Civil rights attorneys out the state of Florida on notice that it was prepared to sue if the state bans the new AP course in African American studies.
Florida’s Black leaders delivered a warning to Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday that if he doesn’t stop attempts “to exterminate Black history” in Florida classrooms, they would sue him for violating the constitutional rights of students.
“We are here to give notice to Gov. DeSantis,’’ said Ben Crump, a Tallahassee civil rights attorney, to a cheering crowd of supporters in the Capitol Rotunda, as three high school students stood at his side.
They were protesting the announcement last week by the Florida Department of Education that it had rejected a new Advanced Placement elective course on African-American studies, developed by the College Board for high school students.
“If he does not negotiate with the College Board to allow AP African-American Studies to be taught in the classrooms across the state of Florida, these three young people will be the lead plaintiffs,’’ said Crump, who has represented families in several high-profile civil rights cases.
The College Board is expected to release its updated version of the AP course on Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month. As a pilot program taught in 60 select classrooms around the country, the board has been soliciting feedback from teachers for modifications to the curriculum. It is unknown how many schools in Florida are involved in the pilot program.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article271651587.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Before people express opinions on the proposed AP African-American Studies course, they should make a respectable effort to actually know what’s in that course. I link below to one perspective from a conservative publication – the conservative publication that is most conspicuously critical of Donald Trump every week. I welcome other perspectives, but let’s try to avoid the ad hominem and namecalling that usually occur when issues like this are raised.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/neo-marxing-the-college-board-with-ap-african-american-studies/
Would you please supply a link to the curriculum that you have. Thanks!
Even if you don’t personally have it please supply a link. Gracias.
I’ve tried to find a link to that proposed curriculum, but the College Board has kept it under close wraps. So like everyone else I’m depending on second-hand information, which is why I welcome varying perspectives, and why I’m keeping an open mind at this time. It’s maddening: why doesn’t the College Board just make it public so people can have informed opinions?
Jack Safely
Here is the course the College Board kept under raps .
Let us know after you read through it. I assure you Kurtz didn’t .
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23584340-ap-afam-syllabus-watermark
Joel,
Thank you for posting the syllabus for the AP African American Studies course. I read it carefully. It is a fair and balanced course. Kurtz’s article in the National Review is an exercise in cherry-picking. He found a small number of names that inflamed him: Kelly, Crenshaw, Coates. He saw the word “intersectionality.” This is not a course that is intended to radicalize students, as he claims. His article relies on the reader’s inability to see what he is critiquing. He is hysterical and unhinged. He hates the course for reasons of his own, not because of its content.
Joel,
Thanks for supplying the link. How did you get it?
I assure you that Stanley Kurtz did read through that proposed curriculum. You just happen to disagree with his conclusion. Thanks for posting the link. I’d like to read a serious debate on this topic rather than the typical partisan posturing. At any rate, I’m off on an extended work trip so no more comments for several weeks.
Jack, I read the curriculum closely. I did not see any validation for Kurtz’s claim that the course is intended to radicalize students. There is one reference to Kelly, and several to Gates. Now that you too have read it, what do you think?
dianeravitch
A simple Google search solved the “Deep State Mystery ” . The link to the Curriculum was hidden in Bold RED (or Blue) INK in an NBC news article about the Course .
As for Kurtz and the National Review.
At least Breitbart and Bannon have no problem telling you who they are up front.
https://theintercept.com/2020/07/05/national-review-william-buckley-racism/
Thank you, Joel.
All well and good. However, Florida has no problem with AP courses that include language and culture for several groups. Here’s the list:
https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/course-index-page
Note there is also an AP European History Course. I taught that course for seventeen years. It’s a great course but it very obviously focuses on European culture. And, stunningly, includes elements of Marxism, communism, socialism and Christianity. You know, since all of those things are European focused.
So apparently, all other ethnic and cultural groups can be discussed and examined in Florida. Just not this specific one.
