Know Dumb Questions
Know Dumb Questions
KNOW DUMB QUESTIONS: The Battle over Teaching Black History in Schools
Could the banning of an Advanced Placement African American Studies course in Florida signal a deeper issue within our education system? We're dissecting the complex fabric of this decision and its potential to shape the narrative taught to future generations. As a staunch advocate for school choice and a more enlightened approach from our leaders, my heart is heavy with the news of the AP course's rejection, and I’m joined by experts who share in both the frustration and the resolve to understand and challenge this ruling.
During our robust discussion, we shed light on the importance of a curriculum that honors the African diaspora, touching on the significant legacies of ancient African societies and the Sudanic empires. We confront the discomfort some may have with this history while advocating for the undeniable value it brings to an authentic educational experience. Our guests, and authorities in their fields, reinforce the urgency of community engagement in preserving the integrity of historical teachings. Together, we make a compelling call to action: to uphold the integrity of our educational content and ensure that the stories of African American pride, struggle, and triumph are not just included, but celebrated in our schools.
We are live, so tonight we're going to have some fun. This is the kind of thing that I get really excited about, because we're going to have a conversation around the source materials. I get with no dumb questions. I get the opportunity to have conversations with people who come from all different walks of life and in those different walks of life I get to talk to them about the issues that move them, things that inspire them. And so tonight I'm going to get to talk to you about something that a lot of us have heard about and have an opinion on. You can't hear me. Is there anyone else struggling to hear me? Let me know. Okay, gotta turn it up. A lot of us have an opinion on this topic, and a real opinion, and very few of us have actually delved into the topic itself. The reason why I wanted to do this tonight is because I don't always get to do the stuff I do do. I mean, it's super cool to talk to people from Jaylen Rose to Earthquake to Dr King to Amanda Seals and so many really cool, smart people, and we get their opinions on everything from relationships to history, but we don't always get to go to the source materials, and source materials are those things that are at the root of the discussion, like why are we even tripping over this? What is the issue? And so I would ask most people about African American studies and what's going on in Florida. I think most people that would look at what I do would want to know why are we having a problem teaching African American studies, especially advanced placement African American studies? And I want to be clear on this one For me, initially I had hoped mostly because I'm a school choice guy that someone like a DeSantis or someone who I had hoped would be more I don't know more open to the idea of choice Children, being able to go to school is that are best for them, being able to learn curriculum that they thought was best for them.
Speaker 1:And I had hoped I mean, I had hoped that some reasonable Republican would make his or her way to the fore. I'm not a Republican, I'm a Democrat. I have been always. I don't know if that's going to stay that way, but it is what it is today. So I wanted to, and then this morning I got a call from Sister Tess Figueroa. She said hey, what are your thoughts on Florida deciding to move away from DEI and more diversity, equity and inclusion and, of course, specifically them saying that they don't want to teach this sociology course.
Speaker 1:And I thought, damn man, what is wrong with Florida? Like, I get the whole anti-intellectualism, I get that. I get why, you know, I don't get it, but I understand that it is this attack against the truth, it's this fear of having a conversation about what really matters, and so because of that, I understand that to the victor, go to spoils, right. When you are the boss, when you win the election, you get to determine what, in some cases, is even learned in schools For real. Like you get to decide who gets to teach, what schools get to be open and why, and then you can start to see, really on a much more global scale, why it's important not just to vote. We're not talking about just voting, because that's weird. I mean, of course you should vote, but it's more important, way more important for us to start to identify candidates running ourselves For people who really are committed to creating opportunities for our community by our community, especially when it comes to education. That's my beat, right. I struggle often because I find myself trying to explain to people why it is that we need to create schools of our own and what's interesting is, many people will consider themselves liberals will often defend what we refer to as the public schools and neighborhood schools, the schools that they have no control over, what is taught or who is teaching.
Speaker 1:Those same, in many cases, black liberals, will fight for public schools and we want our neighborhood schools. And they don't send their kids to those schools at all and they are never going to send them to their schools at all, especially when the majority of the population is black. They are not doing that. I mean, they are black, but they ain't like look at the black, they are like Jack and Jill black. You know what I'm saying. So what I want to talk about tonight is really a topic that we've been talking about for the past couple of years, but I don't think that most people have taken the time to understand. I'm not going to go through the whole thing because it's too volumous, but it's worth noting that tonight y'all won't go to school. Y'all won't go to school for real, and you're going to go to school because it's important that you go to school. We're going to have a conversation tonight about a topic that has become a linchpin, a galvanizing moment for many African Americans, and those people will consider themselves liberals, while, on the same token, it has provided some cover for those people who consider themselves conservatives. And that is we are going to talk tonight about.
