Harris rejects DeSantis’ offer to discuss Black history education during Florida visit

Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday publicly rebuked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ offer to meet to discuss the state’s controversial new standards for teaching Black history in Florida schools, denouncing the proposal as an attempt to “legitimize” efforts to rewrite history.

Speaking at a convention of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Orlando, Harris criticized what she dubbed efforts by extremists to “ban books” and “erase — and even rewrite — the ugly parts” of the country’s history. She then took direct aim at Florida’s new Black history curriculum, specifically a provision that teaches that some enslaved people learned skills that ultimately were used for their “personal benefit.”

“Right here in Florida, they plan to teach students that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” Harris said. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, in an attempt to divide and distract our nation with unnecessary debates.”

“And now they attempt to legitimize these unnecessary debates with a proposal...of a politically motivated roundtable,” she continued. “Well, I’m here in Florida and I will tell you there is no roundtable, no lecture, no invitation we will accept to debate an undeniable fact: there were no redeeming qualities of slavery.”

The speech in Orlando marked Harris’ second public appearance in Florida in less than two weeks. She traveled to Jacksonville on July 21, just two days after the state Board of Education approved the new Black history education standards, where she condemned the new curriculum as “propaganda.”

Harris’ appearance at the Orlando conference has been in the works since mid-July. On Monday, DeSantis sent a letter to the vice president inviting her to Tallahassee to meet with him and William Allen, who helped author the new Black history standards.

“Over the past several weeks, the Biden Administration has repeatedly disparaged our state and misinformed Americans about our education system,” DeSantis wrote. “Our state pushed forward nation-leading standalone African American History standards — one of the only states in the nation to require this level of learning about such an important subject.”

Florida’s Black history curriculum has been at the center of an intense political firestorm since it was approved in July. The initial criticism came from Democrats, civil rights groups and educators, who accused state officials of white-washing the darkest chapters of U.S. history.

Since then, however, some Republicans have spoken out against the new standards, including four out of the five Black Republicans in Congress.

Among those critics is U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, who, like DeSantis, is seeking the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. Scott, who is Black, condemned Florida’s new education standards last week, saying that “there is no silver lining in slavery.”

“Slavery was really about separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives,” Scott said during a campaign stop in Iowa. “It was just devastating,”

DeSantis and his team have defended the curriculum, noting that the standards came from a panel of experts on the subject matter and were approved by the state Board of Education. The governor’s aides have also argued that there’s nothing controversial about the curriculum.

DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to the Miami Herald’s request for comment on Harris’ remarks in Orlando.