There are a couple of weirdly conflicting things going on in Florida right now.
One is that GOP leaders are trying to strip history books, library shelves and even private companies’ boardrooms of any discussions about race and history that make them uncomfortable.
You’ve read the stories — about Florida’s new classroom guidelines that say slavery had some “personal benefit” to slaves.
About the cringey cartoon videos they want to bring into schools, including one where Christopher Columbus tells kids that they shouldn’t consider slavery that bad, since: “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?” (What the heck, Chris?)
The benefits of slavery? Florida teaches warped version of history | Commentary
The Legislature has even passed laws that try to fine companies that offer DEI training that might make people, particularly White people, feel “guilt,” “anguish” or “psychological distress.”
Florida isn’t just the snowbird state. We’re also the Snowflake State.
All that whitewashing and diversity-dissing generated ugly national headlines. So Florida politicians decided to try to counter that by agreeing to build a Black history museum.
Well, it’s no real surprise that a number of Black leaders are skeptical of what Florida’s version of Black history might look like. So skeptical, in fact, that alumni of one of America’s first all-Black high schools in Palm Beach say they don’t want the new museum in their community.
In a letter shared by the Palm Beach Post, the alumni of the historic Roosevelt High School wrote: “Any Black history museum under the auspices of the Florida Legislature and Governor — which have enacted the ‘Stop WOKE Act,’ prohibiting and making illegal classroom instruction that would cause anyone to feel guilt, anguish, or any form of psychological distress due to their race, color, sex or national origin — is a Black Museum without Black history.”
Other Florida communities are still vying to be home to the new museum. One is Eatonville — a location that makes a lot of sense to me, as one of the first self-governing, all-Black municipalities in America.
But I’m also sympathetic to the concerns about whitewashing. I mean, think about how warped Black history would look if told through the lens of Florida’s new don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings-or-make-anyone-feel-bad lens.
Would an exhibit paying homage to Mary McLeod Bethune — a pioneering educator, philanthropist and humanitarian — have to stress that Bethune wasn’t any more pioneering or humanitarian than a lot of super-swell White people, so that none of them feel any “angst”?
What about slavery? It’s a dark and undeniable part of this state’s past. But is cartoon Christopher Columbus going to pop up in Florida’s version of Black history to remind museum attendees that human captivity is “better than being killed, no?”
More slavery propaganda in Florida. And a secret salary | Commentary
Will the story of the Rosewood Massacre of 1923 be told from the perspective of the White mob that slaughtered Black residents and burned the town — so that no one who hears the story feels “psychological distress”?
Some of history is undeniably ugly. That’s why anyone who cares about accuracy is offended by the distorted version Florida leaders are currently promoting.
Remember, this is also a state that, in recent years, has tried to equate protesting to rioting. So how will Florida’s Black history museum tell the stories of the Tallahassee bus boycott of 1956 or lunch-counter sit-in staged at a Woolworths in 1960? Those incidents have traditionally been viewed as examples of principled civil disobedience that evoked change. But those college students were also charged with “inciting a riot” — the same language Tallahassee politicians are trying to bring back half-a-century later.
Instead of an exhibit titled “College Students Stand up to Segregation,” will Florida’s version of Black history be: “Teenage rioters properly arrested for violating municipal codes”?
If some of this sounds absurd, consider this:
Over Christmas, my family visited the National Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C. where one exhibit paid homage to Eatonville author Zora Neale Hurston’s book, “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” describing it as a landmark in Black American literature.
Yet at that exact same time, that book was being pulled off shelves in Florida schools.
Spent Christmas in DC and noticed this:
A great Florida book, featured as a touchstone in American literature at the museum of African-American history.Yet down in Florida, the same book is being targeted for school censorship. pic.twitter.com/ZBTweloNpb
— Scott Maxwell (@Scott_Maxwell) December 26, 2023
These are twisted times. So it’s understandable that Black leaders — and, really, anyone who supports the accurate telling of history — have concerns. (See also this story from the Florida Phoenix: “Will a new FL Black history museum be factual and truthful, or could politics derail the project?”)
I still think the endeavor is incredibly worthwhile and that Eatonville would be a perfectly appropriate place for the museum. I also like that the museum’s task force includes some impressive and respected Central Floridians, including State Sen. Geraldine Thompson and construction company CEO Brian Butler.
There’s even reason to find encouragement in the fact that Gov. Ron DeSantis and GOP legislative leaders appointed these smart folks to the task force in the first place.
Still, Thompson, the group’s chairwoman, is keenly aware of the state’s recent attempt to sanitize history and demonize diversity. So she hopes to follow the lead of the Smithsonian when it was mapping out the exhibits for the nation’s Black History museum and create an advisory board full of historians and scholars. As opposed, Thompson said, to “political appointees who have little expertise in the subject matter and may be wedded to a particular agenda.”
Amen. After all, sanitized and altered history isn’t history at all. It’s propaganda.
smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com
