The College Board kicked off Black History Month by stripping Black history of ideas that might upset its conservative white customers.

For those who have read and studied American history, this move is appalling but unsurprising.

The College Board, which had introduced a new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies, cut seminal Black scholars and writers from the curriculum, including Kimberle W. Crenshaw, Roderick Ferguson, Ta-Nehisi Coates and bell hooks. The move came after Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed to ban the course, although College Board officials say they had planned to expunge these “dense” secondary sources before the governor’s threat. The College Board also eliminated contemporary topics central to the debates about the Black experience in America, such as the Black Lives Matter movement and mass incarceration.

It would be interesting to see how many of the people up in arms about Crenshaw and Coates and critical race theory have ever read any of the aforementioned writers or texts.

When I taught a college writing course a couple of years ago, a legal essay by Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia University, was part of the curriculum. In a paper published in 1989, Crenshaw describes how race, class and gender overlap with how individuals experience the world. One of the legal examples she cites is DeGraffenreid v. General Motors, a 1976 case in which five Black women sued General Motors over its seniority policy. The company did not hire Black women before 1964. So, when the company laid off workers using a seniority-based policy in the early 1970s, all the Black women hired after 1964 were laid off. Crenshaw points out that a policy like that didn’t fall under just gender or just race discrimination -- white women and Black men fared differently under this same policy. At the time, Crenshaw highlighted a shortcoming in discrimination law.

Thirty years later, this argument seems obvious and uncontroversial. But discussing the legal reasoning and arguments gave my students a way to engage with contemporary issues and debates. And yes, legal writing is often “dense” and challenging. Grappling with difficult texts is part of learning how to think critically and engage in these debates.

So perhaps it’s not the content itself, but the connections that students might make that are threatening to certain political interests. For example, the same governor who wanted to ban this course held a press conference before the midterms last fall praising police for arresting 20 Floridians, some at gunpoint, for allegedly casting a ballot when they were ineligible to vote. Fourteen of those arrested were Black. When four white residents of the Republican-leaning retirement community The Villages were later arrested for voting twice, there were not heavily armed police dragging them out of bed in their underwear.

In fact, two residents of The Villages who pleaded guilty were only required to take a 24-hour civics class in order to avoid having any criminal record. A New York Times review of 400 voting fraud charges filed nationally found that “those who are poor and Black are more likely to be sent to jail than comfortable retirees facing similar charges.”

From that perspective, it makes sense that the Florida governor would want Crenshaw’s ideas banned in the state’s schools and colleges.

A reader who wrote to me in defense of DeSantis suggested that the course segments in question were “too one-sided and so controversial as to not represent Black history.” The ideas of scholars are never presented in a vacuum as incontrovertible truth. They are an invitation for evaluation and debate. These writers, in particular, provide a way to think about how Black history influences the present-day Black experience in America.

The writer’s next sentence revealed his own agenda. The original course “included topics that were teaching how to think about race, not factual Black history,” he said.

It’s intellectually dishonest to teach Black history without thinking about race in this country. It’s a difficult topic that makes us confront the complex reasons that so many racial disparities persist long after slavery, Jim Crow and segregation.

Crenshaw and Coates are not the boogeymen these cultural warriors would like you to believe. Instead of letting politicians tell you what you are allowed to read or think, find out for yourself what they are so scared of.

Pick up a book by a banned Black writer and read.

I recently spent more on a single dental cleaning than I've spent on my oral health for at least a decade.

The teeth that got professionally scrubbed belong to my dog.

Frankie's teeth looked great to me, but he'd never had them cleaned by the vet. He's approaching 5 years old, so I figured it was wise to get them checked out.

Given that I am a first-time dog owner, I based this decision on the poster in our vet's examination room that showed the various stages of periodontal disease and its effect on a dog's health. The vet agreed that it was a good idea.

I was a little apprehensive that the cleaning required general anesthesia, but Frankie is 16 pounds of fluffy stubbornness, and I'm sure sedation was necessary. The receptionist asked if I wanted the optional IV fluids during the procedure. It can prevent dehydration, which is more of a risk in older dogs, she said. I decided to spring for the fluids, even though Frankie is still fairly young.

I gave him a pep talk before I dropped him off: Be good and be brave, I said.

Maybe I was talking more to myself than him.

Four hours later, I called to see how Frankie was doing. The receptionist said that he had done great, and casually added that the vet had to do two simple extractions during the cleaning.

This did not seem like casual information to me. Apparently, two of his bottom front teeth were loose, so the vet removed them. I remember feeling the same way when my kids were small and the dentist reported that one of them had a cavity. It's a combination of guilt and shame: How did I cause this and why hadn't I noticed a problem?

