Florida’s new approved guidelines for how to teach Black American history are, intentional or not, proslavery arguments. The “benchmark clarifications” for middle school students state that “instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

The members of the working group said in a statement that these benchmarks are an attempt to portray enslaved Africans as “tak[ing] advantage of whatever circumstances they were in to benefit themselves and the community of African descendants,” Reuters reports. However, the “whatever circumstances they were in” was not some ambiguous condition but the violent intuition of slavery, and to argue the benefits of enslavement is to echo 19th century proslavery sentiment that began to articulate itself as antislavery sentiment rose. 

A Florida slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. produced one of the earliest defenses of slavery in 1828, A Treatise on the Patriarchal, or Co-operative System of Society, which argued that enslavers felt a patriarchal, familial duty to protect the enslaved. The argument that slavery protected the enslaved is also the basis of 1857’s Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters, which stated that enslavement protected and helped govern Africans as their masters provided “food, raiment [clothing], house, fuel, and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family. The master’s labors commence just when the slave’s end.” Written by George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters, argues, “The Negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them.”

Other proslavery advocates said that enslavement was an institution legitimized by the Bible, as argued in 1864’s Nellie Norton: or, Southern Slavery and the Bible. A Scriptural Refutation of the Principal Arguments upon which the Abolitionists Rely. A Vindication of Southern Slavery from the Old and New Testaments. Proslavery tracts like the 1863’s Negro’s Place in Nature also said that Africans were predisposed to enslavement due to their biological inferiority.

The Florida benchmark clarifications for teaching Black American history do not go this far or this explicit in defense of enslavement, one would argue. But in an effort to show that enslaved weren’t victims, the benchmarks minimalize the trauma of enslavement.

What is the problem with teaching that enslaved Africans did not benefit at all from their enslavement? Why say would anyone say the enslaved did benefit,  if not to rescue the reputation of enslavers and slavery? Black people in the U.S. and diaspora are not helped by thinking the abuse and dehumanization their ancestors endured for centuries was good in any way.  o make statements that seem to argue the bright side of one of America’s original sins is evidence that we have not recovered from the centuries-old proslavery mentality about race and the value of Black life and humanity of Black people.

While many might seek to hear both sides, to put it simply, enslavement is one of those things that you’re either for or against. There is no middle ground.