African American Studies isn’t just about history
I want to endorse the Sun-Times’ editorial board’s position on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ludicrous ban on an Advanced Placement course on African American Studies. I also wanted to share a “friendly factual amendment:” This is not just a course on history. There is an assumption that anytime anyone says anything about African American Studies or Black Studies, that it is and must be an academic discussion about history.
I am a professor of Black Studies and have practiced in the field for the better part of three decades. As much as I respect history and consider history an important part of the discipline, I am not a historian, but a sociologist and political scientist. In our discipline, there are specialists in every field of the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities. African American Studies has a similar wide swath of people from many disciplines. This kind of course is important for helping people understand that reducing entire fields of the study of matters related to those of African descent to just history is errant and part of the problem.
History is an important part of this course, not as an end, but as part of establishing a framework for students entering college to have at least a basic template of history to engage all the other areas of study.
One current area in my discipline is the use of geographic information systems technology to locate historic burial sites for African people and make sure that those sites are dealt with appropriately as repositories of respect and history. Another is the development of appropriate technologies to bridge the digital divide. Finally, a big national security issue is the use of artificial intelligence and problems that AI has had with accurately recognizing diverse population and how that needs to be dealt with in terms of privacy protection and preserving public safety. This list is not exhaustive.
I invite people who are taking sides on this issue to not only examine the course itself but more importantly, the fields and disciplines it seeks to represent. It’s not flawless, but it is important that we study all aspects of society, this hemisphere and its people. Where there is understanding, there can be an amelioration of conflict and the potential to establish common ground and pursue the common good.
Nikitah Okembe-RA Imani, professor and former chair of Black Studies, University of Nebraska-Omaha