Brian Kilmeade calls out Kamala Harris, claims VP is 'wrong' to reject Florida's Black history education reforms
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Brian Kilmeade is back on 'Fox & Friends' after a break of almost two weeks and was quick to respond to the ongoing political debates around the country. Kilmeade took issue with Vice President Kamala Harris' response to the Florida education reforms.
The state has recently passed several bills aimed at educational reform, including major changes in how Black history will be taught in schools. Kilmeade shared his own take on Harris' response.
What is the Florida issue about?
The current governor of Florida Ron DeSantis has been on a streak of upturning the course curriculum and other school-level education policies in the state as part of his 2024 Presidential campaign. He has previously worked toward passing the 'Don't Say Gay' bill that disallowed instructors from informing school students on sexual orientation and gender identity.
DeSantis recently made another controversial reform related to African American history, which Harris has spoken against in the last month. The curriculum is said to refer to how the slaves, under the ownership of white people, were able to gain in certain ways. "Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit," the new standards document says, suggesting that the slaves were able to do well in trade because of these "skills."
Harris, while attending a national convention in Indianapolis, slammed the administration in her keynote address. "...Extremists pass book bans to prevent them from learning our true history — book bans in this year of our Lord 2023," she said, "And while they do this, check it out, they push forward revisionist history. Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.” The Vice President later also rejected a debate invitation from the Florida governor on the topic of these new standards.
What did Brian Kilmeade have to say?
Citing his own research for his upcoming book, Kilmeade explained why he thought Harris was "wrong." His latest book is called 'Teddy and Booker T: How Two American Icons Blazed a Path for Racial Equality'. He referred to what the African American author Booker T Washington would think to justify his claims of something good coming out of slavery.
Kilmeade said, "If you taught a slave how to read or write you could get hanged or jailed...What happens is the African Americans, for the most part, had skills. And their skills were cabinet making, agriculture, building a home...they had some legitimate trade while white people, for the most part, did not have that trade."
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He then recalled Washington's own life and his experiences as a young Black child whose family was finally free and "realizing that white people didn't know how to do anything." He added, "It didn't mean anything about slavery is good. But the fact is African Americans, in many cases, left slavery with a trade and multiple skills."