Why separating fact from fiction is critical in teaching US slavery

A Black actor in 1974 impersonating an enslaved man in Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. George Bryant/Toronto Star via Getty Images

Of all the debate over teaching U.S. slavery, it is one sentence of Florida’s revised academic standards that has provoked particular ire: “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Does this sentence constitute “propaganda,” as Vice President Kamala Harris proclaimed, “an attempt to gaslight us?”