Judd Legum’s newsletter today reports on an English teacher in Florida who is leading a charge to ban books. She’s doing all the usual banning of LGBTQ material but also wants to make sure her white high school students aren’t made “uncomfortable” by having to read books about race:
Vicki Baggett, an English teacher at Northview High School in Florida, is pushing for the Escambia County School District to remove nearly 150 books from school libraries. In an interview last month, Baggett told Popular Information that she is challenging books like When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball — the story of a sprinter who overcame racial discrimination to become an Olympic champion — because she’s concerned the book could make white students “feel uncomfortable.” Baggett said she has “a responsibility to protect minors” from this kind of content.
While Baggett claims she is keeping inappropriate content away from children, her former and current students tell Popular Information that Baggett openly promoted racist and homophobic beliefs in class.
Peggy Sunday, who graduated from Northview in 2021, told Popular Information that, during a 10th-grade English class, Baggett said she opposed interracial marriage. “[Baggett] said in the Bible somewhere it says that it is a sin for races to mix together and that whites are meant to be with whites and blacks are meant to be with blacks,” Sunday alleged. About 15 students, from a variety of racial backgrounds, were enrolled in the class.
Another student in the same class, Stone Pressley, recalled the same incident. Pressley said that Baggett said she was opposed to “race mixing” because “she wanted to preserve cultures” and “didn’t want everyone to turn the same color eventually.” Pressley said that although Baggett had a reputation for controversial remarks, he found Baggett’s comments on interracial relationships “shocking.” After the incident, Pressley recalled asking his science teacher if it was possible, as Baggett claimed, for everyone to be “the same color one day.”
Another student in the class, Hamza Jacobs, confirmed Baggett’s comments opposing “race mixing.” A fourth student in the class, who asked to remain anonymous due to the nature of the allegations and Baggett’s standing in a small community, also confirmed the episode.
Sunday said that Baggett is known throughout Northview as an “openly racist teacher.” Sunday worked at a local pool and, one day, Baggett asked her about “the black-to-white” ratio. According to Sunday, Baggett then asked two Black students if they “knew how to swim” because “most black people don’t know how to swim.” The incident was confirmed by one of the Black students targeted by Baggett, who asked to remain anonymous. That student said Baggett “asked me and another girl of color in my class ‘could we swim because black people usually can’t.'” Jacobs and Pressley also confirmed the incident.
A Black student in the class also alleged Baggett said that “she didn’t understand why black people get tattoos in black ink” because “you can’t even see them.” Pressley and Sunday confirmed the incident. Sunday and Jacobs recalled Baggett frequently commenting on the hair of a Black female student. Sunday said Baggett questioned why the young woman wore hair extensions and asked if her hair “was heavy or hurt her.”
Popular Information previously reported that, in 2015, Baggett posted an image of the Confederate Flag to her Facebook page. In the December 2022 interview, Baggett defended the posting, because “everyone in my clan fought in the Civil War” and she was not “ashamed of that.” Baggett added that she was a member of the Daughters of the Confederacy, which has been designated as part of the Neo-Confederate movement.
The Escambia County School District did not answer a detailed list of questions about Baggett’s behavior but did provide the following statement to Popular Information: “We categorically condemn any form of discriminatory speech. Our mission is to reach all students, regardless of race, background, or gender identity.”
Baggett did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the allegations made by her students. She has, however, continued to submit challenges to books in Escambia County school libraries. Most recently, Baggett challenged a bestselling book of poetry available in high school libraries, The Sun and Her Flowers, on January 5.
She seems nice.
This is just one teacher feeling emboldened to challenge books in the local library using a number of excuses including this blatantly racist rationale of not wanting the white students to “feel uncomfortable” with discussions of race. This stems from the ridiculous CRT debate. Remember this?
On Tuesday, a bill backed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis that would prohibit public schools and private businesses from inflicting “discomfort” on white people during lessons or training about discrimination was approved by the state’s Senate Education Committee, its first hurdle before becoming a law. The bill, SB 148, seemingly grew out of the conservative hysteria over “critical race theory,” which, as a reminder, is an academic concept based on the idea that racism is not about individual people’s prejudices but about institutions and policies.It does not, as GOP lawmakers and their partners in the right-wing media would have us believe, teach that all white people are racist. (As another reminder, teaching CRT is not actually being required in elementary, middle, or high schools, but you wouldn’t know that by watching Fox News, which would have viewers believe that teachers are telling white kindergarteners to turn over their allowance as reparations.)
The bill, sponsored by State Senator Manny Diaz Jr., reads, in part, “An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.”
That bill, the Individual Freedom Act (aka the STOP WOKE Act) was signed into law last spring “prohibits schools and workplaces from any instruction that suggests that any individual, by virtue of their race, color, sex or national origin, “bears responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress” on account of historical acts of racism. The bill also forbids education or training that says individuals are “privileged or oppressed” due to their race or sex.” It was partially blocked last November from being enforced in universities, but it still applies everywhere else.
And they call liberals snowflakes.
This is going to be one battleground on which the 2024 election is going to play out. DeSantis is clearly staking his wingnut credentials on race and gender culture war issues and it’s going to be ugly.