We speak with renowned legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw about right-wing efforts to curtail the teaching of African American history, queer studies and other subjects that focus on marginalized communities. The College Board, the nonprofit group that designs AP courses for high school seniors, recently revised a curriculum for a course in African American studies after criticism from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and others who maligned it as “woke indoctrination.” The new curriculum removes Black Lives Matter, slavery reparations and queer theory as required topics, and drops many major writers, including Crenshaw, from the reading list. “Anybody who’s concerned about our democracy, anyone who’s concerned about authoritarianism has to wake up and pay attention to this, because this is how it happens,” she says. Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” to study the overlapping or intersecting social identities and systems of oppression, domination or discrimination people experience.
