Some observations on the banning of AP African American Studies by the state of Florida
Commentary by Chitown Kev
(Note: My computer has been on the fritz for two days now. Therefore, my coverage of this topic is, by necessity, incomplete. CK)
There has been a lot of noise, as of late, about the banning of an Advanced Placement African American Studies course being taught in selected high schools in the state of Florida.
Finally, last night, the Florida Department of Education stated their “concerns” about the course and their reasons for allowing the course to be taught in Florida schools.
Marc Caputo/NBC News
The state finally announced last week that it was rejecting the course, pointing to six areas of concern and works by Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, bell hooks, Angela Davis and other Black authors.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. discussed the issue publicly for the first time at a
news conference Monday. They argue that the course is a Trojan horse for "indoctrinating" students with a left-wing ideology under the guise of teaching about the Black experience and African American history (which is mandated in the state).
DeSantis' critics, including the White House, have accused him of censoring ideas he doesn't like, blocking African American studies in general and engaging in homophobia because the state refuses to allow the teaching of Black Queer Studies, which is one of the six points of concern (the others are Intersectionality, Movement for Black Lives, Black Feminist Literary Thought, The Reparations Movement and Black Struggle in the 21st Century).
Some casual observations:
1) I would imagine that the “hotep” crew would have a few objections to this subject matter; particularly the feminist and queer portions of this proposed curriculum.
2) I’m to actually believe that the Florida Department of Education simply has the listed “concerns” with the proposed course as opposed to teaching African American Studies from anything but a white supremacist POV?
Am I to believe that the state of Florida would actually approve of other parts of an African American studies course that are, if I may use the word, canonical such as W.E.B. Dubois, the Black Queer movement known as the Harlem Renaissance (and any study of the Harlem Renaissance period that doesn’t acknowledge the presence and artwork of queers is incomplete and wholly inadequate), a study of the journalism and activism of Ida B. Wells, the fiction and non-fiction of James Baldwin...just to name of the few of the more famous examples?
I’m not even going to pretend that the DeSantis administration’s response to this African American studies course is exactly a new thing made necessary by new historical facts and/or teaching methodologies.
After all, white supremacy and Lost Cause ideology has never changed nor even gone out of style, really.
The resurgence of Lost Cause ideology that has taken place since 2016 must be countered with an equally stubborn resistance.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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A man who spent six years in prison for murder walked out of the city jail on Thursday moments after prosecutors dismissed charges against him, and weeks after a judge overturned his conviction.
Lamont Cambell, 28, was found guilty in 2016 of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of Lenny J. Gregory III. Gregory, the son of a retired St. Louis police officer, was found fatally shot around 3:15 a.m. July 17, 2011, in the 2800 block of Chariton Street in south St. Louis.
But St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy J. Boyer ruled in December that Cambell’s attorney did not do enough to counter a weak case or explore an alternative suspect, and investigators failed to disclose a romantic relationship between the lead homicide detective and a key witness, which would have called into question the witness’ credibility, according to a December filing.
….
Experts testified that the witness identifications were likely unreliable and, at the time of the second trial, the wife of the married couple had begun an affair with the lead homicide detective in the case — a fact that was not disclosed to the defense.
Evidence of another perpetrator also was not presented at trial, court documents said: A neighbor saw multiple people fighting with Gregory on the night he died and identified a man who was a person of interest in another killing nearby. An analysis from the state crime lab matched two palm prints found at the scene to that person as well.
Lamont Cambell, of St. Louis, walks out of the St. Louis City Justice Center after being released on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023, weeks after a judge threw out his conviction and minutes after prosecutors dismissed the case. Cambell was serving 30 years in prison for first-degree murder in the 2011 shooting of Lenny J. Gregory III.
Katie Kull, Post-Dispatch
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One thing seems certain if the Supreme Court bans affirmative action in college admissions: The only Black men left on campus will be athletes.
This is already more literal than figurative at many universities, a bleak foreshadowing should the conservative high court rule next spring that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina can no longer use race as a factor in creating a diverse student body. The cases, which underwent oral arguments in October, are built around a mythology of discrimination against Asian applicants. All historical data shows that the real goal is suppressing Black, brown, and Indigenous applicants and giving white aspirants more slots.
On the surface, the cases have little to do with sports. But if affirmative action is indeed killed, sports will likely join conservatives and liberals at the hip over one of the greatest hypocrisies in higher education.
Conservatives wage war on classroom diversity as predominantly white crowds of students and alumni of all political stripes scream their heads off for Black men risking brain damage on the football field. With rare exceptions, the presence of Black men on campus is directly tied to the level to which they make the school millions by dunking balls or scoring touchdowns.
This will only become more grotesque with the predicted drop in Black enrollment if the Supreme Court puts affirmative action in the coffin.
