking to.

And this what they did with this and with the Prager U stuff seems to be all part of the same kind of effort.

>>Well, you can find a link to Florida State Academic Standards Social Studies 2023 on our website to read for yourself.

You'll also find a link to Saundra Weathers reporting there too.

It's all at wucf.org/newsnight.

Well, let's talk now about what this all means for teachers and for the keepers of Florida's black history.

I sat down this week with N.Y. Nathiri.

She's the executive director of the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, the oldest incorporated African-American municipality in the United States.

>>When you go out of your way to try to identify something that is at best an outlier or in fact is inaccurate, then that's where the difficulty comes.

And I think that, frankly, that is what you are, what you are hearing, what we are hearing, and as a public response, because it's a distortion, there's a distortion of the historical record.

>>More broadly, there's been a discussion in recent years, hasn't there, about historical narratives around the Civil War, reconstruction.

Some fear that we're seeing an effort at whitewashing history.

How do you see this moment in time where where this discussion is taking place?

>>Theyre cycles.

And after the Civil War, during the the construction, reconstruction and post reconstruction, there was and there was an aggressive effort by southerners to refashion a reconstruction.

What we're seeing now is reminiscent.

The difference is that people understand what is being attempted.

And there is a pushback.

It's unfortunate that the school, the public school system is under this kind of stress.

But what you are seeing is a kind of counter effort to make certain that the real history, the authentic history, is available to the public.

>>How do you think the emphasis has changed when it comes to teaching black history and Florida education over the last few years?

What do you think?

>>My comments are going to be based on the interactions that I have been having with secondary school teachers, with librarians.

A sense of of really discomfort, a sense of really being under assault because not only parents, but anyone might wage a grievance or file a complaint, as it were, about how they're teaching.

I would say that the environment or the atmosphere is one that has a chilling effect.

>>Well you can find a link to the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community on our website as well as my full interview with N.Y. Nathiri, we talked about a lot of things, including her thoughts on solutions and the role of her organization and others in teaching black history in Central Florida.

It's all at wucf.org/newsnight along the bottom of your screen.

Leslie, let me come to you first on this one and pick up on that last point from N.Y. Nathiri I mean, teachers unions broadly have condemned the revised Florida black history curriculum.

What are you hearing about how teachers feel about this and are they sort of broadly in agreement?

Are there different viewpoints there?

>>I mean there are I think 180,000 plus teachers in Florida.

So I wouldn't presume to think that that's a monolithic group or anything.

But I mean, I think that certainly there are teachers who are concerned.

You know, I've always heard that it's the newest teachers who are going to be most unsure and are really just going to follow what's in the curriculum or what's in the textbook or what's in the curriculum plans that their district has given them.

I think more veteran teachers may feel like they have ways to address things that that not not that they're not going to they're going to violate something.

But, you know, they may feel comfortable with how to bring in topics and things like that.

You know, I talked to a teacher in Jacksonville once who said, you know, ax handle Sunday when black lunch counter protesters were attacked with a mob, you know, carrying baseball bats and ax handles.

I think in 1960, you know, he said that wasn't in the curriculum, but he felt like it happened a few blocks from my school.

I should teach my students about it.

And he felt comfortable doing that.

But, you know, he said most teachers wouldn't.

So I think I think there's probably a lot of mixed views and a lot of concern and uncertainty.

And newer teachers may feel like I'm just going to do what I'm supposed to do, what it says here, because, you know, this is my job and my livelihood and I, I can't run some risk.

>>Jason, I'm going to come to you in a moment.

But first, let me play another clip from my discussion with Saundra Weathers from Spectrum News 9.

Then we'll talk about it.

>>I know some educators.

I have educators in my family.

I've done so many stories with different educators.

One of the things that I heard that was so disheartening was like, for instance, February of this month, some teachers, they were like, I'm not even we're not even going there.

We're not putting up any displays.

They were so afraid of what they may be doing wrong that they didn't even do what they would normally do for Black History Month.

That was this February.

Who knows what that's going to look like in the upcoming year.

>>Well, that chilling effect, Jason, that that both Saundra Weathers and N.Y. Nathiri were talking about has been sort of something that we've heard about a lot of pieces of legislation that have been passed, mainly because they're worded broadly.

This is sort of another case where this could have a chilling effect.

If those two are correct.

>>Yeah, that's right.

This is an intentional strategy with a lot of these pieces of legislation that become around here where you're trying to sort of get people to self-censor in a way that, you know, part of the reason the censorship is really hard to do in a country with the First Amendment right.

So you do these broad laws with like really draconian penalties hanging on the other side, and people just don't want to take the chance of whether or not they they run afoul of these.

>>Do you hear about a chilling effect as well?

>>Yes.

And I think this started even before this, like early last year.

Osceola County canceled a Saturday teacher workshop on the civil rights that a Flagler County Flagler College professor was going to do where he violated the “Stop Woke Act ” and taught critical race theory.

And the professor was like, I was just teaching them about the civil rights era so that they could teach their kids that, you know.

And he said it had nothing to do with critical race theory, but they canceled that.

You know, Seminole County pulled a little it's called brain bop brain pop.

They're little supplemental videos.

And they put one you could only see with parental permission, because once again, one parent complained that on the modern protest movement slide, you know, it showed a Black Lives Matter flag and a trans flag.

And I mean, it wasn't it was just a little thing that said, these are some modern protest movements or civil rights movements, which they are, you know, but that videos, you know, went away.

So, yeah, I think that we may see more of that because people are nervous.

