New Advanced Placement African American Studies course is a watered down version of itself
The ConversationNov 02, 2022
The Facts
The College Board, which is responsible for developing high school Advanced Placement (AP) courses, announced revisions to the AP class in African American studies on Wednesday, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had threatened to ban in his state.
The DeSantis administration had objected to the parts of the course that dealt with “queer theory” and allegedly taught tenets of so-called Critical Race Theory, which — per the Associated Press —"centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that those institutions maintain the dominance of white people."
The Spin
Right narrative
Claims that DeSantis is trying to erase Black history are ludicrous, as these revisions were in the works before Florida issued its complaints. Nonetheless, this is a win for DeSantis’s fight against "woke" culture, and a victory for students who can now study Black history without an ideological bent distorting the facts or sowing division by defining people as oppressors and oppressed based simply on race.
Left narrative
It’s hard to accept the College Board's claim that its watering down of the curriculum isn’t a reaction to complaints from DeSantis, whose term as governor has been largely devoted to erasing Black and LGBTQ+ experiences from education. The College Board caved, and sadly students will now be robbed of the educational opportunity to understand how Black history impacts the present world Americans live in.