The College Board on Wednesday released an updated framework for its new Advanced Placement African American Studies course, months after the non-profit testing company came under intense scrutiny for engaging with conservative critics.
The revision includes more material on topics including the Tulsa Race Massacre, Black culture’s influence on film and sports, and discriminatory practices related to housing, known as redlining. The new framework will be used when the course officially launches next academic year.
The course gained national attention early this year when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, now a Republican presidential candidate, said he would ban the course in his state because it pushed a political agenda. The College Board later removed several topics from the exam, including Black Lives Matter, slavery reparations and queer life, and was criticized for bowing to political pressure.
The latest changes address some of that criticism.
The course outline includes written works about feminism and intersectionality, which is a framework for understanding the effects of overlapping systems of discrimination or disadvantage. A unit on “The Black Feminist Movement, Womanism and Intersectionality” includes the 1977 Combahee River Collective Statement by a group of Black feminist lesbians who fought against capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy.
The College Board, a nonprofit testing company, had faced criticism last winter for removing intersectionality from this unit.
The course framework also adds “Legacy” by provocative poet and activist Amiri Baraka as an optional resource in a section on Black arts, after Baraka was among several prominent Black voices removed last winter. Black female writers, including bell hooks and Audre Lorde, also were spotted in the latest revisions.
Several sources that were required course content in the framework released in February were listed as optional in the latest revision, including an interactive map of the…
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