Front Burner - Book bans and Black history in Florida

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

This week, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed yet another bill targeting the state’s education system into law. In this case, the law will defund state college programs that encourage diversity in higher education and limit the discussion of race in many courses. Under his leadership, Florida has become the epicentre of the culture war in America — a struggle that often focuses on classrooms and public education. On this episode, guest host Matthew Amha speaks with Alex Ingram, a high school teacher who taught in Jacksonville, Florida, for a decade, before deciding that teaching there had become untenable. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Matthew Amha, in for Jamie Poisson. This is an incredible package of bills. We just made the decision as a state and me as governor to just say, you know, we're protecting kids.

On Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed yet another bill targeting the state's education system into law. This one would defund state college programs that encourage diversity in higher education and limit the discussion of race in many courses. DeSantis says this has to be done because diversity, equity, and inclusion programs reinforce what he calls racial divisions. And these issues have been a driving force behind his presidential bid, which, according to the New York Times, could be announced as early as next week. Under his leadership, Florida has become the epicenter of the culture war.

We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die. And in so many ways, his legislative focus has centered on public education and classrooms across the state. This effort includes a spate of bills like the so-called Stop Woke Act, which includes the decision to block a pilot program to teach AP African American Studies. ...to Tallahassee where yet another controversial bill, the so-called Stop Woke Act, passed in the Senate and is now headed to the governor's desk. The individual freedom bill bans schools from teaching history that may make some students uncomfortable.

DeSantis said the curriculum lacked, quote, educational value. We want education, not indoctrination. If you fall on the side of indoctrination, we're going to decline. This course on black history, what's one of the lessons about? Queer theory. Now, who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory? The Department of Education has also passed measures that critics say amount to book bans. As teachers across the state have been told to take books off the shelves or cover their libraries entirely until state officials can visit classrooms and assess their books for appropriateness, title by title. So today, we're talking to a high school teacher named Alex Ingram, who taught in Jacksonville, Florida, for a decade,

before deciding that teaching there had become untenable, and leaving Florida for good. Hi, Alex. Hey there. So you're from Jacksonville, Florida, Duval County, and you worked as a high school teacher for a decade in the area. You've taught civics and AP government. But in 2020, you made the decision to teach an African-American history course. Can you talk to me a little bit about why that was? Yeah. So Jacksonville has a long history of race and racism and the interplay between those two. murder of Jordan Davis, as well as the murder of Trayvon Martin, and then more recently, Ahmaud Arbery, and then George Floyd, really kind of brought that to the forefront.

And kids had questions. And it was in the course code. And so we decided, I talked to my administration, to start an African American history course. The kids were really responsive to it. They really got a lot out of it. And it was a joy to teach. If you could take us into the classroom for a second, how were students responding to now being able to learn about Black history in their state? So students, you know, were really surprised, I think, oftentimes in the course, surprised, I think, oftentimes in the course, both in the frankness of the course, but also they saw it as very eye-opening and telling a story that's not often told and has even been

silenced in the past. And a lot of the students really used it as sort of an on-ramp for political activation. For many of them, that was the first time that they started thinking of themselves as political beings in a democracy. Kids have a very strong sense of justice and injustice, and they could very easily see what's occurring in the news and try to navigate that as a political being. And so that was really, as a teacher, that was really exciting. In your answer there, you mentioned some pretty high-profile cases of racialized violence or police violence that happened in the state. And so, you know, I'm curious, in cases like the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, in cases like the murder of Jamie Johnson, and kids like Jordan Davis, and of course, Trayvon Martin, what kind of impact did you see those stories that were happening on a national level? What kind of impact did you see that happening in a material sense on some of the kids that were in your classes? Yeah. So, you know, we talk about political socialization and there's all these sort of different events that create who you are as a person and how you

interact with politics. So for me, my generation, it's 9-11. For older generations, it might be the Vietnam War, the assassination of JFK or the assassination of MLK. But for a lot of them, it's the murder of Jordan Davis or the murder of Armand Arbery that really made them start to look at themselves in a political environment and try to navigate that in an intelligent way. So some of these stories are really foundational for the kids in your classes. Oh, yeah. Like these are moments of political activation, right? They are political on ramps where students are seeing themselves in a political world and trying to figure out how to pull the levers of democracy. And as a teacher, that's exactly what

we want, right? Schools should be incubators of democratic citizenship. And so when kids see injustice, right, like you want to engage with that, that's something that they're interested in. And that's something that's, you know, powerful. And, you know, to try and help them navigate that is a real honor. As it turns out, in the end, you didn't get to teach African American history in Florida for very long, though. Can you talk to me a little bit about why that was? Yeah. So as your listeners might know, there was sort of an increased militancy of these school board meetings. And our personal school board made the decision to change the names of some schools that

