As Florida Gov. Ron Desantis fights for reelection on Tuesday, some details are coming out about his tenure as a teacher at Darlington School in Georgia. A former student of his claimed within his first year, Desantis treated her poorly because of her skin color and took some liberties when it came to Civil War history, The New York Times reports.
Desantis taught at Darlington School as a 23-year-old graduate from Yale University during the 2001-2002 school year. Former Darlington student and 2003 graduate Danielle Pompey told the Times she felt Desantis was particularly hostile towards her because of her race. This was after Pompey believed she and Desantis would have a connection considering there were both from out of town. Pompey was originally from New York, and Desantis came from Florida before Yale.
“Mr. Ron, Mr. DeSantis, was mean to me and hostile toward me,” Pompey told the Times. “Not aggressively, but passively, because I was Black.”
Pompey told the Times Desantis liked to debate topics like the Civil War. There’s an apparent connection between this and his feverous opposition to Critical Race Theory today.
“Like in history class, he was trying to play devil’s advocate that the South had good reason to fight the war, to kill other people, over owning people — Black people,” she said. “He was trying to say, ‘It’s not OK to own people, but they had property, businesses.”
Another former student named Gates Minis, who graduated in 2003, recalled arguments she and Desantis would get into. In a particular case, Minis claimed DeSantis said, “every city in the South burned during the war.” Minis then corrected him that her hometown, Savannah, was not burnt down. Desantis’s warped views on the Civil War were so well known throughout the school, another former student told the Times there was a parody video made about it for the school yearbook.