Speaker 1:Wait for it African American studies, ap advanced placement, african American studies. And this is the course. This is the course. This is the course that the Florida Department of Education said that it did not want any children in the entire state to learn. I need y'all to stay with me. This is that dangerous course. This course right here that we're about to go through is that course that you've been told is so insidious, so dangerous that if black people and white people learn this course, it will undermine the very fabric of Florida and, by extension, america.
Speaker 1:Now, this is not the first time that subjects have been pulled from curriculum. In 1968, the United Federation of Teachers, that's, the teachers union in New York, the teachers union in 1968, pulled from the history books a chapter on Malcolm X. So the New York Federation of Teachers, the teachers union in New York, pulled a section from the curriculum on Malcolm X. They thought it was too incendiary. Not the first time, not the first time, not the first time, but this is the most recent, and in this most recent example of this, we have African American studies AP advanced. It's advanced placement, african American studies. This is the actual curriculum. This is the actual curriculum.
Speaker 1:If you were a teacher in Florida and you wanted to teach human students, the kidding would be this is what it all means Advanced placement, african-american studies. This would be the course that you would choose, and it is really rich. I Don't want to read through it. These are Talks about what advanced placement stands for. You can look this up. You can go to AP. It'll take you right through there. This gives you the course framework, which is really, really, really rich. I'm gonna stay here for a second In this first section and I'm gonna do about so. No, y'all not gonna have anybody famous up here coming in telling you about who they date or what they date or what they do. Ain't no cat Williams moments here. I don't have any Anybody to sell out and to do that. This is just. People want to learn something, taking some time out of the night to learn something, and and that's what we're gonna do. So this is a course framework for those.
Speaker 1:People often hear teachers or or opponents of certain educational experiences talking about curriculum. Curriculum is what you teach and how you teach it. That's what curriculum is. It's just what you teach and how you teach. You hear people get caught up in pedagogy and all the oh my god, this is basically what you would teach if you had been given the opportunity to teach this. And I'm gonna say I strongly encourage I Actually strongly encourage you to consider teaching this in your schools. I will tell you that I have sent to our Assistant superintendent of curriculum instruction that I want to teach this class. I want, I want to talk in our schools.
Speaker 1:But it starts here with the course framework. This is an introduction. Um, I'm gonna just read it through and then we're gonna take you through what it says. This is course framework and it talks about the anchoring the course in sources. What that means is that this is a course about the entirety of the African American experience, but not just the African American experience. It is the African diaspora, meaning that people who were born On the continent of Africa and the many nations that make up made up the continent of Africa back then, before they were colonized or while they were being colonized. These are those people. This is a history of those people and their migration, migration from the continent of Africa all throughout what we would consider the Western world, that's Europe, that's South America, that's the West Indies, canada, that's the United States, everywhere we are.
Speaker 1:This advanced placement African American studies course that is banned in Florida, banned in Florida, dumbasses, banned in Florida. This is that course. So what it says is it's got. It's just telling you, it's got the sources covered. All right, gonna go there. It's a very long curriculum, 294 pages of just outline. That doesn't even get into some of the day-to-day but it's super cool If you know anything about advanced placement. It has, at the end, an examination so you can determine whether or not you receive the advanced placement. One, two, three, four, five, you you get the whatever score you receive right, and then this is how students learning is assessed. It tells you what the exam is. All right, let's get started.
Speaker 1:Um, the course begins at the beginning. Um, it starts on the continent of Africa. These are some of the course framework components. This talks about the course content. It's just Really a rich course that talks about the specifics of it. But I'm gonna jump into it because I I'm gonna geek out and, and if this ain't your thing, you want some out again. You need somebody to come in and tell you about who's sleeping with whom and and all that stuff. That's not we're doing tonight. That is not we're doing tonight.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk about really what and why on Earth anyone who would consider themselves educator would be against a class called advanced placement African-American studies. So these are the skills. You'll find nothing offensive about them. Um, one of them is identify and explain course concepts, developments and process Pretty innocuous we can go all the way over here. Source analysis what that means is evaluate written and visual sources and data, including historical documents, literary texts, music, lyrics, works of art, material culture, maps, tables, charts, graphs and surveys. So, ladies and gentlemen, if you were teaching the advanced placement course for African American studies, you'd teach about maps One of the first things. You would teach your maps and you'd take a look at the art of the culture. So, dr Bond, you take a love Alicia, you take a look at those things and you go through Really not that deep. All right, so it starts at the top. I want you to tell me when we get to something offensive, please, because I want to know why this course was banned. This is a banned course. This course is so dangerous that the governor of the great state of Florida said that no school that's a public school in the state of Florida can teach this course. Not one school can teach this.
