WATCH: Why are people whitewashing slavery?

Florida’s governor Ron Desantis (R) believes Black people actually benefitted from slavery. But the college board disputes that claim.

Florida’s Department of Education on Wednesday approved a new curriculum for the state’s African-American Studies program that teaches students about the personal benefits Black people gained from slavery.

TheGrio’s Marc Lamont Hill spoke to Republican Kim Klacik, who believes that something good came out of the slavery experience. The following transcript of their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Marc L. Hill [00:00:00] The White House is taking a stand against Florida. In particular, they’re taking a stand against Florida’s education standards on Black history. Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech in Jacksonville on what the White House calls the freedom to learn and teach America’s full and true history. The visit comes after Florida approved new standards that require students to be taught that slaves,“developed skills which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit.“

V.P. Kamala Harris [00:00:31]Teachers want to teach the truth. Teachers want to teach facts. And so they should not then be told by politicians that they should be teaching revisionist history in order to keep their jobs. What is going on?

Hill [00:00:53] Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is defending the standards. When asked to clarify them, he says that he wasn’t involved, but he thinks the curriculum could show how an enslaved person used skills “later in life.”

Gov. Ron Desantis [00:01:07] 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.

Hill [00:01:21] My head is spinning already, but I got a lot to talk about. Not on this subject only, but also on a bunch of stuff. And so I’m bringing on for the entire hour, former Maryland Republican congressional candidate Kim Klacik. Kim, good to see you as always.

Kim Klacik [00:01:36] Always good to see you, Mark. Thanks for having me.

Hill [00:01:39] All right. So Newsweek hired Redfield and Wilton Strategies to do a poll in July, and it found that 70% of Americans believe that children in schools should be taught to feel proud of their country. At the same time, 57% think institutional racism still exists in the United States. So, Kim, if most Americans believe national pride is something we should teach, cool, maybe we should teach that. But also, if 57% of the nation believes that institutional racism is real, shouldn’t we teach about that as well?

Klacik [00:02:12] Well, I think it’s up to a teacher’s discretion, honestly, in the classroom. And this is one of the side effects, I think, of the COVID pandemic, right? You had a lot of people that were able to see exactly what the curriculum was in each school because so many kids were learning virtually at home. And so I think it was a good thing, right? Now, I do believe that teachers probably should teach the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I think that’s what they’re trying to do in Florida. I have to say, I’m on Governor Ron DeSantis’ side here. I know people are probably not shocked to hear that. But I do believe that we should be teaching some of the good parts that came out of slavery. And I say that is because there are some people that were born to slavery and they were able to take those skills that they learned and went on to be entrepreneurs. Some of the inventions that we have today, like the folding chair with the bookcase in the back, that was invented by a man named Alexander who was living in Lynchburg, Virginia. He was born into slavery, but he knew that there was a need there because of the church that he attended. Had they not been slaves? No, they would not have learned those skills. But of course, I am not saying that slavery was a job program. That’s not what I’m saying.

Hill [00:03:24] I get that. But here’s my concern with that. If I tell the story of American slavery in the abstract, in a vacuum. Sure, right. We could talk about all the nuances of it. But this is a country that has historically whitewashed slavery. This is a country that consistently pretends that bad things did not happen. You add to that the fact that there’s been a movement around the country for decades to change textbooks to not even often talk about slavery as slavery, but to talk about it as immigration, to talk about it as a jobs program and other things that you’re not doing, but many other people have done. So against that backdrop, if we then encourage teachers or encouraged curriculum designers to focus on the good that came out of slavery, it becomes another way to sort of whitewash or to understate just how severe an impact slavery had. We are still to this day harmed by slavery. We still to this day pay an economic and social and cultural debt to what happened to us in slavery. So if all that stuff is true, then a textbook spending time focusing on the fact that some people got some skills out of it. To me, it’s time we could spend talking about the need for reparations. It’s time we could spend talking about the lingering impact of slavery. Its time we could spend talking about the people who enter slavery with skills and who were actually selected for their skill sets on the continent of Africa. We could talk about all that stuff in a finite amount of time, rather than talking about a few people who were blacksmiths who were able to get jobs when in fact there’s so many laws and program to stop people from getting access to jobs, to freedom, to justice, to food, clothing, shelter, equality, all that stuff, even after so-called emancipation.

