FL: Don't Say African American Studies

The list of things unwelcome in Florida schools continues to grow, adding more evidence to the argument that whatever it is the DeSantis administration wants for education, it surely isn't choice. 

The DeSantis administration rejected the new College Board Advanced Placement course on African American Studies. In the letter to the College Board, the Department of Education stated that "the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law." 

The use of the word "inexplicably" here apparently refers to the fact that FDOE did not actually explain what in particular they found objectionable. Not a new trick--you may remember that Florida also rejected a pile of math textbooks for CRT violations and only after being pressed gave a couple of examples of what they were talking about. Though timing it to come in the same week as Martin Luther King, Jr., Day was certainly a bold choice.

The conservative Florida Standard pointed to some likely culprits from the syllabus, including the topics of Black Queer Studies and "Postracial Racism and Colorblindness" and here's Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a known critical race theory user. 

The AP folks say, "Well, it's just a first draft," and it remains to be seen if they will scrub the proposed course of anything they guess is offensive to DeSantis's sensibilities. The College Board is not a group I pujt great faith and trust in to get things right.

In the meantime, DeSantis and his legislature will continue to make sure that school choice can only be used to choose the choices that they approve of. 

In the meantime, Florida is also busy taking Disney to court to keep them from converting Splash Mountain. I'm sure the fact that Disney wants to convert to an attraction centered on their only African-American princess has nothing to do with it.  Nope-- the story has been picked up by many sites, but they all track back to a satire website. So there are apparently some limits.