Dear Florida, Why Do You Lie About “Natural Reproduction?”





It isn’t fair to single out Florida, but they brag so much about how comprehensive their Black history program is that they must be highlighted. Florida’s guidelines are comprehensive; they cover a lot of material, though what they cover isn’t nearly as important as the truthfulness of what they say.

The topic that galls me most is what Florida teaches about “natural reproduction.” Multiple times in the guidelines, Florida asserts that slavery (meaning the number of enslaved people) increased naturally despite America’s best efforts to stop enslavement. Florida suggests America always wanted to limit or end slavery. While there were a few who felt that way, the majority of Americans did not.

Natural reproduction, often referred to as natural increase, is the theory that the American slave population dramatically increased when other slave populations in South America and the Caribbean decreased despite a similar need for enslaved people. Historians credit either worse conditions on plantations outside America, or that Americans treated enslaved people better, so they thrived. America stopped the legal importation of slaves in 1808, for which Florida gives many pats on the back as an attempt to gradually eliminate slavery when no such thing was intended.