Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that Republican “extremists” in the state of Florida are pushing schools to teach students that slaves “benefited from slavery,” during a speech on Thursday.
Harris said that America’s freedom is “under full-on attack” as Republicans gain ground on pro-life legislation, striking down affirmative action and student debt forgiveness during her keynote speech at the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority National Convention on Thursday. Harris said that Republicans are attempting to “gaslight” the American public with “revisionist history,” and claimed that Florida schools are teaching students that slaves were beneficiaries of slavery.
“Check it out – they push forward revisionist history. Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not stand for it!” Harris said during her speech.
No such curriculum exists or has ever been proposed in the state of Florida. The Florida State Board of Education approved new standards yesterday that would teach students that slaves developed skills for their own personal benefit, such as carpentry, tailoring or blacksmithing, but nowhere in the standards does it say that slaves benefited from the practice of slavery itself. (RELATED: Kamala Harris Gaffes, Says We Need To ‘Reduce Population’ To Clean Up The Air)
Additionally, the curriculum emphasizes the injustices committed against slaves during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and teaches students about African American heroes throughout American history, such as “the service and sacrifice of African patriots during the Revolutionary Era,” according to the standards.
“We can see, right now in our country, so many of our hard-won freedoms are under full-on attack,” Harris said. “There’s so much at stake in this moment, our most basic rights and freedoms, fact versus fiction, foundational principles about what it means to be a democracy… let us fight fueled by the love of our country and let us fight with the knowledge and the faith that when we fight, we win.”
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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