were named after Confederate soldiers. So we had a Robert E. Lee High School, we had a Jefferson Davis Middle School. And so I spoke out personally on the subject of those and encouraged them to change the names as a private citizen. And then, you know, things kind of went off the rails politically. And I got doxxed by the modern formation of the KKK. They don't call themselves that anymore. But they their their goals are the same. Can I ask, like, on a personal level, what is what is that like to be doxxed by extremists for for doing your job yeah so i got into you know the job of being a teacher knowing that it was going to be you know long thankless low-paying hours what i didn't know was that it was going to put me in both emotional and physical danger and

and my family in danger so my my personnel file was requested which which had my address on it, and it was released without any question or quibble. And my supervisor, my principal, was called and emailed and harassed, received over 100 emails and even more phone calls, as well as the superintendent of the schools, basically claiming that I was indoctrinating children, that I was teaching CRT and other absurdities. Am I right in saying that all of what you've just said kind of helped contribute to your decision to eventually leave the state of Florida? Yeah. So I was doxxed by the KKK. But then you also have this political climate in Florida that really shifted with the passage of the so-called Don't Say Gay Bill and the Stop WOKE Act, which basically makes it

impossible to teach black history or to even be an appropriate teacher. And so, you know, I put out my resume and in December I got a job offer and by January I moved to New England. and by January I moved to New England. So, you know, while you were still teaching in Florida, some of these laws that you're talking about started to target the teaching of African American history in the state. There's the Stop Woke Act, which prohibits schools from teaching students anything

that might cause them to, quote, feel guilt, anguish, or any form of psychological distress. And there are also additional measures like House Bill 1467, which deals more specifically with the teaching of specific books and with school libraries. So with all that in mind, can you tell me what school and classroom libraries actually started looking like once these new rules were passed into law? Education happens on the precipice of your own ignorance. You know, there are times in a classroom you should feel uncomfortable, right?

Whether that's in a math class, in algebra, right? Or whether it's your first day of college, right? It is a normal experience to be uncomfortable when something is new and being presented to you. And so the verbiage of that law is intentionally vague. You basically had teachers fall into three basic categories. You had one set of teachers that would completely empty out their bookshelves because these laws were written in such a vague and nebulous way. And so they would empty out their bookshelves and it served as a type of protest, right? This is very reminiscent of, you know, the memorials that the Germans have to, you know, the book burnings

that took place under Nazi Germany. Empty bookshelves are a powerful image. Those teachers emptying the bookshelves in many ways was a protest. Like it's malicious compliance at that point. The second set would cover up their bookshelves with paper. And that served in a way as a protest, right? This barrier was erected between the child and a book or, you know, learning basically. And then the third and probably most difficult were the teachers that were at a lower risk tolerance. Teachers like myself, where, you know,

you basically, you know, I decided personally to keep my books on my bookshelf and kind of looked at them, my classroom library, you know, like, okay, Governor DeSantis, you can take my classroom library from my cold, dead hands. This is a broad tradition of political history in Florida, right? So it is not the first time we've seen, you know, this whitewashing and rewriting of history. It happened after the Civil War with the Dars of Confederacy, attempting to filter books based on how they told the story of the Civil War or the War of Northern Aggression, as it's referred to in some textbooks. You know, it's terrifying to have to help, you know, your classroom neighbor load up their books into the back of their car because they're professionally and personally at risk if they

don't comply with the law. So the consequences of not following this book ban is not just a risk to your professional certification. It's also potentially the same as carjacking in terms of how long you're going to spend in jail if you're found guilty. been in jail if you're found guilty. As we've said, you have libraries papered up and you have teachers waiting for state authorities to show up and make a ruling on what is and isn't appropriate for classroom use. But I wonder, you know, from your perspective, do you feel as though these new rules that are governing appropriateness in the classroom really give teachers a clear sense of what and what they aren't allowed to be teaching?

Yes. The laws are intentionally ambiguous. They're written in that way to have this chilling effect. And so that way you're not sure, you know, what's within compliance and what's not. And the design, like that's there by design. They're written intentionally vague so that you can't exist in that gray area at all. So the default is to clear the bookshelf. And they'll say, oh, it's not a book ban because these books are just going through a review process. Okay, well, when you're already talking about a school district that has been systemically defunded for generations, magically getting the funds to hire media specialists to review all of these classroom libraries, the resources just aren't there.

Failing to adhere to these new guidelines is punishable by up to five years in prison. So with that in mind, has anyone actually been prosecuted under these new laws? Yes. So I think what you're dealing with is that teachers are already a fairly underpaid position. And in Florida, teachers do not have the legal right, the legal protected right to strike. What that means is that you are not only in a profession where you are systemically underpaid, but you are also, you know, lacking a lot of political power that might exist in other places. And so the ability to, you know, send a test case is really limited. Most teachers just simply don't have the financial resources to go through that sort of hurdle of not having a job for that period of time, what goes through the courts. In March, a Disney film about Ruby Bridges, who was the first Black child to desegregate an all-white school in New Orleans,

was temporarily banned from a Florida school because one parent believed the film was, quote, racist and would teach white children to hate black children. Is this typical of the kind of power that parents have in Florida these days? So I think, you know, one of the things that I like to mention is that most parents are really have some level of with it-ness in terms of what's going on in their kid's classroom. The arguments that are being presented at school board meetings are not being done by parents or former teachers or current teachers or administrators or even grandparents or caretakers.

