The 2023 AP African-American studies curriculum released by the College Board, the body that oversees SAT and Advanced Placement (AP) testing, argues that slaves learned “specialized trades” during bondage and parlayed “these skills to provide for themselves and others” once free.
In Unit 2 of the AP’s syllabus on “Slavery, Labor, and American Law,” a chapter on the slave economy suggests that slaves learned to become “painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers” and subsequently “used these skills to provide for themselves and others.”
DeSantis has been widely criticized in recent weeks, including by Vice President Kamala Harris, over a singular passage in Florida’s 2023 social-studies standards which acknowledges that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
In place of facts, extremists in Florida want to erase our full history and censor our truths.
We will not stand for it.
I am on my way to Jacksonville to fight back. pic.twitter.com/gSqLuO0ga3
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) July 21, 2023
“The learning objective from the AP curriculum just shows that this pseudo-controversy was nothing more than a dishonest political hit job by VP Harris, the White House, and the unions,” DeSantis press secretary Jeremy Redfern told National Review on Thursday morning. Redfern tweeted out the relevant section of the curriculum Wednesday night.
Two members of the group responsible for developing the new curriculum recently told National Review that they disagreed with the vice president’s interpretation.
“The intention of it was, African Americans, slaves, my ancestors, they were resilient people,” Valencia Robinson, a teacher of African-American history and English in Volusia County, said. Slaves, she said, were forced to work “sun up to sun down,” but were in some cases able to capitalize on their newfound skills to “gain some extra money.”
William B. Allen, a former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said the line refers to figures such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington who acquired skills “under adverse circumstances, or who came with skills that enabled them to not only survive adverse circumstances, but also to go onto further accomplishments.”
“Why then are they [Harris] doing that? Well, it’s part of the zeitgeist,” Allen argued. “Anything that can be used to prosecute a culture war, and to continue to sow division as a wedge or leverage point to work the transformation of American society will be exploited for that end. So, that’s what we see them doing. It’s a kind of ideological posturing.”
In January, DeSantis initially withheld the state’s approval of the pilot-version of the AP African-American Studies course because it violated Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, which prohibits the instruction of critical race theory. Liberal pundits and prominent Democrats attacked DeSantis at the time for rejecting the College Board’s curriculum.