Guest host Rachel Lindsay said Friday on ABC’s “The View” that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was a “racist” who is trying to erase black culture.
Co-host Joy Behar said, “Governor Ron DeSantis just put the kibosh on an advanced placement African-American studies course in Florida public high schools. The course syllabus isn’t publicly available yet, but the college board that created it called it a history course that also examines the vital contributions and experiences of African-Americans in literature, the arts, political science, geography, and science. The DeSantis administration claims it violates state law and, quote, ‘lacks educational value.’ I would like to know what is he afraid of?”
Lindsay said, “It’s not just a political stunt. I can’t call it that. It’s racism. We have to call it exactly what it is. This is culture erasure. We’ve seen it happen before. They erased our culture from us. They took our religion away. They took our names away. They took our heritage, everything that related us to and Africa. They took it away and replaced it with western culture. That’s what you are doing right now in education. When you look at the AP classes that are taught right now in the state of Florida, you have Chinese language and culture, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin and Spanish but you can’t have African-American studies? I have a huge problem with this, and this was created and cultivated with certain expertise and experience. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a part of this. This wasn’t just some thing they threw together at the last minute. It is put together to teach you about us and who we are through arts and literature, as you were saying, science, civil rights, political science, geography. There’s so much more to it, and if every other culture can be taught except for black culture, that’s racism.”
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