What In The Hell Is Wrong With This Country?: February 1, 2023 Edition
Image Description: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis can be seen speaking to a room of white people. He is standing in front of the flag and seal of the state of Florida. There are rows of U.S. flags one either side of him. He is standing behind a podium with the words “Higher Education Reform” emblazoned across it in white letters.
In today's edition of "What in the Hell is Wrong With This Country?" we find ourselves on the first day of Black History Month 2023, watching as the United States decides to show Black communities that they feel Black folx shouldn't exist or matter in the discourse of U.S. History. Today, the National College Board decided that Black United States history – you know, chattel slavery, kidnapping, racism, oppression, colonialism, and all the stuff that makes up the foundation of hate that is the United States of America – are too scary and "inaccurate" to be taught in U.S. schools. According to the College Board, African Studies, Black queer history, and intersectionality are also way too scary for young white people to learn about in school. Their solution?
Let's teach kids the watered-down, sections redacted, whitewashed Cliff Notes version!
From the New York Times:
"After heavy criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis, the College Board released on Wednesday an official curriculum for its new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies — stripped of much of the subject matter that had angered the governor and other conservatives.
The College Board purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience, and Black feminism. It ushered out some politically fraught topics, like Black Lives Matter, from the formal curriculum.
And it added something new: “Black conservatism” is now offered as an idea for a research project.
When it announced the A.P. course in August, the College Board clearly believed it was providing a class whose time had come. 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, Governor DeSantis of Florida, who is expected to run for president, announced he would ban the curriculum, citing the draft version. State education officials said it was not historically accurate and violated state law that regulates how race-related issues are taught in public schools.
The attack on the A.P. course turned out to be the prelude to a much larger agenda. On Tuesday, Governor DeSantis unveiled a proposal to overhaul higher education that would eliminate what he called “ideological conformity” by, among other things, mandating courses in Western civilization.
In another red flag, the College Board faced the possibility of other opposition: more than two dozen states have adopted some sort of measure against critical race theory, according to a tracking project by the University of California, Los Angeles, law school.
...The dispute over the A.P. course is about more than just the content of a high school class. Education is the center of much vitriolic partisan debate, and the College Board’s decision to try to build a curriculum covering one of the most charged subjects in the country — the history of race in America — may have all but guaranteed controversy. If anything, the arguments over the curriculum underscore the fact that the United States is a country that cannot agree on its own story, especially the complex history of Black Americans.
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, incarceration, 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.
And even that list, in a nod to local laws, “can be refined by local states and districts.”
The expunged writers and scholars include Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia, which touts her work as “foundational in critical race theory”; Roderick Ferguson, a Yale professor who has written about queer social movements; and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author who has made the case for reparations for slavery. Gone, too, is bell hooks, the writer who shaped discussions about race, feminism and class.
What a splendid way to start Black History Month 2023. And on the first day of the month, no less!
We couldn't even get to February 2, 2023, y'all, without a reminder that Black lives don't matter in a country that views them as a nuisance and a hindrance to white comfort and the good/bad binary. Sheesh.
The National College Board deciding that your people's history is only worth teaching young white people about if it's whitewashed and palatable for white people who can't deal with reality is quite a slap in the face.
The Black U.S. American relationship with education and history is a heavy one. If you hadn't realized before, I'm a Black man born and raised in the United States. I can still recall the first times I faced racism and learned about my people's history in a way that made me want to know more.
Both instances are still vivid in my mind.
Both took place at school.
To say that I value and hate what education stands for in equal measures should be understandable. Nonetheless, if we don't learn from history, we are bound to repeat it.
Today we inched ever closer to future generations repeating history, this time by making sure they don't even know said history exists.
There have been struggles to educate generations of white people on the actions of their forefathers for generations. There have also been similar struggles to make sure generations of Black people in the United States understand their history so they can use the thoughts of the past to power the future. But to have the College Board outright bow to the pressure of a bunch of uncomfortable white people who need to live in an alternate reality to feel good about themselves and make these changes signals a new precedent in education. It also signals a clear and present danger to millions of young people's psychological and physical safety in the United States.
Twelve states have practically banned teaching Black history in the past two years. You should expect more in the coming years as the white population decreases and this country becomes more multiracial and ethnoculturally diverse than its "forefathers" could have envisioned. You should also expect education standards to attempt to erase any intersectionality and queer history, creating even more dangerous disconnects for young people seeking community and understanding in this country. We're looking at a trend of assimilation or harm, which creates harm through assimilation. This is what we're putting forward as education in the United States. We'll have to teach our children their history and the history of this country, because the schools sure as hell won't anymore.
I fear for the state of education in the United States.
And that fear makes me even more fearful for my people's safety.