The office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on social media that it will not consider any requests for interviews from NBC and MSNBC until Andrea Mitchell corrects a “blatant lie.”
During her Feb. 17 interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, Andrea Mitchell, host of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” asked a question that set off a social media firestorm.
“Let me ask you,” Mitchell said, “what does Governor Ron DeSantis not know about black history and the black experience when he says that slavery and the aftermath of slavery should not be taught to Florida’s schoolchildren?”
“I don’t know what he knows and what he doesn’t know,” Harris replied. “But I do know this. Any push to censor America’s teachers and tell them what they should be teaching in the best interest of our children in partnership with the parents of America is, I think, wrong-headed. The people who know our children best are their parents and their teachers in terms of the time they spend and the investment they’ve placed in the brains and capacity of our children who are our nation’s future and it should not be some politician saying what should be taught in our classrooms.”
The Background
In January, the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) formally rejected a proposal to include an Advanced Placement (AP) African American History course in the curriculum of any public high school because its content conflicts with state law.
“As presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value,” state Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. said in a Jan. 12 letter (pdf) to the College Board Florida Partnership, suggesting that “should College Board be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically-accurate content, FDOE will always be willing to reopen the discussion.”
