Last year, Florida’s much criticized “Don’t Say Gay” law, “weaponized” education policy to launch “baseless accusations of grooming and pedophilia” against LGBTQ Floridians, according to Latino and openly gay Florida Rep. Carlos Smith.
This year, Florida’s first openly gay state senator, Shevrin Jones, tweeted that Florida was now also a state where you, “Don’t Say Black.” That’s because the Florida Department of Education rejected a course in Advance Placement (AP) African American Studies, as proposed by the College Board, a 123-year-old non-profit which develops standardized tests and curricula to promote college-readiness.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis essentially illegitimately celebrated taking away Black history on the very first day of Black History Month. DeSantis claimed concern with curriculum topics ranging from, “Intersectionality, Black Queer Studies, the Black Lives Matter movement, Black Feminist Literary Thought and the Reparations Movement,” among others, according to The Hill.
The College Board has run 60 pilot AP African American Studies courses across the country. Despite the College Board working on the curriculum for a decade and asserting to work on the most recent changes for months, DeSantis took credit because the announced changes were substantially aligned with Florida’s stated objections.
For DeSantis, this is another talking point to add to the cultural war he is fomenting in his attempt to garner national attention ahead of a potential 2024 presidential bid.
For students, this continues centuries old efforts to limit access to information, voices, and history. Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Anti-Racist, discussed at length with Jarvis A. Givens, the historic parallels and modern relevance of understanding consistent efforts to ban “anti-racist books and ‘Negro studies’,” with examples such as Oklahoma’s 1925 banning and punishment of teaching The Negro in Our History by Harvard-educated Black historian, Carter F. Woodson.
Woodson would go on to write The Mis-education of the Negro, where he explained that “Black children learn to despise themselves — just as non-Black people learn to hate Black people — when Black history is not taught,” according to Kendi.
Significantly, a 2022 Quinnipiac University poll found that only 27 percent of Americans felt that the U.S. history that is taught in schools accurately reflected the role of African Americans. In the same poll, two-thirds of Americans said, “they were not taught enough about the struggles and triumphs of African Americans.”
Devoid of this understanding, it is no wonder many also lack a real conception of the impact of slavery, racism, prejudice, privilege, or even the idea of inherent biases in our society, institutions, and even interpersonal relationships. In fact, Givens stated that, “the physical violence Black people experience in the world is inextricably linked to curricular violence.”
Education Combats Anti-Hate Violence
In stark contrast to DeSantis’ Florida, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation in 2021 making ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement starting in 2029.
As previously reported here, in conversation with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, there was recognition “about the overlap in goals between ethnic studies and practical education and cultural competency as tools for hate crime prevention.”
Bonta stressed, “We do not shy away from hard truths” in addressing the release of his agency’s 2021 Hate Crimes Report, which showed hate violence was highest against Black Californians. Anti-LGBT violence and anti-Asian violence was also on the rise.
Data was similar in Florida’s 2021 Hate Crimes Report, which showed over 75 percent of race-based hate crimes were against Black Floridians. Anti-Black crimes accounted for a third of all hate-motivated crimes as reported to the Florida Department of Justice. Though, Florida’s report only lists 33 agencies which submitted information. The state has 757 agencies according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Woodson wrote that, “There would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom,” according to Givens. To study and celebrate the history of all marginalized groups, as told by them, is essential to understanding liberation and preventing persecution and violence.
The LGBTQ+ community has a responsibility to oppose attempts to silence and further marginalize the truths we hold and teach future generations. In fact, Iconic Star Trek actor and gay activist George Takei has called upon others to center “outrage” at the College Board and sign a petition demanding they “Stop Erasing Black Voices,” which has already garnered over 20,000 signatures.
Our community’s progress is linked to other marginalized communities. We have fought societal discrimination and parallel pushbacks to progress. Also at the “intersection between LGBTQ and Black history we have had countless, often unsung Black LGBTQ leaders that propelled this country forward,” as discussed by The San Diego Black LGBTQ Coalition.
Taking Inspiration from Black History
In February 1926, Woodson, the “father of Black history,” founded the first “Negro History Week.” Nationally, President Harry Truman endorsed it in 1946 and the history week was expanded to the entire month in 1970. In the 1960s and 70s, other marginalized groups were inspired by Woodson and laid the foundation for heritage months for Hispanics and Asian Pacific Islanders, along with Women’s History month.
In 1994, Rodney Wilson, a gay high school history teacher in Missouri took inspiration from Black historians to push for our community’s historic preservation and teaching. Wilson, while drafting the original proposal of “Lesbian and Gay History Month,” had a picture of Woodson on his desk.
