If DeSantis follows through on his threat, tens of thousands of AP students may find their college credits are no longer accepted by Florida universities.

How did we get here? To understand what’s happening now, it’s useful to remember a bit of recent history.

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, many Americans felt compelled to denounce police brutality and white supremacy.

Individuals, politicians and corporations posted long statements condemning white supremacy and systems of oppression to their social media feeds. Schools began emphasizing anti-racist teaching and Fortune 500 companies announced initiatives to prove they cared about racial injustice.

The College Board, which had long considered creating an AP African American Studies course, accelerated the development of a curriculum for the new class.

Many people believed the cultural shift that followed Floyd’s killing was long overdue. But others came to believe that the summer of 2020 had shifted the culture too far in the wrong direction. Many conservatives publicly criticized this new wave of so-called “wokeness” as a sort of political correctness run amok, and vowed to stoke and fight a culture war until all relics of this era were gone.

Conservative activists, politicians and political donors went after the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which focused on the history of slavery in the U.S. Right-wing backlash ultimately led the University of North Carolina to deny a tenured position to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (and UNC alum) who conceived of the 1619 Project.

Some states also passed laws banning the teaching of critical race theory, an academic framework that became a catch-all term for not only diversity initiatives but also ethnic studies and other only tangentially related subjects that conservative activists argued did not belong in the classroom.

There is little indication that this college-level framework was systemically taught in K-12 schools. But conservatives believed that progressives were “seeking to reengineer the foundation of human psychology and social institutions through the new politics of race,” Christopher Rufo, the journalist who launched the right-wing crusade against critical race theory, told the New Yorker.

Conservatives wanted to fight back. Critical race theory was “the perfect villain,” Rufo said.

Florida, DeSantis, and the Republican-dominated Florida legislature led the way in banning the decades-old framework from the state’s public schools.

Next, DeSantis and Florida conservatives turned their fire toward the College Board’s still-in-development AP African American Studies course.

After they complained, the curriculum changed. Did it change because of GOP fury? What does this mean for the future of the class?

Hello, I’m Erin B. Logan. I cover national politics and the White House for the L.A. Times. This week, we are going to discuss racism, Florida and education.

Why all the fuss about African American Studies?

The College Board had toyed with creating a Black Studies advanced placement class since at least 2007. But it wasn’t until the national anti-racism protests spawned by Floyd’s killing that the organization began developing a formal curriculum.

Last February, after consulting with top scholars, the College Board put forth a framework for the class. Students would learn about reparations, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, queer studies and feminist thought.

Florida Republicans claimed that the new curriculum ran afoul of Florida’s laws regulating what can be taught in classrooms. Last month, DeSantis banned the class from Florida schools, claiming the AP course “significantly lacks educational value.”

In a Jan. 12 letter to College Board, the state’s education department confirmed the class would be banned from the state.

Last week, the College Board seemed to respond to the pressure, removing the some required writings from Marxist Angela Davis and feminist scholar bell hooks and made some of the more controversial topics, including Black Lives Matter, optional rather than required.

The College Board initially denied that the changes were prompted by Florida Republicans’ outrage. A Feb. 7 letter, however, indicates that the nonprofit had been in frequent communication with the state’s education department.

In a statement on Saturday, the College Board said it regretted “not immediately denouncing the Florida Department of Education’s slander, magnified by the DeSantis administration’s subsequent comments, that African American Studies “lacks educational value.”

“Our failure to raise our voice betrayed Black scholars everywhere and those who have long toiled to build this remarkable field,” the statement said.

What happens next?

This week, DeSantis suggested that Florida may completely cut ties with the College Board.

“Nobody elected [the College Board] to anything,” DeSantis said Monday. College Board is “providing service. And so you can either utilize those services or not.”