African Studies

Last Wednesday, the College Board announced new changes to its AP African American Studies curriculum, soon after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis banned AP African American Studies from Florida schools as part of his crackdown on any curriculum acknowledging systemic racism or discussing queer issues in a positive light. Sure enough, the new curricular changes remove several of the more left-wing authors and ideas, relegate contemporary topics like Black Lives Matter, reparations, Black feminism, and the Black queer experience to “optional” or “suggested” status, and add “Black conservatism” as a suggested topic for projects. The president of the College Board, David Coleman, told The New York Times that these changes were all pedagogical, not political. But as a former College Board employee myself, I have a pretty good guess what these “pedagogical” reasons are.