Florida teacher investigated after racially charged remarks in online social studies class
A school in Osceola, Fla., has moved a teacher away from students and is investigating racially charged remarks she made in class.
The teacher, Tracey Brown, was giving a lesson on the Constitution to her social studies class at Poinciana High School when the dialogue veered into a discussion about the Black Lives Matter movement. The online class was being conducted via Microsoft Teams, so it was recorded, reported WFTV-TV.
“You’ve never had to go through that struggle, but there are some Black people that live in communities where the cops do not treat them right, do you understand?” said one student, reported the Orlando Sentinel.
That’s when Brown lashed out.
“Stop right there, David. Stop!” she interrupted him, index finger wagging. “I want to be very clear. What you don’t know about me could fill a frigging swimming pool.”
A student posted that video to TikTok, and another reshared that on Twitter.
“I have as much right as anybody else to dislike Blacks,” Brown said, detailing an attack against her by a gang of Black youth when she was 16.
Brown went on to say, however, that she had been raised to understand that “skin tone is nothing but pigment. It has nothing to do with what you’re like on the inside.” That second part was not included in some of the initial clips that circulated.
She also decried the property damage wrought by a small percentage of protesters in demonstrations raking the nation in the wake of high-profile murders of Black people by law enforcement and self-styled vigilantes, according to WFTV, which obtained video of the entire discussion.
“You’re implying that black lives are more important than anybody else,” Brown said. “And I have a problem with that.”
In reality, Black Lives Matter is saying that Black lives are as important, not more important, than other lives, as activists and scholars have noted.
“Really think about all of the ways that, under the law, Black people have been treated as less than,” wrote businessman, entrepreneur and philanthropist Paxton Baker in a June op-ed for CNN. From slavery to being defined initially as three-fifths of a person under the Constitution, to being red-lined out of property-owning rights in certain areas and refused loans and mortgages, the institutional racism is all around us, and documented, he noted.
Thus, Baker wrote, those who say that all lives matter “are missing the bigger picture.”
In Brown’s class, the period began with a lesson on the Constitution, a student told WFTV.
“We’re going over the amendments,” the student told the station. “Then some kids started asking different things.”
He also said that although he took offense to her words because he is Black, his teacher is not a bad person, WFTV said. He actually “didn’t want her to, like, say anything about this at all,” he told the station.
Brown also clarified that she “was using it as an example, not to start an argument in class.”
Teen trauma or no, Brown has been removed from the classroom while an investigation is under way, where she’ll remain until the investigation has concluded, district spokeswoman Dana Schafer told the Sentinel.
An online petition calling for disciplinary action has gathered nearly 2,000 signatures.
“We’ve certainly heard from individuals,” Schafer told the newspaper, “and the teacher’s statements absolutely do not reflect any belief that is held by the Osceola School District.”
