This commentary is by George Longenecker, a resident of Middlesex who was a professor and chair of the Department of English, Humanities and Social Sciences at Vermont Technical College. He also worked for the College Board’s Advanced Placement program.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced that the new African American Studies Advanced Placement course will not be taught in his state’s high schools.
The decision was made through the Florida Board of Education, which finds African American Studies unacceptable. This decision is designed to stoke division among constituents, and is not based on what African American Studies actually teaches.
It’s a decision based on fear that students will learn about mistakes the United States has made. However. African American Studies is the perfect place to learn about our nation’s contradictions and dualities.
On a spring day a few years ago, I visited Kingsley Plantation, run by the National Park Service on the outskirts of Jacksonville, Florida. There are rows of slave cabins, now mostly in ruins. The Fort George River flows quietly through the grounds where Zephiniah Kingsley’s slaves once harvested indigo and cotton.
Though the fields have long since grown back to forest, the place still feels like it might have 200 years ago. Florida was not part of the United States until 1821, so this plantation operated under Spanish rule in its early years. Some of the enslaved had been born in Africa, the last generation with direct ties to the Nigerian coast. Kingsley had children with his African slave-spouse; some of their descendants still live in northern Florida.
There were students having lunch on the grounds, a field trip to learn about the plantation. Some of them are likely descended from slaves. This plantation is an example of the conundrum of slavery and African American history.
Here slaves did backbreaking labor and lived heartbreaking lives. Many of their descendants carry the DNA of both master and slave. Some of the elementary school students I saw that day would undoubtedly love to learn more in an academically rigorous high school class. To deny students the opportunity to study their state and national history is not just academically unsound; it’s as racist as slavery.
AP Courses are designed by high school and college faculty and first taught as pilot classes at high schools. That’s where African American Studies is now. Students can get college credit for the class.
I’ve worked with faculty grading students’ AP exams. These courses are balanced in perspective and comprehensive in content. Students use primary documents to read opposing views, like the proslavery writing of Zephiniah Kingsley and the abolitionist perspective of Harriet Tubman.
Writing on CNN on Feb. 3, Leslie Kay Jones, professor of sociology at Rutgers, said: “This attack against African American Studies is not motivated by the value of intellectual balance, but by ideological posturing.”
DeSantis’ attack is not about curriculum. It’s a dog whistle to white supremacy. We live in a nation of conundrums. Students need the option to learn about our contradictory history in African American Studies.
