Some members of the Florida review board that questioned the content of the AP African-American studies program available in the state’s schools objected to lessons about the economic benefit European and white American enslavers received from the free labor the slaves provided, saying the lesson “may lead to a viewpoint of an ‘oppressor vs. oppressed’ based solely on race or ethnicity.”
Yes, you read that correctly: Republican Florida Governor and man without a personality Ron DeSantis’s select group found lesson about the economic benefit collected by white slaveowners by enslaving Black people was rejected because it centered on the fact that one race oppressed another, and the lesson may be too harsh for students to learn.
Per the Miami Herald, when he announced that Florida wouldn’t back down to the woke agenda of AP African American educators who demanded the intolerable right to teach the actual history of slavery in the United States, DeSantis said it was because of controversial subject matter like the BLM movement or queer theory in the African-American community.
In fact, however, many of the remarks by reviewers focused on how poorly history would reflect on whites, and they noted that lessons focusing on white ownership of Black people would likely lead to “oppressed vs. oppressor” mindsets that they found inappropriate. Instead, the group moved to spread the guilt and minimize the impact of the white enslavement of Blacks in America, something key to African-American studies.
For example, one note to the College Board, the company that manages AP classes, said the course “may not address the internal slave trade/system within Africa” and that it “may only present one side of this issue and may not offer any opposing viewpoints or other perspectives on the subject.” Meaning that shockingly, the class doesn’t teach about how a small number other people from non-white races took slaves, as was permitted by the law written in a nation where, at the time, only white men could write the laws.