Danielle Pompey remembers Mr. DeSantis, a Florida native and recent Yale grad, being an outsider like her, a New Yorker with a thick accent to match. But Ms. Pompey, who is Black and was on an academic scholarship, said she felt that Mr. DeSantis treated her worse because of her race.

“Mr. Ron, Mr. DeSantis, was mean to me and hostile toward me,” said Ms. Pompey, who graduated in 2003. “Not aggressively, but passively, because I was Black.”

Passively mean.

She recalled Mr. DeSantis teaching Civil War in a way that sounded to her like an attempt to justify slavery.

“Like in history class, he was trying to play devil’s advocate that the South had good reason to fight that 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.’”

Imagine a history teacher trying to make people understand the perspectives of other people. No, no, just say "five million people did this because they were BAD".

Pranks, Parties and Politics: Ron DeSantis’s Year as a Schoolteacher