TAKE THE TOP TIER OF DIVISION I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), where 131 schools spend an average of $15 billion a year for a chance at a postseason football bowl game. In that division, a Black man is seven and a half times more likely than a white man to be a scholarship athlete. One out of every 9 Black men on campus is on athletic financial aid, compared to 1 in 67 white men, according to 2021-2022 data that schools provided to the NCAA.
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Demonstrators marched in protest of the Wednesday police killing of Tortuguita and in opposition to development of a public safety training center. The Grio: Violent protest in downtown Atlanta over killing of activist
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A protest turned violent in downtown Atlanta on Saturday night in the wake of the death of an environmental activist who was killed by authorities this week after officials said the 26-year-old shot a state trooper.
Masked activists dressed in all black threw rocks and lit fireworks in front of a skyscraper that houses the Atlanta Police Foundation, shattering large glass windows. They then lit a police cruiser on fire, smashed more windows and vandalized walls with anti-police graffiti as stunned tourists scattered.
The violent protesters were a subsection of hundreds of demonstrators who had gathered and marched up Atlanta’s famed Peachtree Street to mourn the death of the protester, a nonbinary person who went by the name Tortuguita and used they/it pronouns.
Tortuguita was killed Wednesday as authorities cleared a small group of protesters from the site of a planned Atlanta-area public safety training center that activists have dubbed “Cop City.”
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has said Tortuguita was killed by officers after shooting and wounding a state trooper, but activists have questioned officials’ version of events, calling it a “murder” and demanding an independent investigation.
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Civil-society activism in Africa can sometimes seem like an exercise in empty sloganeering: “mobilising the grassroots”, “empowering the youth”, and so on. Not in Sudan, where in recent years thousands of neighbourhood “resistance committees” have sprung up throughout the country. Forged in 2018 in the furnace of revolt, they began as autonomous networks of local protesters aimed at toppling Omar al-Bashir, an Islamist despot accused of genocide by the International Criminal Court, and at shepherding the country towards democracy.
Four years on, their revolution is unfinished. In 2019, after protesters had taken to the streets for months, Sudan’s generals gave Mr Bashir a final shove and seized power. They have clung to it ever since. Nonetheless, the committees offer a glimpse of how ordinary people were able to come together to fight for freedom.
In parts of Sudan, committees can be found at every administrative rung down to the village, each with its own rules governing its affairs. Over time they have become more sophisticated. Many have elected separate field, political, liaison and media officers. Some provide first aid or welfare, such as handing out fuel and flour.
But their core business is still organising demonstrations. Since the generals’ latest coup, staged in October 2021, the committees have brought people onto the streets almost every week. “It basically takes a WhatsApp message and we can shut down all the roads in Sudan,” says Ahmed Ismat, a spokesman for a committee in Khartoum, the capital
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While the United Nations estimates that 60% of Port-Au-Prince is controlled by the gangs, nowadays most Haitians on the street reckon that number is closer to 100%. The Grio: As Haitian gangs expand control, cop’s family is left shaken
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Every day when Marie Carmel Daniel’s husband put on his flak vest and walked out the door for another day of fighting Haiti’s gangs, she wondered if he would come home that night.
Friday was the day her smiling spouse of 18 years, Ricken Staniclasse, didn’t.
One of the country’s nearly 200 gangs ambushed his police unit that morning, sending gunfire echoing through the streets in an unexpected area — a mansion-lined stretch of the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
A gang led by Lionel Lazarre battled the police patrol under the sweltering Caribbean heat as officers desperately called for backup. But help never came, the country’s police union said.
The fighting killed three officers, hospitalized a fourth with bullet wounds and left the 44-year-old Staniclasse missing.
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Diners at a Greek restaurant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on Tuesday night were subjected to police body camera footage from the night Breonna Taylor was shot and killed in her Louisville apartment in 2020, according to the local NAACP and restaurant patrons.
The Republican Women’s Club of South Central Kentucky scrambled to find a new venue for an event featuring former-Louisville-police-officer-turned-conservative-author-and-pundit John Mattingly after the initial location for its dinner, the Bowling Green Country Club, said it would no longer host the group. Additionally, gubernatorial candidate and Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles backed out of the event because of the mounting controversy around Mattingly’s attendance, according to Spectrum News in Louisville.
Mattingly was one of the three police officers who raided Taylor's home and fired shots while searching her apartment for her ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover. He was not in the apartment at the time. Glover was handed a five-year probation sentence in 2021 after he accepted a plea deal from prosecutors for charges related to narcotics.
The Tuesday night event took place in the balcony of Anna's Greek Restaurant, while it was still open to patrons unaffiliated with the event. According to the Bowling Green-Warren County NAACP and restaurant patrons' accounts online, the lights went dark, as patrons unaffiliated with the event heard and saw graphic descriptions of the incident that killed Taylor. The audio from that night could be heard throughout the restaurant, through its speaker system.
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