Fourteen words from Florida’s 2023 Board of Education-approved curriculum now erase 400 years of black history, with statements claiming that: “Slaves developed skills, which in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” 

Governor DeSantis of Florida shocked the nation in 2022 with his “Stop WOKE Act,” which has instigated the erasure of slavery in United States (US) education under the guise of preventing “woke indoctrination.”

As part of this act, Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Education Department made an atrocious decision when they blocked the Advanced Placement (AP) African American studies from being taught in high schools. They argued that topics in this curriculum included systemic racism, intersectionality, and black queer studies, which all perpetuate a “woke agenda.” DeSantis commented, “We will not let Florida be held hostage to some woke agenda.”

The excuse for this move is senseless.

According to the bill, no individual should be made to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.” 

The same law bars employers from holding diversity or bias training that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” workers to believe they are responsible for actions committed by others of their same race or sex. Although the bill claims that instructors may still discuss topics like slavery, segregation, or racial oppression “in an age-appropriate manner,” it clearly states that “classroom instruction and curriculum may not be used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”

One of the bill’s sponsors even admitted that “while teachers could include mentions of historical events like the Three-Fifths Compromise, which infamously counted Black people as three-fifths of a white person, they could not openly express why these laws were morally wrong.” This reflects the larger intent of the bill, not to teach history accurately, but to sanitize it. Hence, no one feels “uncomfortable.”

In plain words, the bill is a ban on Black history intended to make white people feel comfortable about the past. Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” championed by conservative Republicans like DeSantis, deliberately rewrites history to protect the privileged while erasing the suffering of millions. Democratic State Senator Shevrin Jones, the committee’s vice chair and its only Black member, called it “an attempt to revise history and keep White people from feeling uncomfortable,” saying, “My ancestors were uncomfortable when they were stripped away from their children.” 

By claiming that teaching slavery causes “discomfort” or “guilt,” lawmakers erase the courage of those who fought for freedom and civil rights throughout history. The slaves were the ones who faced the pain and anguish of being ripped away from their loved ones, the guilt of watching their own families die from mistreatment, starvation, and brutality.

As Mr. Benson, an Upper School history teacher, says, “Sanitizing history misleads students and erases the real struggles and courage of those who suffered.” When DeSantis defends these erasures as moral, he’s not protecting children; he’s safeguarding white innocence at the expense of truth. 

If we stop teaching about slavery, society will slowly lose its moral conscience. Children will be taught “economic systems” instead of human tragedy, “migration” instead of forced deportation. Violence and marginalization will no longer be seen as abhorrent but as an “overreaction” —  something amplified by activists trying to “make people feel uncomfortable.” They’ll roll their eyes at protests and belittle the fight for justice as “woke,” not knowing why people continue to fight for it.

Erasing this context blinds students to the inequalities and daily injustices we continue to fight against. It stops us from understanding and continuing the advocacy for justice that has gotten us to where we are today. Mr. Benson emphasized that by censoring history, “students don’t learn the true lessons of courage, resistance, and freedom,” and that ignorance “undermines the foundation of civil rights.”

Those very same children will one day grow up to be leaders who never realized the magnitude of racial oppression, dismantling all the work the silenced, oppressed, and marginalized fought, died, and bled for. They’ll cut public housing, forget how redlining created segregated neighborhoods, cut voting protections, and criminalize poverty with harder sentences and “law and order” politics, never having a clue why these socioeconomic ills actually happen.

 It comes from the root of slave codes and Jim Crow legislation, gnawing away at black people and keeping them below whites, eventually creating social inequality that black people still face today, because we haven’t been able to win our fight for equity. 

This social division perpetuates a cycle of social division, where only descendants of privileged whites thrive while marginalized communities remain trapped in cycles of poverty, crime, and disease.

Public schools will be increasingly segregated—resources for the wealthy will continue to accumulate, while public schools in lower-income areas will fall drastically behind, sacrificing generations of black youth. College will be a preservation of the wealthy. Voting will be a formality for some but an impossibility for others as blacks will be branded by leaders as “uneducated,” ripping apart the freedom and rights people have fought for generations and generations. Medical care, food, and protection will be privileges, not rights, and laws touted as “neutral” will still criminalize poverty, dissent, and the fight to stay alive. Generational wealth, opportunity, and even life expectancy will be decided by the color of a person’s skin, unseen shackles that stretch across lifetimes.

But silence doesn’t have to win. As Mr. Benson says, “There will always be people who stand up, protest, and spread awareness, no matter the cost.” Even as these bills form, we can still use our voices, through the power of the people and the spirit of America itself, to fight back against these unjust politicians. The spirit that has always lived in the people who refuse to forget, the people who are never afraid to speak up and fight back. Let them fear discomfort, but we will not fear the truth.