They're normally being done by a very small and vocal minority of people, often from outside of the county or outside the city. of people, often from outside of the county or outside the city. And so one of the issues with the legislation, one of the many issues with the legislation is that the law allows anyone in Florida to challenge any book in Florida, even if that person is not a parent. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing.

In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Many of these new measures handed down by Governor Ron DeSantis

focus their power on public education and the teaching of African American history specifically. What is it, do you think, that DeSantis has identified in African American history that makes the subject so politically convenient? Yeah, so this is a long tradition in American politics of, you know, the power of a euphemism. in American politics of, you know, the power of a euphemism. There's that Lee Atwater quote, right? You can't say the N word anymore, that hurts you. So you have to say busing, and then you get really abstract. And you start talking about cutting funds when you really know whose funds you're cutting and who that hurts directly is black people, right? This is a euphemism that Rhonda Sanchez has found politically advantageous in Florida. And then the second part of this is also like a long tradition

in Florida of rewriting history, right? And whitewashing Florida history. Florida has a lot of really amazing moments in social justice and racial justice, whether that's the wait-ins that happened in St. Augustine to desegregate pools and beaches, or the writings of Zora Neale Hurston, or, you know, the decimation of Rosewood, the Rosewood Massacre. And so, you know, whitewashing that out is a way of taking power away from a minority. So, you know, you have mentioned there a number of, you know, really significant moments in Florida's Black history. You know, you've mentioned Rosewood, you mentioned the writings of Zora Neale Hurston. You know, I mean, Florida also has a pretty deep history with the Ku Klux Klan and with chattel slavery as well. So I wonder, you know, for you, as someone who is both from the state but is also taught in the state, what do you think is lost if these stories and that history isn't passed down to the next generation? saw what happened when the Daughters of the Confederacy were successful the first time around.

Black people lost political power. Racist laws were passed, not just in the form of separate but equal, but politically disempowering laws were passed. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses, white primaries, all of these things happen as a way to take political power away from a particular group. And that same thing can happen again and is happening again. You know, we saw with something like Florida had a constitutional ballot initiative called Amendment 4 that would restore the rights of returning citizens, people who have a criminal offense and have served their time and are now reintegrating into society, they would automatically get their right to vote back. And, you know, more than 60 percent of voters approved of this. And Ron DeSantis in the legislature quietly passed a law that said, oh, but you also have to pay your fines and fees on top of serving your time. And golly gee whiz, if you've got to pay money to be able to vote,

that sure does sound like a poll tax, which in the United States is unconstitutional by the 24th Amendment. This issue with African American history in Florida classrooms is, as you've said, emblematic of a much broader war over public education in the state. Governor Ron DeSantis has gone to great lengths to reshape the scope of public education in so many ways. And so I wonder for you, as someone that was formerly working on the front lines there, what do you believe the goal of a project like that to be for Ron DeSantis? laws, these xenophobic laws, these hateful laws that are then going to be exported to other states. And potentially these laws are going to be exported to other countries even. And we've already seen this play out in school board races, both in the United States and

Canada, right? That these otherwise very boring, routine school board races now become, you know, multi-million dollar races. You know, it's really terrifying. And so just as a kind of a way to ground this conversation now, you know, the former governor of the state, Jeb Bush, has been quoted as saying that Florida could be a model for the future of our country. And so I wonder for you, if Florida were to become a rubric for the nation when it comes to education, what do you think that might mean for the rest of the country?

Right now, these laws are, you know, they're saying the quiet part out loud right now, that they are intentionally trying to craft a set of laws that can be used in other places. This formula is not one of proper classroom pedagogy. This is not one of listening to stakeholders or listening to experts. It is one of populism and reminiscent of fascism. Okay, Alex, thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely. According to Pan America, a group that advocates for writers and free expression,

more than 177 books have been banned in schools across the state of Florida as of March. These titles include Toni Morrison's Beloved and the Bluest Eye, the New York Times' 1619 Project, biographies of baseball icons Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente, and Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. That's all for this week. Frontburner was produced this week by Imogen Burchard,

Derek Vanderwyk, Lauren Donnelly, Rafferty Baker, Jody Martinson, and me, Matthew Amha. Our sound design was by Matt Cameron and Sam McNulty. Our music is by Joseph Chabison. The show's executive producer is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Matthew Amha.

Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.