Why there’s a fight over AP African American studies

“We sometimes treat the Black experience as though it is peripheral to the American experience, when in fact it is central,” says law professor Ralph Richard Banks.

“African American Studies is a step in the direction of the full integration of the Black experience into the American experience.”

The introduction of a new AP African American Studies course became part of the culture wars after Florida’s Governor DeSantis threatened to ban the class in his state. The College Board appeared to give in to political pressure after the official framework was made public on February 1, and topics such as Black Lives Matter, slavery reparations, and queer theory were deleted from the curriculum. (Some of these subjects were included on a list of topics that educators could suggest to students for end-of-the-year projects.)

Here, Ralph Richard Banks, co-founder and faculty director of the Stanford Center for Racial Justice, discusses the new AP course, the importance of critical thinking—and finding a way to consider all opinions to get away from no-win culture wars. He is the author of Is Marriage for White People? How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone (Penguin Random House, 2012). His book, The Miseducation of America: The Crisis of College and the American Dream, is forthcoming in 2024.

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