In 1995, the National Education Association (NEA), a two-million-member union organization, passed a resolution in support of teaching gay history. Progress was met with fear, anger, and organized opposition. Teachers threatened to quit by the hundreds. Conservative groups such as Concerned Women for America took out full-page newspaper ads weaponizing child protection rhetoric to stoke fear in parents – parents whose own history education had been devoid of queer accomplishments, excellence, artistry, and resilience.
The organized opposition ended NEA’s support not just for our community, but for all history months, choosing instead to generically support “cultural and heritage celebrations and/or history months.”
“We absolutely learn through omissions,” Givens argued. America’s diverse youth deserve to see America’s diverse history. They also deserve to see themselves not only reflected in that history but capable of shaping and being part a of it. Unfortunately, our community is all too familiar with organized opposition to recognizing our very existence, dignity, and access to resources and opportunity.
Other Education Inclusion Battles
California’s 1978 Proposition 6, informally known as the Briggs Initiative, was a failed campaign to ban gays and lesbians from working in public schools. Instrumental in its defeat was Harvey Milk. Inspiration for the campaign came from the successful repeal of an ordinance that prevented discrimination based on sexual orientation in Dade County, Florida.
At the same time, the civil rights movement highlighted factual (if not explicitly legal) segregation rampant across America. Various iterations of affirmative action policies proliferated following the dismantling of Jim Crow racial segregation laws in the South.
Also in 1978, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. The Court rejected race-based quota systems but upheld affirmative action admissions policies which holistically reviewed applicants and considered race as one of many factors.
Affirmative action was one tool institutions of higher education used to advance racial integration of predominately white student bodies. The Court narrowly allowed its use, but only to advance diversity as intellectual enrichment of campus environments — not to address racial discrimination in society.
Put differently, Justice Lewis Powell, the first moderate Republican-appointed swing vote on the Court, justified diversity as a benefit to enrich the quality of education for institutions that were predominately white, but not diversity as a goal that would center benefits on Blacks and other marginalized communities.
Today’s Supreme Court conservative majority has no moderate Republican-appointed swing vote. The not-so quiet Republican-led court packing scheme allowed Donald Trump to appoint a third of the Supreme Court bench. That conservative majority has already overturned Roe v. Wade, bulldozing abortion protections.
Oral arguments last October in two cases challenging Harvard and the University of North Carolina’s use of race-conscious admissions policies portend more losses. The “national trend toward widening inequality that already endangers our democratic way of life” is expected to “compound the many lingering and systemic racial inequities that people of color still face today” when the conservative majority hacks affirmative action in favor of colorblindness.
Modern Calls for Race Neutrality Are Not Neutral
The largest public demonstrations in American history arose following the 2020 murder of George Floyd. The protest movement’s victories included declarations of opposition to racism across American institutions, recommitments to racial diversity, and pledges to better acknowledge Black history and perspectives.
However, we see resistance to change in Congress, state legislatures, in the media, and in the courts. Calls for colorblindness and race neutrality betray their declared values by attempting to impose white-dominant narratives of society and history while also gatekeeping the very idea of America and American.
The vocal minority of racist and white national groups leading the resistance to calls for change championed by the Black Lives Matter movement say the quiet parts aloud. No citation needed. Republicans and right-wing media have weaponized terms such as critical race theory, which is little understood, to discredit calls to address anti-Black violence, white privilege, and the ongoing impacts of racism, both institutional and unconscious.
Republicans such as DeSantis know their history and weaponize ignorance, fear, and lack of understanding to cultivate influence and power. DeSantis seeks to make a name for himself by criminalizing educational dialogue on sexuality, gender identity and now racial discrimination that includes “important historical contexts behind it,” decrees Marvin Dunn, a professor emeritus at Florida International University.
Nothing here is new. Every generation has had to fight for inclusion in public education. The scope of that inclusion has shifted from physical exclusion of Black students to contractual exclusion of openly gay teachers, to exclusion of topics, books, history, and even informal discussion. Controlling who and how we educate is about controlling power and resources.
America’s history of racial discrimination has profoundly distributed resources inequitably. Sterilizing and decontextualizing racial discrimination from anti-Blackness is a tactic to preserve historic trends in access to resources, influence, and power.
Kendi quoted Woodson’s declaration: “The mere imparting of information is not education.” Context matters.
We need to advance more education tools such as ethnic studies graduation requirements and AP African American Studies, not fewer. We all must learn from, experience, and interact with others; and unlearn ingrained habits of thought that lead to errors in how we perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions.
Without that work, political and economic power, opportunities, laws, and policies that are facially race-neutral will continue to bestow benefits inequitably while leaving marginalized communities vulnerable to violence.
It’s said that history may not repeat itself, but it does often rhyme.
This publication was supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of
California, administered by the California State Library.
