AP African American History Includes Similar Lesson to Controversial Florida Curriculum Blasted by Kamala Harris

A line in the new Florida African American history curriculum spurred on a wave of denunciations, including from Vice President Kamala Harris, but the AP African American History course, which progressives have defended, includes a similar lesson.

The new guidelines in Florida attracted attention for asserting that instruction should include lessons on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” This led Harris to declare that “in the State of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery.” She was hardly the only one to critique the curriculum harshly.

But as Jeremy Redfern, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s (R) press secretary, discovered, the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American History course for high schoolers includes a similar claim in its lesson plans. In a unit on Slavery, Labor, and American law, the AP course suggests that students should learn that:

In addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers in the North and South. Once free, American Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.

Although this is more artfully put than the Florida provision, it aligns with the explanation Dr. William B. Allen, a member of Florida’s African American History Standards Workgroup, provided for the “personal benefit” provision.

“It is the case that Africans proved resourceful, resilient and adaptive, and were able to develop skills and aptitudes which served to their benefit, both while enslaved and after enslaved,” Allen told ABC News. “It was never said that slavery was beneficial to Africans.”

Ironically, the DeSantis administration had previously been criticized for rejecting the AP African American History Course because of its alleged promotion of Critical Race Theory, queer theory, and socialism.

“It is incomprehensible to see that this is what this ban — or this block, to be more specific — that DeSantis has put forward,” argued White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in January.

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