AP African American Studies: 'Academic legitimacy' or 'indoctrination'?

Last week, when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis explained his rejection of a proposed Advanced Placement African American Studies class, I thought about the small number of Black students enrolled in AP courses. A 2020 report by The Education Trust pegged it at 9%, despite counting 15% of high school students nationwide as Black.

I was one of those few Black students 20 years ago. More often than not, I was the only African American kid in my class, the social ramifications of which I didn’t fully understand until I attended a historically Black university years later. I can only imagine how many more Black classmates I might have had in an AP course if the curriculum presented had been relatable to students of African descent.

Fortunately, I didn’t solely rely on the public school system for an understanding of Black history. I still have a box of BlacFax, a Trivial Pursuit-style game that my parents bought for my younger brother and me when we were kids, with the intent of teaching us about popular African American facts along with less conventional anecdotes. I didn’t fully understand the ramifications of this either, until I became much older and gained a profound appreciation for the intricacies of Carter G. Woodson’s view of Black history.

“We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history,” he said in 1927, a year after starting Negro History Week.

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/ap-african-american-studies-academic-111517208.html

Please read the whole thing. This is a good editorial.