Florida Department of Education rejects AP African American Studies course

I dont really know what you are talking about, or what I'm supposedly admitting. I was asking a question to another poster.

 

This!

 

Is there an objective arbiter of what is or isn't racist? Or what the definitions or conditions of true justice or equality are? Seems like it would be helpful in this conundrum you've presented, but ultimately it just sounds like the issues inherent in free speech where ideas are contested and disputed, a freedom which people claim to prize.

 

so you have absolutely no opinion about the subject of the thread you've been posting on? carry on ...

 

Right now, considering how divided we are as a country, it's hard to think of one both sides would agree on with say 75% support.

Normally, this is what courts are for (which are far from perfect but are the closest thing we have to an objective arbiter), but we eliminated the filibuster for court picks under Harry Reid which has now turned courts to be perceived as more of a partisan institution than ever. Folks on the left like to think history started with the Trump SCOTUS picks, when all Republicans were doing at that point was making Democrats eat their own rules.

 

Such ignorance in this post.

Like all Spanish-speaking countries have the same culture. Don't worry, I won't call you a racist or bigot.

Also, there's a European History course, I don't believe there's a European American History course, and those two are very different things.

 

Courts should determine what's racist? Like a judge weighs in on if being mad about a black actor playing the Little Mermaid is racist or not? That seems even stupider than arguing about it online or something. I wasn't asking who should do it, because obviously no one would be qualified. Its obviously not something any one person can decide for a larger group of people. Seems like ideas like justice or equality will be perpetually contested, not decided for all time by anyone.

 

No, obviously not...

I mean violation of law. Most racism in practice is in the form of discrimination. If it's discrimination on the basis of race, courts can determine if it violated federal law.

Apart from that, you're right... basically nobody is objective, but that doesn't mean we should completely ignore the issue and I think you agree with that.

 

Their descendants may or may not be better off (in reality with different circumstances they simply would never exist, and a different set of African descendants would exist in this alternate universe).

That entire discussion is rather moot. The fact is they do exist, and should have 100% of the freedom and opportunity… equally, full equality without shenanigans designed to undermine them. In my view these “better off” hypotheticals pretty much always predicate the highly racially charged “well if its so bad for you here, why don’t you go back to Africa” argument that Trump and his white nationalist ilk typically use as conversation enders. This also ignores that much of Africa’s “modern day” problems were actually caused by colonial powers exploiting them (slaughtering millions of people and taking them for slaves tends to do that, kind of disrupts a society… no?). Really, Russia and China are on the ground there now as well so Africa is still a bit of a playground for corrupt foreign powers wreaking havoc.

 

I would imagine if AP AA History becomes a thing, there will be other courses to follow Native Americans, Hispanic/Chicano, etc. Latin American history should already be a thing, but that wont happen because that would be impossible to teach it without accurately portraying America as constantly backing and being the bad guys.

 

So does the American History course.

You mentioned European American History. I mentioned that I don't know of a high school class like that, I know of a European History course and that is not the same.

And if you can't see the distinction between classes focusing on culture AND language and a class that just focuses on the history of a particular subset of Americans that is already discussed at length in U.S. History courses, then I can't help you. And if higher education is any indication, African-American Studies is treated as a platform to preach political ideology based around equity.

 

By today's standards, everyone was essentially "the bad guys" 600 years ago. We just have a group of people hyper-focusing on the "bad guys" who happened to win a majority of the time.

 

Most of what people argue about being racist or not in American culture has nothing to do with legality. I mean its not even illegal to actually be racist or discriminate racially in many contexts. That's kind of why people argue about it, its self-policing.

 

Fair enough. What do you think we should do about it?

 

What specifically? I don't think we should do anything about people arguing over whether the Little Mermaid can be black. But there are probably other things that maybe we should.

 

Who should be the arbiter of what is and isn't racism? Should we even bother having these discussions if there is no clear impartial authority?

 

In what context? Like you said, we have courts to determine when someone has committed illegal discrimination based on race (which are flawed for many reasons). Otherwise what is or isn't racist is going to be determined by people collectively through persuasion. I don't think anyone made a law saying doing blackface was illegal or racist, but people generally consider it racist now, because they were persuaded in any number of ways to think that.