It’s almost Black History Month and just another excuse to use BLACK in almost every heading in this month’s newsletter. As if we needed an excuse. But this time around, we do feel the need to press ever harder to bring the news of Black history into glaring view.
It’s unbelievable that a Governor, who will remain nameless, has the time to restrict the teaching of Black history in AP classes in his state. And why in the AP classes, we wonder, AP meaning Advanced Placement. What is it about the higher-achieving students and their studies that threaten this administration? We simply can’t make it make sense, but here’s how the Florida Department of Education’s Office of Articulation (wth is that?) explained the action. They said, “In its current form, the College Board’s AP African American Studies course lacks educational value and is contrary to Florida law. If the course comes into compliance and incorporates historically accurate content, the Department will reopen the discussion. As submitted, the course is a vehicle for a political agenda and leaves large ambiguous gaps that can be filled with additional ideological material…”
There are so many rubs in this decision that make it laughable if it wasn’t so undeniably oppressive and ultimately disgusting.
Florida statutes state that schools must teach the “history of African Americans, including the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement experience, abolition, and the history of contributions of Americans of the African diaspora to society.”
Black Jesus, please help me understand. The passage to America, as in ship stewards greeting us to take our leather luggage on a steamboat journey to the new world? The enslavement experience? You mean like a trip to Universal Studios??? Before political conflicts, oh like; here’s some rum for your people, your diamonds, your gold, your rubber, and your oil???
You can read this over and over again to try to make sense of this action when really the intent is staring at us directly in plain sight. Apparently, somebody is using books and curriculum and lecturers that tell the true history of Africans in America and somebody wants to return to those old books that only paint Blacks as savages in need of being spared, so the good Europeans brought the chains needed to lead Africans into their utopian manifest destiny.
The 1619 Project got people rattling in their delusional cages and clutching their filthy pearls. One would think that enough evidence to the contrary of the sanctioned and outright lies about our American history would lead to that state of “indivisible and justice for all” stuff we crossed our hearts and recited for so many years in public schools, just before force-fed classes of dehumanizing dribble from contrived American history. But never fear, the fear of Black truth will always be just one sniffing dog away.
Go now and enjoy Black History Month. And we’ll see you back here serving up Black history facts for your soul, all year long.
Disclaimer: The above is MY opinion as editor, with factual excerpts from on-the-record statements from the Florida government. I could not have in my greatest moments of creativity, made that up!
- Vivian Phillips, Founder + Board President
Go get yourself some of the real history.
The 1619 Project will be out as a limited docu-series on Hulu starting January 26th.