Video Shows Florida Teacher Saying Slaves Weren’t Whipped, Wrongly Defining N-Word

A Florida school has launched an investigation into a teacher who told his class that slaves weren't abused by white people in videos that went viral.

February 16, 2021

florida teacher — Image via Getty/Georges De Keerle
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A Florida school district is looking into several viral videos on which a teacher claims that white people didn’t whip slaves and that the n-word “just means ignorant,” International Business Times reports.

A student—whose name appears to be Hector—posted three TikTok videos of an alleged in-class discussion led by his AP government instructor at Island Coast High School in Cape Coral, Florida. In the first video, with the camera pointed on Hector, another student can be heard describing how slaves were whipped by white people, to which the teacher responds, “They wouldn’t do that to slaves.”

Hector then says, “How do you know that? Were you there?” He laughs and asks again: “Like, how do you know?” The teacher then threatens to kick the student out, saying he wants the class to have an” honest conversation” about it. “That’s what I want. That’s what we’re here in AP for,” he adds.

In the second video, the teacher asks what the N-word means, and another student says, “ignorant.” The teacher agrees and says, “The N-word just means ignorant. It doesn’t have any other meaning in any other vocabulary other than you are a stupid person. You are ignorant. You are not well read. You are not well educated. That’s what it means.”

In the third video, the teacher and other students discuss what hate speech means.

After facing backlash, the Lee County school district took to Twitter to write that the situation is “currently under investigation.”