Vice President Kamala Harris mentioned extremists wish to “replace history with lies” as she traveled to Florida on Friday to assail Republican efforts to overtake instructional requirements, plunging right into a battle over education that has rippled by lecture rooms across the nation.
“They dare to push propaganda to our children,” she mentioned in Jacksonville. “This is the United States of America. We’re not supposed to do that.”
Her journey got here two days after the Florida Board of Education accredited a revised Black historical past curriculum to fulfill laws signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate who has accused public colleges of liberal indoctrination. The new requirements embody instruction that enslaved individuals benefited from abilities that they discovered.
“How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Harris requested.
She didn’t point out DeSantis by identify, as an alternative referring to “so-called leaders.” However, the speech was one other instance of how Harris has been the White House level particular person for addressing cultural points akin to race, education and abortion that DeSantis has taken on within the governor’s workplace and on the marketing campaign path.
In Salt Lake City on Friday, DeSantis doubled down on earlier arguments that the brand new curriculum was wanted to forestall liberal indoctrination and accused Harris of trying “to demagogue” and politicize historical past.
PHOTOS: Harris says Florida guidelines on Black historical past pushed by DeSantis are ‘propaganda’
He mentioned he wasn’t concerned in devising the Board of Education’s requirements however defended the elements regarding how enslaved individuals benefited.
“They’re probably going to show is some of the folks that eventually parlayed being a blacksmith into doing things later, later in life. But the reality is: All of that is rooted in whatever is factual,” he mentioned.
Earlier, DeSantis accused the Biden administration of being “obsessed” along with his state because it ignores different issues, like border safety and crime.
Harris, the primary Black particular person to function vice chairman, spoke from the Ritz Theater and Museum, situated in a traditionally African American neighborhood of Jacksonville.
She described “true patriotism” as “fighting for a nation that will be better for each generation to come,” and she or he mentioned colleges would higher put together college students for the world in the event that they don’t gloss over historic crimes.
“Let us not be seduced into believing that somehow we will be better if we forget,” she mentioned. “We will be better if we remember. We will be stronger if we remember.”
Christian Ziegler, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, mentioned Harris was out to “lecture Floridian parents that their children belong to the government and the government has a right to indoctrinate and sexualize our children.”
He mentioned “the government overreach on parental rights has already been overwhelmingly rejected in Florida.”
President Joe Biden and Harris have pitched their reelection marketing campaign round preserving freedoms, and so they view training points as one approach to spotlight Republican extremism.
In a video asserting his bid for a second time period, Biden warned about Republicans “dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love, all while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”
Jacksonville is a uncommon brilliant spot for Democrats in Florida, a longtime swing state that has turn into more and more secure for Republicans. Donna Deegan, a Democrat, was elected as town’s mayor in May, and Harris tried to spice up morale among the many occasion devoted on Friday.
“We gotta remind the folks of Florida that you’re not fighting out here by yourself,” Harris mentioned. “We believe in you.”
Florida has shifted to the best beneath DeSantis‘ leadership. As governor, he’s signed laws on a lot of training points, akin to banning drag reveals at colleges and imposing new necessities for transgender lavatory use.
In 2022, he signed what he referred to as the Stop WOKE Act, which limits how race might be taught at school and which the governor used to assault crucial race idea – a topic he has described as “crap.” The regulation basically says college students can’t be made to really feel responsible about their race due to injustices of the previous.
Critics mentioned the regulation was DeSantis’ try to suppress an correct account of Black historical past. The regulation is being challenged in courtroom.
“The full measure of African American history is not a hand-picked Rosa Parks here and a Martin Luther King Jr. there,” mentioned Democratic state Sen. Bobby Powell, who’s Black. “It is the sweeping collection of stories spanning several centuries, the lessons of cruelty and inhumanity interwoven in the determination of a people to live and breathe free. It is as much Florida’s story as the nation’s story and it needs to be fully told.”
Earlier this 12 months, the DeSantis administration rejected a College Board Advanced Placement course on African American historical past, which DeSantis mentioned was “indoctrination.”
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