The Furor Over AP African American Studies, Explained

On Feb. 1, 2023,  the School Board launched a revised framework for its Superior Placement (AP) African American Research course, which is at the moment being piloted in 60 faculties throughout the U.S. In January, the course was focused as missing in “academic worth” and banned in Florida by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The brand new framework eliminates, downplays, or makes elective a number of the extra controversial components of the pilot course: intersectionality, Black feminist thought, Black LGBTQ tradition, Black Lives Matter and the reparations debate. On the identical time, it leaves intact the research of African civilizations earlier than contact with Europeans, which is vastly understudied in Okay-12 faculties. 

In a statement, the School Board stated the brand new framework was finalized in December 2022, weeks earlier than DeSantis moved to bar the course from Florida faculties. Nevertheless, the timing and nature of the modifications has raised issues that the School Board is caving to political strain, not simply from DeSantis, however from conservative strain across the country. 

In late January, DeSantis’ press secretary Bryan Griffin stated in a Tweet that the Florida Division of Schooling would evaluate the revised framework “for compliance” with the state’s Cease WOKE Act,  which prohibits educating “divisive concepts” about race.

The pilot AP course has develop into a flashpoint within the tradition wars over curriculum and a focus for debate over how Black historical past must be taught in U.S. faculties. But the course has been within the works for greater than a decade. At the moment, the School Board plans to open the course to all excessive faculties and supply the AP examination in African American research in 2024-25.

The lengthy journey to create an AP African American Research course displays each the political controversies over tips on how to train about race and historical past in Okay-12 faculties and the reluctance of predominantly white faculties and universities to embrace non-Eurocentric approaches to the research of historical past, literature and tradition. 

College students By no means Get Black Historical past with no Struggle

The origin of African American research stretches again no less than to 1915.  That yr, after the American Historic Affiliation refused him entry to its conferences, Black historian Carter G. Woodson based a company now often called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. A yr later, he launched a still-publishing journal devoted to scholarship in Black historical past.

Whereas African American research then loved students’ consideration via these teams and at historically-Black faculties and universities, it took pupil protests within the Nineteen Sixties and 70s to win the identical consideration from predominantly white establishments of upper training. In 1968, a multiracial coalition of scholars at San Francisco State College gained the creation of the nation’s first official Black Research Division.

A whole lot of schools and universities adopted swimsuit, below related strain from their college students. Quickly, philanthropy acquired concerned, hoping to steer the packages towards  a extra incremental, integrationist strategy to the subject. 

As chronicled in a 2006 book by historian Noliwe Brooks, lots of their packages have been first bankrolled by the Ford Basis’s McGeorge Bundy, who had beforehand served as nationwide safety adviser to President John F. Kennedy. Bundy’s objective was to additional racial integration on school campuses and stop the packages from going right into a militant, Black-separatist path.

Whereas the scholar protests of the late Nineteen Sixties additionally pressured plenty of Okay-12 faculties to launch programs in African American, Native American, Latinx and different ethnic research, many college students nonetheless undergo highschool commencement with restricted or no publicity to this info. Within the wake of George Floyd’s homicide, a wave of state legislation spurred elevated consideration to Black historical past and ethnic research of all types.

The current calls from conservatives to “ban critical race theory” are pushing the political pendulum away from African American research in lots of states and districts. As of February 2023, practically 20 state legislatures are contemplating educational gag orders that stop lecturers from discussing race and different delicate matters within the classroom. 

If the School Board Caved, It Wasn’t to DeSantis

The School Board has been growing its AP African American Research course for greater than 10 years. It has delayed the complete rollout a number of instances. It’s arduous to parse when these delays have been to refine the curriculum and once they have been supposed to permit political warmth to chill off earlier than continuing.

Given how slowly the wheels of the School Board grind, there isn’t a means the DeSantis announcement in January altered the timeline for the revised framework launched at this time. Teachers concerned within the growth of the course insist the newest set of modifications have been made primarily based on their enter via ongoing evaluate, plus suggestions from lecturers and college students now within the pilot. 

Robert Patterson, a professor of African American research at Georgetown College who’s among the many students supporting the School Board’s work, told NBC, “The curriculum that’s being launched on Feb. 1 is in response to consultants, the event committee, the lecturers, the scholars. That’s what that’s in response to. It’s not a response to the state of Florida.” 

However the political fireworks surrounding AP African American research are more likely to proceed for a while. In late January, Florida highschool college students, supported by distinguished civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, threatened to file suit towards DeSantis to overturn his ban on the course.

As reported by the Tallahassee Democrat, SAIL Excessive College tenth-grader Elijah Edwards informed supporters, “I’ve not realized a lot concerning the historical past or tradition of my individuals outdoors of my mother and father and shut family. After I heard there is likely to be an African American Research AP class, I used to be ecstatic.”

Whether or not he and hundreds of different highschool college students, not simply in Florida however throughout the nation, get the possibility to take the course stays an open query.