“Anybody that is implying that there was an upside to slavery is insane.”

By Bess Levin July 31, 2023

A lot of crazy s–t has come out of Florida over the last number of years—see: every headline that starts with “Florida Man…”—but almost none of it compares to what the Sunshine State came up with earlier this month, when the Board of Education approved a new set of rules requiring teachers to tell students that there were upsides to being enslaved. Yes, really: The state literally requires instruction on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Obviously, this is completely nuts, as is the fact that Florida governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has repeatedly defended the new curriculum standards, saying its authors “did a good job” and that it would be totally reasonable to “show that some of the folks…eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” To be clear, “the folks” the governor is talking about here are enslaved people, and he’s suggesting that there were positive trade-offs to being human property.

Not surprisingly, a number of DeSantis’s rivals for the GOP nomination have seized on Florida’s batshit new rules as well as DeSantis’s decision to back them. On Sunday, appearing on NBC News’ Meet the Press, former GOP congressman Will Hurd said that “anybody that is implying that there was an upside to slavery is insane.” (He also noted the obvious, which is that “slavery is not a jobs program.”) Hurd added: “It’d be hard to make the case, if Ron DeSantis was the Republican nominee, that folks in Black and brown communities should support him.”

Also on Sunday, former UN ambassador and 2024 hopeful Nikki Haley told CBS News’ Face the Nation: “It’s the 21st century. And I think we can all agree that…there were no positives that came out of slavery,” adding that DeSantis should say as much. On CNN’s State of the Union, fellow 2024 candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said that “obviously, we should be teaching kids about the awful legacy of slavery.”

Days earlier, Representative Tim Scott—the sole Black Republican in the Senate—told reporters at a campaign stop: “As a country founded upon freedom, the greatest deprivation of freedom was slavery. There is no silver lining…in slavery…What slavery was really about [was] separating families, about mutilating humans, and even raping their wives. It was just devastating.”

And on Wednesday, Representative Byron Donalds—the only Black GOP congressman representing Florida—tweeted that “the attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is wrong & needs to be adjusted.” (In response, DeSantis’s campaign picked a public fight with the lawmaker.)

Of course, at this point, the fact that DeSantis would defend this curricular absurdity is not entirely surprising, given that, earlier this year, he backed the Florida Department of Education’s decision to ban the College Board’s AP African American studies course, claiming it lacked “educational value.” There’s also the uncomfortable New York Times reporting around DeSantis’s tenure as a private school teacher in Georgia, where he stuck out to students thanks to his unorthodox POV on the Civil War and slavery:

Danielle Pompey…recalled Mr. DeSantis teaching Civil War history in a way that sounded to her like an attempt to justify slavery. “Like in history class, he was trying to play devil’s advocate that the South had good reason to fight that war, to kill other people, over owning people—Black people,” she said.

[Gates] Minis, who is white and was in the same history class as Ms. Pompey, also remembers debating issues around the Civil War. Mr. DeSantis wasn’t so much politically opinionated, she said, but, in her view, factually wrong. She remembers him claiming that every city in the South had burned, even though she knew her hometown, Savannah, had not and she called him out on it.

As the Times reported, DeSantis’s point of view on slavery was so well known that ”students made a satirical video about him” in which a student meant to be DeSantis is heard saying, “The Civil War was not about slavery! It was about two competing economic systems. One was in the North….”

In response to a request for comment from The Washington Post, DeSantis’s campaign forwarded a tweet featuring a video from Friday in which the governor says he is “defending” Florida “against false accusations and against lies” and will “continue to speak the truth.”

Bess Levin is a politics correspondent at Vanity Fair. An essential voice of our current tragicomedy, she is an incisive, hilarious daily narrator of the horrors that never seem to stop. If you need catharsis in these terrifying times—or even if you don’t!—she is a must-read. You can follow her… Read moreSee More By Bess Levin »