Klacik [00:05:14] Yeah. Well, Mark, look, I still believe you teach the good, the bad and the ugly. You teach all of it. And so, I do have to ask you, you know, without slavery in this country, which, again, you had Blacks purchasing Blacks, you had Blacks selling Blacks, you had Native Americans purchasing Blacks, you had Blacks purchasing Native Americans. It goes on and on and on. And I think that conversation around reparations does get very complicated. And I know that there are a lot of people that advocate for that. Well, beyond that, I have to ask you where you be today without slavery?

Hill [00:05:48] That’s a great question. That’s what we call one of those counterfactual hypotheticals. Right? It’s hard for me to tell you where I’d be without slavery because our entire history was interrupted by it. But, Black people or African people, more importantly, had empires. We had civilizations, we had governments, we had order, we had laws. Were we perfect? No. No society, no civilization is perfect. But the question, where would we be without slavery would imply or suggest to people that somehow we are we have benefited from the enterprise of slavery, that somehow in the aftermath of slavery, we’re better off than we otherwise would have been. And there’s absolutely no evidence to believe that African people were better after interacting with enslavers, after interacting with the European colonists. There’s no evidence of that. So I don’t know where we’d be without slavery, but I’m certainly sure it’s better than where we would otherwise be.

Klacik [00:06:37] Yeah. See, and I would counter that personally with what we see on the continent of Africa today. I mean, honestly, you talked about some people having, you know, some of the kingdoms, and being on the hierarchy in Africa, in different countries, in Africa, and sure. But those weren’t the people that were being sold into slavery. See? So it’s like so hard to understand.

Hill [00:06:56] But Kim, where in Africa – I want you to be more specific. Where in Africa can we point to and see any kind of problem, any kind of disruption that hasn’t been touched or interrupted by Europe?

Klacik [00:07:10] You’re kidding, right? Okay, So, my family is from…

Hill [00:07:14] Name a country that hasn’t been… You’re saying Nigeria and Cameroon haven’t been affected by Europe. That’s your argument?

Klacik [00:07:22] There’s many countries in Africa that did not have Europeans colonize it, and they’re still down today. Look at the Congo, for one thing. We don’t talk enough about the Congo and what they’re dealing with, especially when it comes to China and everybody that is going into their to extract cobalt and lithium and all these things that we want here in America to make us feel good with electric vehicles. So if we want to go down that road, we can go down that road, ok? But at the same time, not every country was invaded by Europeans that then put colonization on their culture and their people, that what did not happen everywhere. But I can tell you right now in Cameroon, we have a situation, we have people running…

Hill [00:08:06] Continue, finish your thought.

Klacik [00:08:08] We have tribes in Cameroon right now that are trying to run from the military, run from the government, and it is Black on Black in Cameroon. This is what’s happening across Africa. I’m not saying you being from a family of slavery is great. I’m not saying it for myself either. But you can’t sit here and say that your life wouldn’t have been better without slavery because we just don’t know. We can look back to the continent of Africa today and we can say that there are a lot of places where people are leaving, seeking refuge to come here in America because this is the land of opportunity.

Hill [00:08:43] So just real quick, I have to take a break. You’re familiar with Zaire, right? The country?

Klacik [00:08:49] Yes, Yes.

Hill [00:08:51] Right. Do you know what that’s called now?

Klacik [00:08:54] What is it called now?

Hill [00:08:57] Congo. So the country you’re saying wasn’t affected by Europe, it was affected by Europe because it was colonized. It’s only now being called Congo again.

Klacik [00:09:03] You have the Republic of the Congo…

Hill [00:09:08] Right. My point is Congo was colonized. When you talk about Cameroon, there’s a reason why they speak French. It’s not because they really love the language, it’s because they were colonized.

The conversation doesn’t end there. Learn more about “Kim Klacik and the slavery debate” from the clip above, and tune into theGrio with Marc Lamont Hill weeknights at 7 pm ET on theGrio cable channel.

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