But then when the fascists come for women's reproductive rights, these people will beg the very same Black people that their system has miseducated to "stay in line!" And "vote like our lives depend on it!" because "democracy is on the ballot!"

This one-way solidarity is getting old.

@mekkaokereke

Someone tell the jerk DeSantis that all his racists comments will always be on You Tube.

@mekkaokereke
I continue to be stunned the first impulse orgs have is to roll over when an ignorant fascist opens his mouth.

Also, where are the civil rights lawyers on this? Telling black kids African american history has no educational value HAS to be discriminatory under title vi, right??

@mekkaokereke And also, now DeSantis is damaging more than his own state.

Took until about the 20th paragraph to try to guess what they are changing , too. Really badly written article.

“expected the removal of content about topics "that violate our laws," including critical race theory, Black queer studies and intersectionality.’

@mekkaokereke

i would argue that DeSantis is both a Nazi and a fascist, but i have long argued that the Trumps and DeSantis of the world are not the problem, its the folks who vote for them, our good upstanding white Christian neighbors

@mekkaokereke Exactly. And, White Americans who hate what he is doing can’t simply hit the favorite or like or share buttons on social media and expect no onus to rest on their shoulders. A lack of action & spoken words is a green light for him and his racially & religiously bigoted base.

Also, he’s an Ivy League educated revisionist. With his legal knowledge & crooked maneuvers + the backing of the CNP’s Federalist Society, he’ll revise European History, too. https://masto.ai/@JennaWright/109718323578693732

@mekkaokereke Hold up, I can't have read this right. Florida bans teaching how gender, race, class, and sex bigotry join up to form SuperBigotry. It extra special bans teaching queer racism. It bans "Critical Race Theory" which it defines as "anything that makes white folk look or feel bad." And the AP's response is to take those things out of the African American Studies test nationwide??? My kids in California learn that stuff in their AP AAS class. I super duper want them to learn that stuff. They are in the tiniest intersectional "minority" in their high school: blue-eyed, blonde-haired CisHet (at least one of them - the younger is mum about that) males. They know they play the game of life on easy mode, and want to learn what the other 99% of the school deals with.

And it's not like DeSantis will stop with this class. AP World History and American History have that stuff too, and even more stuff banned by Don't Say Gay. He'll ban those next. He'll ban AP Comp Sci for talking about how Turing died.

@mekkaokereke It's nauseating we need to have this discussion; but since we do, can we please have some pushback from officials elsewhere saying they will not allow *any* of the College Board's AP History classes *at all* if the curriculum is altered to make white supremacists feel better?

I'm sorry students end up as pawns in this (like so much else), but the line needs to drawn here and now.

@mekkaokereke Mighty DeSantis...

I recall a scene some time ago when DeSantis bullied high school kids in the stage behind him, pointing fingers at them and complaining because they were wearing masks. Terrified the kids. If one of those were my kid, I would have invited DeSantis to point that finger at my face. And then we would see how it would go.

@mekkaokereke While it doesn't look encouraging, I'll wait to see what College Board's actual changes are before concluding they are trying to appease DeSantis.

Florida will never accept any African American Studies course anyway, and I would think that College Board understands this as well as all of the rest of us do.

@mekkaokereke DeSantis is also going after Rocky Hanna, the superintendent of schools for Tallahassee, FL’s state capital, IOW DeSantis’s ‘home’ town. That’s not so important in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a potent way to make sure everyone in the FL state govt ‘gets the memo’ that showing any ambivalence about his policies will puts people at risk.

https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/education/2023-01-27/florida-department-of-education-investigating-leon-county-superintendent-rocky-hanna

In the State U System of FL system (UF, FSU, etc) he’s gotten pushback from the leadership — not an outright refusal, which would be illegal, but more of a letter-of-the-law / work-to-rule approach. I’ve heard/seen scuttlebutt suggesting that, at least in some cases, his admin is trying to route around central admin leaders and approaching department heads directly for info. If so, that too will be effective because they’re, as faculty, they’re more vulnerable and more inclined frame their decisions in terms protecting their depts.

@mekkaokereke

But that’s the opposite of his position.

Whether a person agrees with the argument or not, his stances is that some of the material in the course is obscuring Black history by spending course time and resources focusing on other issues like LGBTQ+ interests. He has pushed the College Board to revise the course to focus more solidly on the history of Black communities in the US.

You might reply that LGBTQ+ is part of Black history, and that’s fair, but it’s important to recognize that DeSantis is actually arguing. Not against Black history but against a course that he believes is insufficiently focused on exactly that.