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Ron DeSantis had nothing to do with changes to the AP African American Studies test

I didn't notice this last week, but here's the letter the College Board sent out after Gov. Ron DeSantis said he was banning the AP African American Studies course in Florida. His decision was based on the preliminary framework then being piloted, not the final framework:

To develop this official course framework, the AP Program consulted with more than 300 professors of African American Studies from more than 200 colleges nationwide, including dozens of Historically Black Colleges and Universities....This process was completed in December 2022.

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.

What does it mean that "the process" was finished in December? Here's a clarification:

The College Board has time-stamped records of revisions from December 22, 2022....Core revisions were substantially complete — including the removal of all secondary sources — by December 22, weeks before Florida’s objections were shared.

Practically every article I've read about this affair frames it as DeSantis winning a victory over the College Board. Conservatives think this makes DeSantis a hero. Liberals think it makes the College Board cowards.

But unless the College Board is outright lying, it's neither. The final curriculum was finished a month ago and nothing DeSantis said or did had any effect on it.

I'm inclined to believe this, since DeSantis made his announcement on January 12 and three weeks is nowhere near enough time to make changes as substantial as the ones the College Board made. On the other hand, it would be nice for them to say explicitly that no changes were made after January 12. Why is that so difficult?

21 thoughts on “Ron DeSantis had nothing to do with changes to the AP African American Studies test

  1. shapeofsociety

    The new version is clearly a lot better than the old. The old version's reading list was full of far-left writers, many of them quite obscure. The new version has the people you'd expect to see, the ones who were broadly influential and famous. I am no fan of DeSantis, but his complaints about the old version actually had merit. The black community is not a far-left monolith and it should not be presented as one.

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      1. shapeofsociety

        Did you actually read what was in the old and new versions of the course, or are you just going off of what you've heard about it?

  2. rover27

    The College Board CEO, David Coleman, denied that political pressure from DeSantis had anything to do with its revisions, releasing documents showing that alterations were in process in December before DeSantis launched his attack. But those changes were partly in response to pressure generated by right-wing media after an early draft of the curriculum was leaked last summer. The National Review began its campaign against the curriculum last September. And this became a meme on right-wing social media.

    1. bw

      This was always the obvious explanation to anyone who's taken an intro Af-Am Studies course at the college level. Mine (which was taught by Cornel West, no less) definitely had bell hooks on the syllabus, and it almost certainly had a number of the other writers who were supposedly removed for perfectly innocuous, pedagogically sound reasons.

      Which is more likely? That a bunch of leading light academics in the field just happened to decide that it didn't make for a sound curriculum to include a bunch of topics that wingnuts have been freaking out about for years? Or that someone actually noticed that rightwingers were having a conniption about the curriculum well before the latest DeSantis thing, and everyone caved when they realized the College Board would rather royally screw them out of having *any* Afro-American Studies course than have to stand behind them when the death threats started coming in?

  3. Lounsbury

    Why would they bother to say such a thing as no changes. It is a lose-lose and pointless, pleasing no one, convincing no one on any side and merely getting sucked deeper into a political tar baby

  4. DFPaul

    Florida is a very confusing place. It’s illegal to hurt students’ feelings, right? But if you feel threatened you can also stand your ground and shoot someone, right? Sounds like they have some sorting out to do.

    1. Art Eclectic

      Understanding Florida means understanding migration. The northern part of the state is largely populated by white southerners who migrated down for farmland. The lower half of the state is heavily Cuban and many older refugees from states with cold winters. So, you have a culture clash similar to what happens in states all along the Mexico border.

      Much like Texas, Florida is becoming redder as conservatives from other states move there for the weather and to live under a political regime they find comforting.

  5. Hugh Jass

    It was not DeSantis' complaints that the CB let lefty activists write the curriculum that got the the course changed.

    It was everybody else's complaints that the CB let lefty activists write the curriculum that got the course changed.

    hmmmm.

  6. NeilWilson

    I think DeSatanis heard about the upcoming changes and decided it would be smart politics to get ahead of things.
    He could take some heat, and credit, for a little while and then the test would be changed basically exactly as he proposed.
    I think it was a very smart move.

    1. Art Eclectic

      Exactly. The beast of the Republican base needs constant feeding of outrage and red meat. Sometimes they have to do some dumpster diving to meet the quota.

  7. Jim Carey

    "Practically every article I've read about this affair frames it as DeSantis winning a victory over the College Board."

    Don't confuse the Hippocratic Oath, which is "do no harm," with the Hypocritic Oath, which is "do no harm to my bank account."

    Likewise, don't confuse Journalism, which involves informing people of things that are relevant and true, which is what you do (thank you), with what JOURINOs (Journalists in name only) do, which is "do no harm to my bank account."

  8. ProgressOne

    Strange how the vast majority of conservatives will defend Trump no matter what he says or does. Unfortunately, liberals have a similar problem. Let's say the original AP course was filled with far-left, ultra-partisan framings and interpretations of history and our current racial situation. I have no doubt the vast majority of liberals would go along with it without even reading what is in the course's detailed teachings. Defending one's tribe is more important than criticizing the extremism of anyone on your side.

    Oddly, both sides succumb to conformity - just stay in your lane.

    1. Jim Carey

      If you want to know if you're tribal, take a DNA test. If it comes back Homo sapiens, you're tribal. If it comes back frog or scorpion, then maybe not.

      In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin wrote a passage about how we were fundamentally tribal, and that only an artificial barrier stands in the way of us becoming essentially one tribe, meaning a global community. I hope he was right, and I am unaware of any reason to believe that the barrier is anything other than artificial, which to say that it is a cultural phenomenon that amounts to a fundamental misunderstanding of our true nature.

      The question is, if Darwin was right about this as well, then what we have to ask ourselves is, "What is my tribe?" A tribe is comprised of a set of ideas and the people that demonstrate adherence to those ideas. Most Republicans I listen to imply, in a very obvious way, that they belong to the "Democrats are the enemy" tribe. That includes the MAGA gang and the never Trumpers.

      As Will Rogers put it, "I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."

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