I don’t really care what the National Review says. They dislike Trump but their editorial agrees with everything Trump says. The love the ideas but the ivory tower conservatives don’t like the way Trump delivers it. This is not an unbiased source.
gtaperuo
Spot on . The Right as Diane said wants to pretend that they want color blindness . Hard to claim to be Color Blind when you notice only one color .
You say people should make an effort to know what is in it and then you post a link that starts like this.
“A new and sweeping effort to infuse leftist radicalism into America’s K–12 curriculum has begun. The College Board — the group that runs the SAT test and the Advanced Placement (AP) program ”
I second Duane. I did not see a link to the actual Curriculum. As I quickly scanned through the rest of the Right Wing gibberish . I suspect the author is as afraid to do so as you are. Or as ignorant of the subject matter.
I did not notice anywhere in Kurtz’s bio that he was anything but a Right Wing hack commentator. Please also post his credentials in either African History, American History or History.
I’m as curious about the course as anyone, but I don’t think it is our opinion that matters. The issue is that a Governor, for political reasons, is attempting to micromanage the content of a College Board AP course. I don’t even like the College Board, and I oppose the teaching to the test mentality. But, the AP system is widely used, and many students feel that it benefits them. And, it must be acknowledged that AP materials are developed by educators who are highly knowledgeable in their field. It’s simply not a Governor’s position to micromanage and censor high school courses.
I agree with you, Anne.
No governor should attemp to micromanage the course of study of a private or public institution.
Jack,
That certainly is a screed by Stanley Kurtz. I would want to read the materials myself before making a judgment.
Some of the things he finds shocking are not shocking to me. As a liberal, I used to espouse the doctrine of color blindness, but now I realize that that doctrine has become conservative dogma to justify doing nothing to address or eliminate racism. Now, conservatives like DeSantis insist that Dr. MLK wanted society to be colorblind. That’s a blatant distortion of his life’s work. We can’t eliminate racism by not seeing it. Any review of data shows that Blacks have the least and the worst of everything we measure. Asking why the difference exists means using CRT. Or we could be, like Kurtz, colorblind and ignore the disparities. If we look too closely, we will see the importance of federal, state and local laws that kept Black people down.
I recall LBJ saying in a major speech that you can’t expect a white man and a black man to have a fair race if the black man has been hobbled for decades before the race. That’s CRT.
Just to underscore this with another example: In most cancers and diseases, racial disparities are the norm. This can be traced to economics, prejudice in diagnosis (that pain is the result of working hard your whole life, Black women tend to exaggerate symptoms, etc), and genetics. So in a normal world not impacted by the pandemic, I would encourage people to see color when they were in the waiting room with other patients. If they saw a Black face, they should engage them with facts and how they can help. The irony in all of this is the recognition in the medical community in general that the ultimate keys to solving many diseases may be found in knowing the reasons for disparities from economics to genetics. So as conservatives try to spread their faux “color-blindness,” they may well stop a great deal of medical progress as part of the collateral damage.
I support the esteem Ben Crump and the three amazing Students and their parents for them standing up for their rights .Power to the Voice of the People Students Parents and Community .
DeSantis claims that African American history is simply American history. That may be easy for a white man to say. The journey of most Black ancestors is not the same as white immigrants, and that fact alone justifies the legitimacy of exploring the history further.
Meanwhile, people in Philadelphia are protesting the nomination of DeSantis as a member of The Union League, a private club started during The Civil War. This organization was created to support the policies of Abraham Lincoln. Ironically, The Union League of today is dominated by Big Money and right wing politics.
This is the best phrase I have read in months:
“We are here to give notice to Gov. DeSantis,’’ said Ben Crump, a Tallahassee civil rights attorney, to a cheering crowd of supporters in the Capitol Rotunda, as three high school students stood at his side.
*GIVING NOTICE to an insidious Governor legislating hate from the podium
*A civil Rights attorney
*Three high school students.
