Ron DeSantis defended Florida’s controversial rules, which will require teaching that enslaved Africans “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
As for “being a blacksmith” — the example DeSantis cited as a skill that could provide personal benefit — Africans all over the continent already knew how to forge iron and other metals with great skill long before slavery. That’s why masterpieces like the Benin Bronzes were later stolen and ended up in British and American museums.
Just adding a recent discovery to this snippet: Industrial Revolution iron method ‘was taken from Jamaica by Briton’