During a press conference in Utah, Gov. Ron DeSantis derided Vice President Kamala Harris for trying to “chirp” and “demagogue” about Florida’s revised Black History standards.
DeSantis defended the “robust” guidelines, which include teaching middle school students “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” and teaching high school students about “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” in the context of events like the Ocoee Massacre.
“I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. It’s totally outrageous,” DeSantis said of Harris’ visit to Jacksonville.
DeSantis contended that the Florida Department of Education “got a lot of scholars together to do a lot of standards and a lot of different things,” creating what he called “the most robust standards in African American history probably anywhere in the country.”
Describing the standards as “very thorough, very factual,” DeSantis said that “for them to try to demagogue it; look that may have worked in the past, nobody is buying their nonsense anymore.”
The Governor then pivoted to criticisms of the Biden administration.
“And so, you know, she’s going to come down to the state of Florida and try to chirp and try, try to demagogue. All she’s doing is ignoring the responsibilities that the administration has to secure our border,” DeSantis said. “They’re failing at that. They’re not developing enough domestic energy they need to, they’re not doing what we need to do to counteract China in the Pacific and so on and on.”
While Harris has yet to respond to DeSantis’ Utah oration, it’s likely nothing here changes the contention she made in Jacksonville.
“They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not have it,” Harris said.
The Vice President critiqued teaching middle school students that “enslaved people benefited from slavery,” but DeSantis attempted to put that in context.
“I think what they’re doing is I think that they’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.”
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