‘No Silver Lining’ to Slavery: Tim Scott Chides DeSantis over Florida Social-Studies Curriculum

Addressing reporters during a Thursday campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.) criticized fellow 2024 Republican presidential contender Ron DeSantis over a section in Florida’s newly proposed social-studies standards on slavery.

The 216-page document laying Florida’s K-12 social-studies curriculum, which was approved last week by the state board of education, includes a single line explaining that, in some cases, slaves learned skills during their enslavement that they later used to benefit themselves.

“As a country founded upon freedom, the greatest deprivation of freedom is slavery,” Scott said when asked about the Florida curriculum. “There is no silver lining in slavery. The truth is that anything that any benefits that people suggest you had during slavery, you would have had as a free person.”

“Slavery was really about separating families, about mutilating humans, and even raping their wives. It was just devastating,” he continued. “So, I would hope, that every person in our country – and certainly running for president – would appreciate that. People have bad days. Sometimes they regret what they say, and we should ask them again to clarify their positions.”

His comments come after Vice President Kamala Harris denounced a passage in Florida’s 2023 social-studies standards.

Last Friday, Harris landed in Jacksonville, Fla., “to fight back” against the new curriculum. “In place of facts, extremists in Florida want to erase our full history and censor our truthers,” the vice president wrote on Twitter following her arrival.

“We will not stand for it.”

Representative Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican and an outspoken Trump supporter, has also criticized DeSantis over the curriculum, saying that while most of the content was defensible, the “attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is wrong & needs to be adjusted. That obviously wasn’t the goal & I have faith that (the Florida Department of Education) will correct this.”

DeSantis reaffirmed his support for Florida’s new curriculum during an Iowa campaign stop on Thursday. “So at the end of the day you’ve got to choose,” the Republican hopeful said. “Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you going to side with the state of Florida?”

On Wednesday, similar offensive passages were discovered in the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) syllabus for African-American studies, whose content initially featured the works of critical race theorists (CRT). In Unit 2 of the AP’s new syllabus on “Slavery, Labor, and American Law,” a chapter on the slave economy suggests that slaves learned to become “painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers” and subsequently “used these skills to provide for themselves and others.”

“The learning objective from the AP curriculum just shows that this pseudo-controversy was nothing more than a dishonest political hit job by VP Harris, the White House, and the unions,” DeSantis press secretary Jeremy Redfern told National Review on Thursday morning. Redfern tweeted out the relevant section of the curriculum Wednesday night.

The AP test was largely supported by liberal commentators who denounced DeSantis earlier this year for initially withholding the state’s approval of the course.