Afro Latino scholars and activists slam Gov. DeSantis' dissection of AP African American studies

Afro Latino educators say.Florida's rejection of AP African American studies undermines student learning in a multicultural world and the history of Black Latinos.

Educator and community activist Ted Victor was outraged when he learned Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had decided an Advanced Placement African American studies course his daughter planned to take “significantly lacks educational value.”

“No educational value, like something you can discard, something you can just throw away, something that says you are not as important as other people,” said Victor, who is Afro Latino and has taught for 25 years at the middle and high school level, and college.

The son of a Cuban father and an Haitian mother, Victor was born in the Dominican Republic and was raised there, in Brazil and Brooklyn. He was a 17-year-old in college before he understood that he was part of the Black diaspora. Learning this from another college classmate led him to switch his undergraduate major from math and computer science to African American studies. 

“How can you label a people and their history of no value?... How is it my daughter can take world history, U.S. history, European history and there is no question? In other words, she can study your ancestry, but my ancestry, her ancestry has no academic value?” he asked.  

DeSantis’ crusade on diversity and race comes in a state, colonized by the Spanish, where the intersections of Black, Latino and Indigenous culture and history abound. The first Generation Z member of the U.S. Congress, Rep. Maxwell Frost, is a Florida Democrat who identifies as Afro Cuban.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/afro-latinos-desantis-black-ap-studies-rcna69036

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