>>Talia, one thing that's been interesting to me is, is the role that African-American faith groups have kind of been playing here in sort of voicing their concerns about some of these educational changes, whether it's Prager U or the Black History changes.

And you guys have been covering that as well.

>>Yeah.

So right now, black churches, which before I say this, I do want to mention that black churches have always been there for the movement forward of black people since the civil rights movement.

That's where black people would meet to organize.

Where are they going to protest?

Where are they going to sit?

And so I just want to throw that out there.

But yeah, so right now there is a group of faith leaders that are trying to put together a toolkit that is basically going to bridge the gap in learning that they fear is going to happen with these new standards.

So it's going to be 11 units that takes you from the transatlantic slave trade all the way up to recent protests against police.

>>This is Faith in Florida.

>>Yeah, this is Faith in Florida against police brutality and recent mass incarcerations.

And again, they're just trying to bridge that gap, especially for kids.

It's going to be available for everyone.

But they're really fearful that kids are this is just not going to be good for them.

So they want to bridge that gap in learning >>And Faith in Florida calls itself a nonpartisan group that wants to sort of address.

>>Yeah, and they're looking for, I believe, a thousand worship houses of worship to sign up and get these toolkits.

>>Yeah, very interesting to see how that plays out.

At the same meeting last week, the board also approved rules that affect LGBTQ students, including limiting preferred pronoun use and requiring students to use bathrooms that correspond with their sex assigned at birth.

We want to hear what you think about all of it, were at WUCF, TV on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

With the adoption of Florida's revised African-American history curriculum has been playing out in Washington politics since last week.

As governor, DeSantis runs for the Republican presidential nomination.

Here's Vice President Kamala Harris in Jacksonville last week.

And then we'll hear the governor's response.

>>They want to replace history with lies.

Middle school students in Florida to be told that enslaved people benefited from slavery.

High schoolers may be taught that victims of violence, of massacres were also perpetrators.

I said it yesterday.

They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not have it.

>>The Department of Education or the State Board of Education had a working group of African-American history scholars that really beefed up Florida standards.

I mean, probably the most dramatic anywhere in the country.

And you now have people like Kamala Harris trying to perpetuate a hoax, saying that these African American history scholars, many of whom were black, some of them who descended from slaves, are creating a curriculum saying it was good.

Are you kidding me?

Who believe such nonsense.

>>Governor DeSantis there.

Charlie, let me come to you first on this one, if I can.

The vice president was in Florida again this week, this time in Orlando.

She said the governor had written to her requesting a roundtable to discuss Florida's new standards.

What was her response?

>>Absolutely not.

Big N.O.

I mean, even if you just look at her body language when she said benefited and she was like, they're gaslighting us, you could see it in her body language.

It's a big, big, big no.

And she said, like there's no discussion, there is no roundtable because there were no redeeming qualities of slavery.

Like, what are we even talking about here?

It's a big no from her.

>>Yeah.

Leslie, education has become, as we talked about before, very political, whether it's from the school boards on up.

In terms of the political fallout in this case, has the response to these new standards and rules broadly fallen along party lines, do you think, or have some Republicans also voiced concerns?

>>I mean, we have seen some Republicans, Congressman Byron Donalds, I'm sorry, you know, Senator Tim Scott voicing some concerns about it.

But broadly speaking, I defer to Jason, but I think it has most of it has been along party lines, although there have been some Republicans who have spoken out.

>>Jason, let me come to you in a moment.

Before I do, I just want to play a clip from an interview I did this week with Dr. Larry Walker.

He's a professor of educational leadership at UCF.

Take a listen.

>>Florida is is ground zero for these topics in this.

So what is there?

Because you've seen essentially other states, textbooks, etc., duplicate what's happening, what's happened in Florida.

So the question is, what is that?

What does that mean for the state and what does it mean for America in general?

And so I think we've reached a pivotal point.

You know, a few, you know, a year plus out from the election and an inflection point for this country and particularly the state of Florida.

So I think that we need to continue to have a dialog about the things that happen in this country and then also the continued challenges, struggles that members of the black community, other minorities, populations encounter in the state.

And if we ignore those, we ignore them at our own peril.

>>Larry Walker there.

Jason, I mean, do you agree with Dr. Walker there that this issue will join other policies which sort of Florida's brought to the fore and under Governor DeSantis that are likely to spread to other states?

>>Yeah, I think that's proven to be the template for the last few years with some of the stuff.

A lot of it will sort of depend on how this plays out, because right now there is something that Florida normally doesn't have, which is some pushback from national Republicans.

Right.

From Washington, black Republicans in Washington, D.C. particularly.

Right.

So if there's enough sort of Republican pushback, we might not see it spread so far as we do.

But, you know, to to Leslie's point, there's been very little Republican pushback within Florida with that with Florida politicians in state government.

Right.

So, you know, I think there's a real good chance that that what starts in Florida fans out to other particularly very conservative state legislatures.

>>Yeah, it's a good point.

And certainly Florida once again at the forefront of a of a national conversation.

And we'll keep our eyes on that, as I'm sure all your outlets will as well.

You can find more of all the interviews you've seen on the show tonight on our websites.

It's all at wucf.org/newsnight.

And finally, I wanted to let you know that next week on the program, we're going to be going in-depth on a new Florida law that tackles various aspects of immigration policy, talking with those impacted by the legislation.

We hope you can join us for that.

But in the meantime, that is all the time we have this week.

My thanks to Jason Garcia, Talia Blake and Leslie Postal.

Thank you guys for your time.

Really appreciate you coming in today.

Nice, lively discussion.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

In the meantime, from all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.