College Board Revises African American Studies Course

ITNPod25Jan2023

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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.'
• Many of the names of Black writers and scholars were removed from the curriculum, which also no longer studies Black Lives Matter and other political topics.
• David Coleman, the College Board CEO, issued a written statement calling the curriculum “an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African American history and culture.”
• A version of the course is available at 60 high schools across the US as part of a pilot program. It will be open to students at hundreds more schools over the next year.
• The debate over the course comes amid a larger debate in the US over what should be included in public education and who should have the most influence over curriculums.

Sources: PBS NewsHour, Daily Caller, New York Times, Al Jazeera, CNN and New York Times.

Narratives

• Right narrative, as provided by PJ Media. 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, as provided by Mother Jones. 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.