Dr. Marvin Dunn PHOTO COURTESY OF MARVIN DUNN

Where is Gov. Ron getting this nonsense about slaves benefitting from their enslavement? Is it coming from rightwing extremists or the Ku Klux Klan? Is it coming from neo-Nazis who adore DeSantis? Nope. He is getting it from black Republicans who serve on his so-called “work group” that replaced the legitimate African American History Task Force. In its place DeSantis inserted a group of Black Republican extremists who are now setting the racial agenda in Florida schools. DeSantis has a compliant Black chancellor for grades K-12, Paul Burns, ready to administer DeSantis’ racial poison to every school in the state based upon newly adopted standards for teaching African American history that were written by his Black cronies.

Who are these “scholars” that DeSantis says he relies upon? One of them is Kim Daniels of Jacksonville who famously said, “Thank God for slavery. I could be in Africa worshipping a tree.” Daniels served in the Florida House of Representatives where she stood out as a nut. She also said that she is grateful for “the crack house” and “Jews own everything.” Daniels is just the kind of “scholar” you want advising a governor. Another DeSantis Black scholar on the work group is Dr. William B. Allen who insists that historians must tell “both sides” of slavery.

Meanwhile, the African American task Force which is appointed to advise the Department of Education regarding how Florida’s 67 school districts are doing incorporating Black history into their curriculum has been decimated. I served on the first task force in 1994. We got very little accomplished because school districts simply refused to comply with the mandate complaining that there was not enough Black history material to incorporate although one wonders how much effort Dixie County for instance devoted to searching.

This remains true today. Even though DeSantis brags that Florida requires the teaching of Black history in schools, only 11 districts are in compliance and the governor, and his Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz couldn’t care less. Today the task force that is supposed to have 11 members is down to four. Many serving members resigned when DeSantis installed his Black Republican work group that began feeding him racial poison, like slavery wasn’t all that bad and every country was doing it and most offensive that some of the enslaved benefitted from enslavement.

And so, we are enthralled in a great national debate about race spurred on by an extremist governor who would be president. How bad was slavery? I am in my eighth decade on this earth. I proudly served my country as a United States naval officer for six years. I thought Americans agreed that slavery was an evil institution. I did not know that there was another side.