Other than a less-toothy grin, Frankie seemed to be doing fine when I picked him up. They had shaved the lower part of his front right leg where the IV was inserted. The cleaning -- including fluids, two extractions and preventative antibiotics -- came to $517. At home, I noticed Frankie licking his shaved leg quite a bit. The next day the area looked red and a little raw. It was the weekend, so we went to our neighborhood pet store. I shelled out $18 for a bandage wrap and an antibiotic spray.

By Monday, his skin looked worse, so we went back to the vet. She prescribed a different spray, plus gabapentin (to make him drowsy and less interested in licking) and an anti-inflammatory medicine. Total: another $50.

She reapplied a bandage and suggested he might need a cone. By the time we got home, Frankie had ripped off the bandage. We went back to the pet store, where I dropped $23 on an inflatable neck pillow.

Frankie has never acted very bright when I've tried to train him to follow commands. It turns out he's not as dumb as he acts. He propped up his leg on his bed so he could continue licking it despite the neck pillow. The medicine finally kicked in enough to make him drowsy, and he only wanted to sleep in my lap.

This is when I turned to the internet for help. I checked the Facebook page for owners of this same breed and searched for dental cleanings. Several hours later, I was more confused than ever.

Frankie refused to tolerate the wrap on his leg. That night, I woke up a few times to the sound of him licking it despite the neck pillow. At 5 a.m., he came over and sat right next to my bed, staring at my face and whimpering until I took his neck pillow off.

I tried wrapping his leg again, using a larger nonstick gauze pad underneath. Within 15 minutes, he'd pulled the gauze out and torn it to bits. I decided to try a CBD "all day" calming bone (another $18) to take his mind off the obsessive licking. He finished it in 10 minutes. For those keeping track, the cleaning and subsequent issues have cost $626 to this point, plus six nights of sleep.

His skin is looking better, but he still starts licking when I take the neck pillow off.

The constant caretaking, coddling and worrying this past week took me back to when the kids would get sick as toddlers. They are on the cusp of young adulthood now. They don't let me fuss over them anymore.

Over the years, their perfect smiles also cost a small fortune.

At least Frankie will never get braces.

Imagine if Dr. Seuss memorialized our current political leaders.

The Sneetch who lived on a Florida beach might insist: I do not like Black history and books. I do not like them, Ron I am!

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took the unprecedented step of banning an Advanced Placement course on African American history -- an optional, college-level course for high schoolers -- for violating state law. DeSantis tried to justify his actions by railing against "indoctrination" because the class included texts from modern Black thought leaders and history teachers he didn't approve of. The course, developed by respected scholars and approved by the College Board, covers topics from literature, the arts, science, politics and geography related to Black Americans.

No state has ever refused to certify an AP course since the program began in 1952. Banning students' access to early college credit is the latest salvo in the war against educators and what they can teach and say.

Censoring an entire course for all the students in the state is a draconian step, but there are smaller repercussions of the conservative censorship wave rippling across the country. Earlier this month, NPR's "Planet Money" podcast was recording an episode in a third grade classroom in Ohio during a lesson in economics. The teacher was reading the Dr. Seuss book "The Sneetch and Other Stories" to the students. A child named Noah spoke up, connecting the theme of the book to history.

"It's almost like what happened back then, how people were treated," the student said. "Like, disrespected. ... Like, white people disrespected Black people, but then, they might stand up in the book."

The school administrator observing the lesson stopped the reading, saying they did not have parental approval to discuss race and they were uncomfortable with the discussion.

Is this what lawmakers are so afraid of? Is a third grader's observation about a Dr. Seuss book so dangerous and threatening that the entire lesson must be shut down?

Right-wing lawmakers in state legislatures, including Missouri's, have been whipped into a frenzy about "critical race theory" being taught to children, but it's a cover to stop conversations exactly like this. In real-life classrooms, this crackdown translates to teachers or books never mentioning race at all.

How can you teach even the most basic American history without discussing race? Hundreds of years of America's history and violence were predicated on the belief that whites were superior to other races.

This isn't new information. But it's important to know and understand the truth.

This is how politicized culture wars end up playing out in classrooms: School administrators and teachers become so afraid of offending someone's feelings, and of threats of criminal charges, that they will self-censor what is taught. People have literally called the cops about books in school libraries.

Ironically, it was conservatives who were upset about Dr. Seuss for an entirely different reason not that long ago. In 2021, the Dr. Seuss Foundation said it would stop publishing six titles that included outdated images depicting East Asian characters as offensive caricatures.

At that time, warriors crying about "cancel culture" lashed out about the Great Cancellation of Dr. Seuss. But when an actual school lesson involving a Seuss book literally gets canceled, it's been crickets from the cancellation crowd.

Granted, intellectual consistency isn't a hallmark of partisans.

Teachers have been dismantling their classroom libraries for fear of violating state laws. Educators have been fired or pushed out because they support diversity and inclusion programs. Now, an AP course gets shut down in Florida.

More crickets.

There's a lesson here in the words of the Lorax: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

At least there's some advice from Dr. Seuss kids are still allowed to read.