Speaker 1:Now y'all sit there and talk about why you defend public schools and why you got to have public schools and why we got to make sure everything goes to public schools. When you're talking about neighborhoods schools, this is what happens when the government runs the schools. When the government runs the schools and your elected official the one that you picked, when the one that you wanted to run, when the one that you thought was going to take consideration African Americans and Latin people and take consideration as people when that group wins the election, the ones who you didn't want to win when they win, they get to determine what your children learn or don't learn and what their children get to learn and don't learn, so they can say you don't get to learn this. Now, in my schools, in our charter schools, we can teach this and we will. We're going to ask anybody for permission, but in your neighborhood schools you can't. But let's just get to it right.
Speaker 1:Again, I'm not going to be able to go through all this. It literally is 294 pages, but I'm just going to take you through the different units. There are four units of study. The first one is the origins of African diaspora Again, pretty innocuous. What is African American studies? Pretty straightforward the African continent, a varied landscape, and there this course is going to talk about maps and the major climate regions, just to give you an understanding that all of Africa is not hot. Some of y'all didn't know that, but it's not all hot. It's a continent, it's not the desert. The course is going to take you through ancient societies from circa 300 to 400 BC Sudanic empires, ghana, mali, shanghai, right Learning, traditions, right, where to go through that. These are all the things. This is in unit one. In unit one, what you would go through is you take a look at West Central Africa, kinship and political leadership. This is all on the continent of Africa.
Speaker 1:Please tell me when I hit something that is offensive. Please tell me when I hit something you think that white children should not learn and that if black kids learned it it would be the end of society. Tell me where I hit it. So this is the deal, right? This is it. This is all the first section. First section Going to take you through those topics. Right, let's take a look at what they're looking at here. This is here. This is the program for the first National Council for Black Studies from 1975. Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, studying African Americans, believe it or not, studying African Americans in this country, is actually not an old discipline, 1975. 1975 was the first and I do mean this, the first Black Studies National Conference. And for you, charlotte, it was at the University of North Carolina, at Charlotte, 1975. All right, so here we go. This explains the origins of African American studies, what it looks like.
Speaker 1:This first section, as I said to you, just going to take you through what the continent of Africa used to look like before it was made into countries and it was colonized. Right, just showing you the different climates Some people didn't know. There's tropical rainforests, there are grasslands, there's desert, uh uh sorry, there we go. Um Simerad and Mediterranean. Right, so sorry, it's there. Just showing you the different climates in Africa. Right, nothing here, nothing to see here, right, nothing too bad, nothing that's going to scare anyone, especially anybody who is a Republican or anything like that. Right, y'all are good. Right, nobody's scared, yet Anybody's scared. Let me know if we scared you. Yet I see in a young man shooting um protesters scares me, but that's me. So right here goes through ancient societies, talks about some ancient societies. I encourage you to take a look at this.
Speaker 1:We are today taking a look at this the course that was banned in Florida. This course was banned in Florida because it was seen to be uh problematic that it was. The information therein would be insidious and somehow would harm the good people of Florida, black and white. They wanted to teach American history, not African history. They do teach European history, though, but apparently teaching European history does not uh offend the sensibilities of the Republican leadership in the great state of Florida. All right.
Speaker 1:So what would you see if you were teaching this course in Florida or anywhere else? Uh, like a talent Atlas, right, that's from 13, uh, 75 images of Molly equestrian figure. This is from the 13th century. Anybody scared? Yet it takes you through image of a grio. That's clearly more recent, but you get the point. Talking about grios, you're about a shea shango, um ceremonial wand. Just showing the artifacts of a people helps you to understand who we all are, the culture and trade in Southern and East Africa. We're not talking about trade and people. Here we're talking about trade. All right, there's nothing at all that you'll find in these first couple of sections. Many of you have seen this image. It's the image of Queen mother pendant mask. You've seen versions of this all over. This is the course, ladies and gentlemen, that was banned in Florida. This is the course that was banned in Florida.
