By Laureen Boll | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
I’m a long-term resident of Douglas County and for the last three years have been a volunteer with FAIR (www.fairforall.org), a non-profit, grassroots organization that aims to overcome identity politics by nurturing a culture rooted in fairness, understanding and our common humanity.
I expect our public education system to embrace these values. History curriculum, in particular, can and should present a balanced and truthful account of past events, the good and the bad, by ensuring elements of fairness (e.g., multiple perspectives, avoiding bias), understanding (e.g., contextualization, cause-and-effect) and our common humanity (e.g., shared experiences, empathy building) are woven into the curriculum.
Douglas County School District (DCSD) will soon vote on whether or not to approve AP African American Studies (APAAS) as an elective course for high school students. A recent opinion piece in the Rocky Mountain Voice advocates for this curriculum, stating that it teaches “the full story of African-American history.” I appreciate this opportunity to share my opinion on why I don’t agree with this assessment and explain why I view APAAS as a grievance studies course that encourages activism amongst students versus a balanced narrative that fosters critical thinking.
APAAS is heavily focused on systemic oppression and injustices, framing history through a theory-based lens of victimization rather than resilience or agency. In the course description available online at apcentral.collegeboard.org, the word “oppression” is mentioned 27 times. And there’s an entire unit devoted to this topic, titled Interlocking Systems of Oppression. Per the curriculum, the “concept of ‘interlocking systems of oppression’ describes how social categories (e.g., race, gender, class, sexuality, ability) are interconnected and considers how their interaction with social systems creates unequal outcomes for individuals. The concept examines interrelated contexts, systems, and institutions that facilitate oppression or privilege in many areas of society, including education, health, housing, incarceration and wealth gaps.”
Students are taught that immutable characteristics, such as skin color and sexual orientation, are part of a complex formula that dictates their outcomes in life. Distilling human beings down to mere representatives of identity groups is dangerously regressive, does not create empathy and is likely to perpetuate inaccurate and negative stereotypes. While understanding systemic barriers is important, overemphasizing them can obscure stories of achievement, progress and contributions to humanity as a whole.
One of the units titled “Economic Growth and Black Political Representation” touches on advances in black political leadership in the latter half of the 20th century. Figures like Shirley Chisholm (the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968), Colin Powell (the first Black Secretary of State), and Condoleezza Rice (the first Black female Secretary of State) are highlighted. It is curious that the first Black Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, who served from 1967 to 1991, is not mentioned. Before becoming a Supreme Court justice, Marshall was a Civil Rights lawyer who successfully argued the Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court. Excluding influential figures like Marshall from a historical social movement impinges on students’ understanding of why things happened as they did.
This same unit also addresses wealth disparities along racial lines: “Despite the growth of the Black middle class, substantial disparities in wealth along racial lines remain. Discrimination and racial disparities in housing and employment in the early twentieth century limited Black communities’ accumulation of generational wealth in the second half of the 20th century. In 2016, the median wealth for Black families was $17,150 compared to $171,000 for white families.” Notably, the list of resources cited for students to reference does not include any works by the economist Thomas Sowell. Sowell is known for critiquing common narratives about systemic racism and focuses on cultural and economic explanations for disparities. His absence from this curriculum calls into question the fairness of this curriculum. Is it free of bias?
The last section of the curriculum – Further Exploration – includes Contemporary Grassroots Organizing and The Reparations Debate. Regarding reparations, the debate isn’t about whether there should be reparations or not, it is about how reparations should be carried out. And there’s no recognition of reparations already in place, such as affirmative action.
This AP course was introduced in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd tragedy and has been the subject of much debate and controversy. Several states have banned the curriculum because it violates their laws disallowing Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the classroom. DCSD has a policy regarding the selection of controversial learning resources (Policy IJAR), and the instructions for teachers evaluating proposed resources include: “whether the resource contributes to the presentation of all sides of controversial issues within the overall curriculum so that learners may develop, under guidance, the practice of critical analysis.”
I implore the DCSD school board to use the same level of prudence when evaluating the AP African American Studies curriculum, with the additional consideration of whether or not it’s appropriate for taxpayers to fund a curriculum that is not truly academic in nature. It is critical that our elected school board members honor our students’ First Amendment rights by selecting curricula that offer viewpoint diversity and foster open inquiry. These foundational principles allow our classrooms to succeed in bringing up thoughtful, critical thinkers who enter the workforce as effective leaders of future generations.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.