Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said again that his state would not participate in a planned advanced African American studies course for the whole country. He said that the system would promote a political agenda. Three writers whose work was included in the state’s critique said that the governor was pushing a political agenda in return.
Desantis 2024 said that his administration did not like the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies course because _____we want education, not brainwashing. Before last week, it was reported that the Florida Department of Education had just told the College Board that the course would be banned unless some changes are made.
The state then put out a chart late on Friday that says the course promotes the idea that Black people, other minorities, and women are oppressed by modern American society. The chart also says that the course uses articles written by critics of capitalism and has a chapter on “Black Queer Studies” that the administration thinks is inappropriate.
The government program
The governor says the program breaks the Stop WOKE Act, which he signed into law last year. It stops people from being taught in a way that labels them as automatically privileged or disadvantaged based on their race. At least some of the authors mentioned in the course think that modern American culture supports white supremacy while putting down people of color, gay people, and women.
What is the subject of one of the lessons in this course on the history of African Americans?
The idea of being gay Who here would say that queer theory is an important part of learning about black history? Someone is trying to get something out of it Desantis 2024, which has been discussed as a possible candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, agreed.
The Democratic Leader of the Florida House of Representatives, Fentrice Driskell, called the administration’s decision to reject the course “cowardly” and said that it sends a clear message that the history of Black Americans doesn’t matter in Florida.
She said on Monday, Think about how boring and closed-minded we’d all be if we only heard opinions with which we agreed. After getting ready for ten years, the College Board tests the Desantis 2024 planned time for deployment, no state or institution would be required to keep providing it.
The organization offers Advanced Placement (AP) classes in math, natural sciences, social studies, languages other than English, and the arts, among other things. Since this is a college-level class, students usually get college credit at their home school if they pass the final exam.
Since Friday, no emails or phone calls have been answered by the College Board. The week before, the company said it welcomed feedback and would consider any changes. The state picked out five modern writers to criticize in its weekly chart. The Associated Press sent them an email, and three wrote back.
The commands of Ferguson
In the “Black Queer Studies” chapter, you can find readings by Roderick Ferguson, an associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale University. The state says, “We have to foster and create ways so that being gay isn’t giving up on the status quo of race, class, gender, and sexuality.”
Ferguson says he made this comment in an interview about his book “One-Dimensional Queer.” He says the book studies racism against black people, job discrimination, laws against LGBTQ+ people, the suppression of progressive movements in the U.S., police brutality against minority groups, immigration limits, and so on.
These stories come from the past and are true. Academics have done studies and research to back up the claims made about them, as well as the claims made by the other academics on this list,” Ferguson said. “Unluckily, we live in a time when people on the right are getting together to make it hard to talk openly about the truths above. If we need a good example of this mobilization, we could look at the groups that came together to fight against this plan.
The state has problems with the class because it uses the book “Black Study, Black Struggle,” written by a history professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and published in 2016. The state has said that Kelley “argues that activism, not the university system, is the key to social change.” Kelley thought it was too simple of an explanation.
In it, he criticizes things like racism, inequality, capitalism, militarism, and police brutality. He also urges student activists to take their work outside of the school. But he also said that activists must love everyone, “even those who may have been our oppressors in the past,” and that they must study and understand Western literature to criticize it.
He said, “We shouldn’t put so much emphasis on trauma and victimization. Instead, we should understand how we have fought for justice not just for Black people but for the whole nation (yes, even struggling white people),” even though we have been hurt and mistreated. This was one of the points he made. The state also points out that Kelley wrote the 1990 book “Hammer and Hoe,” a history of communism in Alabama during the 1930s Great Depression.
Kelley said that because it was based on a lot of research, something DeSantis’s people don’t know much about, it won many awards and praise, even from a few conservative anti-Communist historians.
The document section
The document contained a section about the “Movement for Black Lives,” a partnership of more than 50 groups like Black Lives Matter and the National Conference of Black Lawyers. This got the state in trouble, though. This means that one of the organization’s goals is to get rid of prisons, and it also says that there is a “war” against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of African descent.
The state has a problem with a reading written by Leslie Kay Jones, an assistant sociology professor at Rutgers University. It focuses on one of her quotes: Black people make uncountable content for the same social media companies that support the white supremacist system that oppresses us.
Jones said she couldn’t find proof that the Movement for Black Lives had ever worked to eliminate the legal system. She was surprised when Desantis 2024 team members beat her up for criticizing social media companies since he is known to do the same thing. She says this is one reason students should be able to evaluate both primary and secondary sources and come to their own conclusions.Â
