College Board Surrenders to DeSantis on AP African American Studies

After scathing criticism of the Advanced Placement curricula for African American Studies by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the College Board has significantly altered the curriculum by stripping many of the issues to which DeSantis objected.

It’s a big win for DeSantis and Florida students, who now have a less ideological black studies program to study — if they so choose.

Gone will be most references to black authors and writers associated with critical race theory (CRT). Also gone are many writers and scholars associated with the queer experience and black feminism. Also not a part of the formal curriculum anymore is Black Lives Matter.

Added to research topics: black conservatism.

New York Times:

When it announced the A.P. course in August, the College Board clearly believed it was providing a class whose time had come, and it was celebrated by eminent scholars like Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard as an affirmation of the importance of African American studies. But the course, which is meant to be for all students of diverse backgrounds, quickly ran into a political buzz saw after an early draft leaked to conservative publications like The Florida Standard and National Review.

In January, DeSantis announced he would ban the AP Black Studies course on the grounds that it violated state law that regulates how race-related issues are taught in public schools. Essentially, any ideological approach to teaching race-related issues was forbidden.

David Coleman, the head of the College Board, said in an interview that the changes were all made for pedagogical reasons, not to bow to political pressure. “At the College Board, we can’t look to statements of political leaders,” he said. The changes, he said, came from “the input of professors” and “longstanding A.P. principles.”

He said that during the initial test of the course this school year, the board received feedback that the secondary, more theoretical sources were “quite dense” and that students connected more with primary sources, which he said have always been the foundation of A.P. courses.

As far as the leftist criticism that DeSantis was trying to “erase” black history, the College Board showed how ludicrous that idea was.

In light of the politics, the College Board seemed to opt out of the politics. In its revised 234-page curriculum framework, the content on Africa, slavery, reconstruction and the civil rights movement remains largely the same. But the study of contemporary topics — including Black Lives Matter, affirmative action, queer life and the debate over reparations — is downgraded. The subjects are no longer part of the exam, and are simply offered on a list of options for a required research project.

DeSantis wanted to erase the radical left version of contemporary black history, not the history itself. Contemporary black history is hardly “history” at all. What’s missing from the AP course is the ideological tilt on current events, like Black Lives Matter and other media headlines.

There are plenty of topics covered in the program that are bound to put white people in a negative light. So once again, left-wing hysteria about something conservatives support or oppose turns out to be a lot of “sound and fury signifying nothing.”