Speaker 1:I am encouraging everyone who teaches anywhere in the United States of America to teach advanced placement African American studies. All right, unit two about to get hot in here. Ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about freedom, enslavement and resistance, all right. Well, what are we talking about? African explorers in the Americas. I might have ever won Guerrero's petition 1538.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk about what that means Departure zones in Africa and the slave trade to the United States. I mean, y'all do know that they're were slaves in the United States. You want to know where they came from. This is going to tell you Capture and the impact of slave trade on West African societies, african resistance on slave ships. People don't realize. Folks didn't look up in light and say, oh dip, we're about to go somewhere. Y'all hop on this chip and we're going to go with now and risking life and limb, and in many cases, both they fought back and they fought back hard, but it's the truth. Slave auctions I know Americans really ain't trying to feel that, but slave auctions and the domestic slave trade 12 years, a slave narrative, solomon Northrop. It's a fantastic book, fantastic book. Fantastic book. Please read it Please. It's very, very important. All right, so you go here.
Speaker 1:These source materials talks about labor, culture, economies, 1800s, slavery and American laws, one of the reasons why these laws are so important. I just need y'all to stick with me on this one man. Yeah, this is a good course. One of the reasons why this is so important is because many of these slave codes, one of the things that they had in common is to not teach black people to read. I want to say that again. Most every slave code said that you are not to learn to read, because if we teach you to read, if this country teaches you to read, allows you to read, then you'll discover that there are you no different than anyone else. Now we're starting to see the root of why people who don't want to own the circumstances that their ancestors created that allow them to still win, because they set the scale so that they always win. Laws in the United States of America that said that black people could not be taught to read, and the many cases those were called these slave codes. These slave codes. This particular curriculum doesn't go through every slave code, but it does go through a couple of them. And then, dred Scott, you know, separate but equal there, social construction of race and their reproduction of status. This was powerful. So what this is saying is that race is not really a thing until it needs to be made into a thing that justifies slavery we're going to go through here.
Speaker 1:So unit two is about how Africans became slaves, where slavery took place and how, within this country, while slavery was taking place. You see here, white lady, happy, proud and free, lend a while thine ear to me. Let the Negro mothers wail, turn thy pale cheeks still more pale. Can the Negro mother joy over this, her captive boy which is bondage and in tears for a life, of who she rears, though she bears a mother's name, a mother's rights she may not claim For the white man's will can part her darling from her busting heart? Yeah, man, that's rough, that's rough, that's rough.
Speaker 1:So I think we're starting to see where, if you're unwilling to acknowledge the circumstances of your advantages. Seeing something like this might make you feel uncomfortable. It might make you feel like you know what. I don't know if I want all people to learn about how Africans became slaves and how they were kept as such throughout the colonies. So it's important to note that in the earliest of times, african Americans, even as they were slaves, fought radical resistance.
Speaker 1:And this is where you can see if there was someone who didn't want Africans to learn about the pride that they have in themselves, you would see where this course could start to take you on a journey, because what it's doing is it's saying that the road to freedom in the United States, that many still have to learn about the truth, the challenges of slavery we're nearing the end. I'm not going to take you through the entire course, but I do want to get you to the end. This is the course that the state of Florida says that it's illegal to teach. In the next section you'll see the practice of freedom. These are the steps that people take white supremacists, violence and the red summer, the color line and double consciousness lifting as we climb uplift ideologies and black women's rights, black organizations and institutions, hbcus, greek letter organizations.
Speaker 1:Tell me how this wouldn't benefit all people. To learn about symphony and black black performance in music, theater and film, black history education, african American studies, the great migration, afro Caribbean migration, the universal Negro improvement association Y'all know what that is, that's Marcus Garvey Folks. In the four sections of this course, what you'd learn is about resistance and recovery on the road to forever. You see Joe Lewis down there visiting Fidel Castro Point is this.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, it's important for you to say that you think that it is wrong for any state to say that teaching about a culture, a race, is wrong, but it's more important that you learn what it is in that curriculum that's gotten them so scared. And then what I want you to do is to identify individuals in your community to run for office, and after you do that, I want you to support them and after you do that, make sure they hold to their promises. No dumb questions is something I get to do. I get to talk to people who are interested in topics that I think are interesting, but tonight we took you through something I think is super important. We took a look at the advanced.