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Key points
- A Florida teaching standard says some enslaved individuals learned skills that could have “personal benefit.”
- Yet some Florida officials deny that the new standards “teach that slavery was beneficial.”
- Multiple potential biases and fallacies in defending the new standard may undermine its justification.
A new teaching standard in Florida directs teachers to teach their students that there were “benefits” of slavery in the United States. Or does it?
The much-discussed standard states that “instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” That sounds like benefits of slavery, but there is apparent disagreement on that point among Florida officials and even members of the workgroup who created the standards.
Benefits or Not?
A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education confirmed the “benefits” position in providing a clarifying statement from two members of the workgroup which reads, “The intent… is to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefitted” (Planas, 2023). But Politico quoted state board members and officials as saying the standards “do not teach that slavery was beneficial” (Atterbury, 2023). And according to National Review, “members of the workgroup… say there was no intention to suggest that African Americans benefitted from slavery” (Mills, 2023).
So which is it? These apparent contradictions may reflect that some of those involved are feeling pressure to backpedal or parse words. Or as Republican Senator Tim Scott suggested, “People have bad days. Sometimes they regret what they say. And we should ask them again to clarify their positions” (Kinnard and Fingerhut, 2023). But in some of these ongoing “clarifications,” some biases or logical fallacies may be showing.
It Wasn’t (Just) Me
In a form of self-serving bias (Myers, 2013), some are trying to remove blame from themselves. William Allen, one of the workgroup authors of the standards, said to an NPR interviewer, “Let me emphasize that I’m not the author.” His point was that “no one [person] in the workgroup” was the author and that there was “consensual agreement” (Inskeep, 2023). But other members of the same workgroup claimed that it was Allen who pushed the wording of the standard, that most members disagreed with it, and that they didn’t know the exact wording until after publication or didn’t even recall voting on it (Griffith, 2023b; Mills, 2023).
False Dichotomy
Governor DeSantis also emphasized he didn’t write the standards. He also created a false dichotomy in trying to persuade others to support the standards when he asked, “Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you going to side with the state of Florida?” (Kinnard and Fingerhut, 2023).
Whataboutism
Some defenders of the Florida standards have pointed to a college Advanced Placement (AP) course on African American history as having a similarly worded standard. It may seem relevant at first, but there are multiple differences in the language between the two standards (Bouie, 2023) including that only the Florida standard uses the word “benefit.” Miami-Dade School Board member Steve Gallon also pointed out that the college course is voluntary and its students would be older and more capable of their own critical thinking (Griffith 2023a).
Cherry-Picking
Some defenders provided the names of 16 slaves who supposedly benefited. Most of those individuals were never enslaved or learned their skills after gaining freedom (Bridges, 2023), but even if all 16 and 100 more were valid examples, that would still be infinitesimal compared to the actual number of enslaved people, most of whom died in bondage. The standard does say “in some instances,” so asking how many valid examples it would take to justify the word “some” is another question of semantics.
No Control Group
Because there’s no control group with which to compare, we don’t know how much better the enslaved individuals’ lives would’ve been, or how many more skills they would’ve learned, had they never been enslaved in the first place. Although it seems obvious that freedom is better than enslavement, this discussion forces the question.
Senator Tim Scott similarly suggested that individuals who were not enslaved could also have learned those skills (Oliphant, 2023). So another potential semantic issue is whether there has to be a “net benefit” of slavery or just an occasional skill-specific benefit to justify using the word “benefit” in the standard. Even some defenders acknowledge the wording was poorly chosen or “clumsy” (Ferguson, 2023).
Correspondence Bias
A classic cognitive bias is thinking you can read someone else’s mind for their motives or intentions. It falls under the correspondence bias or fundamental attribution error in which we overestimate the role of internal dispositions or specific feelings behind observable behavior (Stalder, 2018).
Some who defend the standards seem to have committed this bias in contending that critics of the standards have “questionable intent” (Griffith, 2023b) or are “not acting in good faith” (Mills, 2023). Some critics of the standards are also inferring negative intent in the workgroup (Hartmann, 2023).
Racism and Revisionism
Worst-case scenario: The workgroup is trying to revise history in a racist way. Some members of Florida’s African American History Task Force (not the workgroup) are “outraged” by the new standards and claim they were “purposefully” excluded when they were supposed to be consulted. At least one member thinks that Governor DeSantis orchestrated the whole process in “a race war” (Hartmann, 2023). These views may fall under correspondence bias, but they may be understandable concerns (if overstated) given other changes in Florida education in recent months.
In Sum
I generally suggest caution in inferring negative intentions behind a word choice because word choices can have multiple causes beyond negative intentions (Stalder, 2014, 2018). If possible, follow up with the author to clarify. In the case of the word “benefit” in a published standard about teaching slavery, the follow-ups reveal multiple potential biases and fallacies that justify continued concern about the standard.
In fairness, so much focus on a single standard or word could be called cherry-picking or even “catastrophizing” (Ferguson, 2023), but there are other similar criticisms of the broader set of standards beyond the scope of this article. Continued discussion about the standards without assuming nefarious intentions on either side might be challenging but also a constructive way forward.
References
Andrew Atterbury, “New Florida Teaching Standards Say African Americans Received Some ‘Personal Benefit’ from Slavery,” Politico, July 20, 2023.
Jamelle Bouie, “Ron DeSantis and the State Where History Goes to Die,” New York Times, July 28, 2023.
C. A. Bridges, “‘Factual?’ ‘Lies?’ What to Know About Florida Schools’ New Black History Standards,” Tallahassee Democrat, July 24, 2023.
Christopher J. Ferguson, “Misinformation Only Obscures History,” Psychology Today, July 28, 2023.
Janelle Griffith, “College Board Pushes Back on Florida Work Group Member Who Likened New Black History Standards to AP Curriculum,” NBC News, August 1, 2023a.
Janelle Griffith, “Most of Florida Work Group Did Not Agree with Controversial Parts of State’s New Standards for Black History, Members Say,” NBC News, July 28, 2023b.
Ray Hartmann, “Same Methods ‘Used on the Plantation’: Black Task Force Member Scorches Florida Slavery Guidelines,” Raw Story, July 29, 2023.
Steve Inskeep, “William Allen, Who Helped Write Florida’s New History Standards, Stands by Curriculum,” NPR, July 27, 2023.
Meg Kinnard and Hannah Fingerhut, “Scott Criticizes DeSantis over His Support for Florida’s Slavery Curriculum as They Stump in Iowa,” AP News, July 28, 2023.
Ryan Mills, “Educators Behind Florida’s African-American History Standards Push Back on Claims That It Whitewashed Slavery,” National Review, July 26, 2023.
David Myers, Social Psychology, 11th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2013).
James Oliphant, “2024 Republican Candidate Scott Decries Florida’s New Black History Plan,” Reuters, July 28, 2023.
Antonio Planas, “New Florida Standards Teach Students That Some Black People Benefited from Slavery Because It Taught Useful Skills,” NBC News, July 20, 2023.
Daniel R. Stalder, The Power of Context: How to Manage Our Bias and Improve Our Understanding of Others (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2018).
Daniel R. Stalder, “What’s in a Word? The Fundamental Attribution Error in Verbal Decoding,” PARBs Anonymous (blog), September 30, 2014, https://parbsanonymous.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/whats-in-a-word-the-fundamental-attribution-error-in-verbal-decoding/.
