Morehouse College’s giant leap for Black history
21st August 2023 · 0 Comments
The big payback against Ron DeSantis’ 2022 Stop Woke Act is still rolling, bringing with it harsh criticism from Democrats and – surprise, surprise – Republicans too. Now DeSantis is claiming he didn’t have anything to do with pressuring The College Board to remove facets of its proposed AP Black History curriculum or demanding changes to the state’s curriculum that hides the truth about the Black experience in America.
The Stop Woke Act, which passed in July 2022, was initially called the “Individual Freedom Act.” DeSantis nicknamed the law using the word “woke” as an acronym for “Wrong to our kids and employees.” The law is designed to stop what DeSantis has called Critical Race Theory, a “pernicious” ideology because it is based on the idea that racism is systemic in U.S. institutions that perpetuate white dominance.
The central tenet of the Stop Woke Act is to prohibit the teaching of Critical Race Theory and to deny that “a person, by virtue of his or her race, color, national origin, or sex, bears responsibility for, or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex.”
While DeSantis is busy denying his agenda to ensure white children, don’t feel guilty about the selling of people, sex trafficking and breeding of human beings, whipping, lynching, enslaving, and making people work for free, carried out by their ancestors, his attempt to shield white students from the truth has created a monumental whitelash against him. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christy lit into DeSantis’ denial of being involved in banning truth in Florida’s new Black History curriculum.
DeSantis, as all anti-Black politicians do, stuck two Black faces out front as the designers of his Stop Woke curriculum. Black people recognize this worn-out window-dressing tokenism, and we are not moved.
Those Black folk won’t help DeSantis win, nor will they succeed as a cover-up for his racist attack on Black History. The truth is anyone running for president who backs DeSantis’ anti-woke campaign will, thankfully, not win. His pandering to the racist elements in the U.S. to gain votes may result in campaign contributions, but that’s all.
Organizations and institutions continue to respond forcefully to DeSantis and other far-right politicians’ attempts to turn back the clock to pre-civil war days.
As of March 17, 2023, a partial temporary injunction against The Stop Woke Act remains relative to university curriculums. A lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U. and other social justice groups in August 2022 resulted in the injunction.
According to the A.C.L.U., the “Stop W.O.K.E.” Act is a classroom censorship law that severely restricts Florida educators and students from learning and talking about issues related to race and gender in higher education classrooms.
Florida is one of nearly 20 states that have passed similar laws to censor discussions around race and gender in the classroom.
Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker blocked enforcement of the law in November after ruling it was unconstitutional, arguing it violates the First and 14th Amendments and the Equal Protection Clause. Walker issued a similar ruling in August, preventing the law from taking effect in businesses.
The law remains intact for K-12 schools, USA Today reported. Walker wrote in his opinion that the First Amendment does not permit the state of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark. “Our professors are critical to a healthy democracy, and the State of Florida’s decision to choose which viewpoints are worthy of illumination and which must remain in the shadows has implications for us all,” he wrote.
On March 17, 2023, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal upheld the injunction.
Try as he may, while DeSantis is lying about not being responsible for attacking “wokeism” as he attempts to track to the political left, the governor can’t deny that he supports teaching middle schoolers that some enslaved people developed skills, like blacksmithing, that they could apply for their personal benefit later in life.
Republican Presidential Candidate Will Hurd discredited DeSantis’ notion about enslaved people benefitting from slavery. Hurd said slavery was not a job-training program. It was dehumanizing. Vice President Kamala Harris went to Florida last July to reject DeSantis’ attack on Black history. Harris said DeSantis and others want to “replace history with lies.”
The vice president warned Americans that a national agenda is afoot to obliterate or rewrite Black history.
Indeed, in September 2022, the American Conservative Union sent a “woke congressional leadership pledge” to G.O.P. lawmakers seeking endorsements for leadership posts. “The first step to earning our support is a new shared strategy to reprimand corporations that have gone woke,” the letter read.
However, what’s most invigorating about DeSantis’ and G.O.P. lawmakers’ futile attempt to whitewash Black history is that beyond burning rhetorical clap backs, some institutions, organizations, and film producers are rising to the occasion to protect, retain, and teach Black history, past and present.
During Black History Month 2023, Morehouse College garnered national headlines for being the first institution to provide a three-dimensional virtual reality Black History curriculum. Today, Morehouse students are learning Black history and other subjects like Chemistry in the metaverse.
Morehouse College Professor Ovell Hamilton’s “History of the African Diaspora Since 1800” is one of this semester’s 13 virtual reality courses – part of Morehouse’s Virtual Reality Project.
The Virtual Reality Project’s manager and Morehouse Chemistry Professor Muhsinah Morris told Axios the college was the first in the country to pursue a “metaversity” model.
V.R. at Morehouse began in the fall of 2020 because the school sought ways to engage remote students. Morris told reporters the primary goal was to ensure they stayed in.
In V.R. classes, they saw no attendance drops and saw improvement in student achievement. Morehouse College deserves our gratitude for seizing the technology familiar to today’s students.
Indeed, the metaverse provides an engaging, entertaining, fun learning environment. Undoubtedly, V.R. is the future of learning and will one day exist not just on a college level but in K-12 classrooms.
And that V.R. curriculums in the metaverse are now a reality that bodes well for preserving, retaining, and teaching the truth about American history, Black history, and the lived experiences of Brown, indigenous, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized people.
All Americans risk being muzzled, censored, and having our First Amendment rights stolen. We must remain vigilant. The battle over censorship in our classrooms goes deeper than freedom of speech. The campaign to deny history serves not only to bury the truth but also to deny reparations.
Yet, the great thing about the truth is that truth will always rise to the top and set us free. In other words, what is done in the dark will come to light? Morehouse College has become a beacon of truth for Black history. Hopefully, many more institutions will join the prestigious institute of higher learning.
This article originally published in the August 21, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
