Woke history is “correct” history! That was the take of Politico’s Eugene Daniels on today’s Morning Joe.
Fill-in host Jonathan Lemire tossed Daniels a left-wing softball: “Gene, let’s just start with how inaccurate and offensive some of this teaching is from the Florida new curriculum there. But also how Governor DeSantis and his anti-woke policies have put him in a box with speaking to a seemingly smaller and smaller portion of the electorate.”
Feeling righteous on the controversy surrounding Florida’s education policy that includes a line suggesting that slaves benefitted from learning useful skills, Daniels said:
DANIELS: This is what happens when you [DeSantis] base your entire kind of political career on this. When you say that everybody needs to be anti-woke, It was because he felt, and a lot of people around this country are starting to feel, that we can’t teach the correct history of this country, because it makes white kids uncomfortable.
It’s uncomfortable to hear that people who look like you put people who look like me in chains, and they made them do things. And they beat them, and raped them. That is uncomfortable for kids to hear. That is what folks, that is what these folks are saying.
That is patently untrue. In Florida and in other states, kids of all races are taught about the evils of slavery. What DeSantis and others object to is kids being taught that slavery is the essence of the American story, and that every aspect of American life must be viewed through the lens of systemic racism that never ends.
Daniels also inadvertently admitted a truth about the education system in America. He said that Florida’s anti-woke policies are making it hard to recruit teachers–implicitly acknowledging that the teaching establishment is dominated by the left.
Jonathan Lemire hosted today’s show in the absence of Joe and Mika. Lemire doubles as an MSNBC host and Politico’s White House bureau chief. He made it a Politico day at Morning Joe. In addition to Daniels, Lemire also had Politico’s Sam Stein on the panel.
While “completely” agreeing with his colleague’s take, Stein did point out that the notion that slaves benefitted from slavery was just one line in the curriculum. He regretted that no one in DeSantis’s orbit had the “maturity” to tell him that the line should be changed to remove the controversial wording.
On Morning Joe, Eugene Daniels of Politico saying Ron DeSantis has adopted an anti-woke approach to the teaching of American history because the “correct” history makes white kids uncomfortable was sponsored in part by Ring and DirecTV.
Here’s the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
7/24/23
6:30 am EDTJONATHAN LEMIRE: Say, Gene, let’s just start with how inaccurate and offensive some of this teaching is from the Florida new curriculum there. But also how Governor DeSantis and his anti-woke policies have put him in a box with speaking to a seemingly smaller and smaller portion of the electorate.
EUGENE DANIELS: This is what happens when you base your entire kind of political career on this. When you say that everybody needs to be anti-woke, that’s –this is where you end up.
And when you talk to folks in Florida, the whole point of the bill that came through, this is in reaction to a bill that he wanted. He was making clear what he wanted to folks.
And it was because he felt, and a lot of people around this country are starting to feel, that we can’t teach the correct history of this country, because it makes white kids uncomfortable. That is at the base of this, right.
It’s uncomfortable to hear that people who look like you put people who look like me in chains, and they made them do things. And they beat them, and raped them. That is uncomfortable for kids to hear. That is what folks, that is what these folks are saying.
But when you use that as a political cudgel, you have to own it, right? At this point, this is on Ron DeSantis. He may not have created these policies with the school board, but at the end of the day, he made it very clear to what he wanted to the folks in that state.
SAM STEIN: Yeah, no. Completely agree. I think you have to put it in the context, there has been an effort to sort of desanitize [sic, sanitize] American history, specifically American colonial history, and this was done in that context.
The actual curriculum, if you read it, it’s just one line, right? It’s just one line, does use the word “benefit,” and that, obviously, is problematic.
And what’s striking to me, beyond just that it got to this point to begin with, which is crazy, is that there’s not someone in that orbit, in his universe, who has the maturity and the capacity to say, “this wording is problematic. Maybe we can go back and revise it. We recognize that we’ve sort of lit a fire.Let’s try to revamp it.
Because that would be a sort of rational, human thing to do. It’s like, look, we didn’t mean to offend anyone. Let us, you know, scrub it and replace it with something else. But in a political context, you can never admit that you’ve made a misstep. And, more importantly, I think, for Desantis, he doesn’t want to back down from something that goes with his brand. Which is, we are going to push back against all these efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, and we want to sanitize our history.
DANIELS: I mean, it also is — it has real impact on the state. His anti-woke agenda. Because Florida has a teacher shortage now, right? It has become harder for people in the state to want to teach.