I said Kurtz was a Right Wing Hack who never read the Curriculum he criticized. I will stand by that statement . There is nothing better than seeing how an authors screeds stand the test of time. Here is the esteemed Stanley Kurtz with his degree in Social Anthropology(don’t knock it, so is mine ) commenting on Health care policy in 2011. He did not read ACA either .
Rationing, death panels, socialism, and deception. It’s all there. When Sarah Palin first raised the “death panel” issue, she was referring to end-of-life counseling. But IPAB is the real death panel (as Palin herself later noted), a body of unelected bureaucrats with the power to cut off care through arbitrary rules based on one-size-fits-all cost calculations, just as in Britain. [NRO, 4/18/11]”
Anyone meet with a death panel lately other than those whose inadequate insurance coverage made them choose between medications ,food and shelter.
“In Fact, IPAB Specifically Prohibited From Making “Any Recommendations To Ration Health Care”
Law Specifically Prohibits Advisory Board From Making “Any Recommendations To Ration Health Care … Or Otherwise Restrict Benefits.” As Media Matters has noted, the health care law specifically prohibits the Independent Payment Advisory Board from making “any recommendations to ration health care … or otherwise restrict benefits.” [Media Matters, 10/12/10; Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, accessed, 4/21/11]
The Right is ‘Color Blind’ except for the color Brown .
Thank you for the link for the actual curriculum/syllabus. I was blown away by the depth and breadth of course content; just reading through the course outline was an eye opener as to how little any of this subject matter was ever taught in school, by design. To classify the course as having no educational value is not only a racist slap in the face to African Americans, but deprives our young people in Florida the chance to actively study and face the reckoning of racism in this country. The fact that this kind of whitewashing of history is still happening, and is accelerating under tyrant-wannabes like DeSantis is ironically one of countless reasons why this course needs to be offered in the first place.
This course is not “basket weaving.” It is a serious academic course designed by scholars. By rejecting this course of study, DeSantis is revealing his true nature.
“We can’t eliminate racism
by not seeing it.”
Racism is a form of prejudice.
Prejudice can’t be eliminated
by institutions that are founded
on prejudice, depend on prejudice,
and practice prejudice.
Beneath all the pious word
clouds, beyond the din
of concocted notoriety, the
hypocritical display of virtues,
lies REALITY.
A nation founded on
white supremacy, clouded
as a “democracy”, ISN’T
changed by the prejudice
of “othering”, OR
what is offered or not,
in universities.
All I know from helping with our local Black History Month exhibit for years, I have learned so much and I have become a richer person for it. To tell young people their culture is non-significant is pure insanity. The railroads would have never made it to the the “Golden Spike”; John Glenn and the Mercury 7; Brown v. Board of Education; Civil Rights…and the list goes on from artists to authors to Harlem Renaissance. I was never afforded this type of education and it took me years to become less ignorant. The poet Gil Scott Herron’s words have stuck with me forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpBmxkI8ox8
I just received a message from the college Board that states: “To be clear, no states or districts have seen the official framework that will be released on February 1, much less provided feedback on it. This course has been shaped only by the input of experts and long-standing AP principles and practices.”
So while people may have had a sneak preview here or there, no one has seen the full framework of the class. This is just a series of political maneuvers from Republicans to curry favor with their base.
A political analyst in a podcast that I enjoy stated the following: “Republicans do not know how to improve the lives of their disgruntled rural voters. For those that feel left behind, neither party really has a path to that. Instead, what Republicans seek to do is keep those disaffected voters ABOVE some others in society. By keeping some voters down, they make their voters feel more powerful.”
In an earlier comment, Joel posted a link to the College Board syllabus in question.
I don’t know how Joel obtained this copy, but I think it’s genuine.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23584340-ap-afam-syllabus-watermark
If the College Board plans to release it February 1, it’s already written.
No one could fake this level of detail and knowledge.
Read it and see what you think.
Watermark gave it away. It’s here on NBC News website: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/ap-african-american-studies-course-florida-rejected-rcna67112
Wonderful!
Threats mean nothing to the likes of Desantis. Sue him and the state. Take action and then insist national media expose his failures.