College Board's AP African Studies Course Cuts Revealed

The official curriculum for the College Board's Advanced Placement African American Studies course has been unveiled and a number of concepts that were included in the original course have been cut, according to Axios.

The changes come after Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis blocked the course in January, saying it is "inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value."

DeSantis claimed the course teaches critical race theory, an academic framework that, according to the NAACP, teaches that "racism is more than the result of individual bias and prejudice. It is embedded in laws, policies and institutions that uphold and reproduce racial inequalities."

Conservatives largely view teaching this as inaccurate and harmful.

Here are some of the biggest changes between the draft of the curriculum the Miami Herald obtained and the current framework:

Black Lives Matter: The original curriculum included material on "the origins and mission of the Black Lives Matter movement and Movement for Black Lives." The revised curriculum does not require that the BLM movement be taught and lists it instead as a sample project topic which "can be refined by states and districts."
LGBTQ: The draft curriculum included a section on "Black Queer Studies," which mentioned works by writers Cathy Cohen, Roderick Ferguson and E. Patrick Johnson. The new framework discusses the sense of exclusion Black lesbians felt from the civil rights movement and the women's movement but does not use the term "queer studies" and includes "Gay life and expression in Black communities" as an optional topic and not a requirement.
Reparations: While lessons in the original curriculum had highlighted the debate over reparations for slavery in America, the new framework only mentions reparations once as a sample project topic and not a course requirement.
Mass incarceration: In the draft of the curriculum, the instructional focus on Black lives today included lessons on Black incarceration from the passage of the 13th Amendment to the present and the larger prison industrial complex. Students would have studied the "relationship between carceral studies and abolition movements" through works by scholars such as Michelle Alexander, who is best known for her 2010 book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness." The new curriculum includes material on the exploitation of imprisoned African Americans in the early 1900s but only mentions incarceration and criminal justice once and makes the topic optional.
A movement renamed: The section on "The Black Feminist Movement and Womanism" in the original curriculum was renamed to "Black Women and Movements in the 20th Century." Prominent Black women writers such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde and Alice Walker have also been cut.

Since announcing the changes, the College Board has come under fire from those who accuse the organization of buckling under pressure from DeSantis.

The organization rejected the suggestion that political pressure played a role in its decision.

"The fact of the matter is that this landmark course has been shaped over years by the most eminent scholars in the field, not political influence," the College Board said in a statement.

It is unclear how the changes may affect DeSantis' earlier decision to ban the course from Florida's high schools.