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Discrimination Tater watching ten peeve, A Class Dealer, I recalled seeing ten program years ago. Despite remembering the film from 1985, I found myself taking away a deeper lesson than I did back then. This time around, the program taught me that it doesn’t take long to marginality a group of people simply by playing upon a particular shared attribute. When all the students were told they could throw the collars away at the end of the two-day exercise, watching young Brian wrestle with the collar… Sting and attempting to tear it to shreds… Was very powerful. He had been on top, and then on the bottom and, in the end, he seemed very determined to destroy the visible remains of what had been a powerful lesson. As a young, white boy born into unearned privilege, it was very likely the first time he felt the sting of discrimination, and I felt him trying to make sure he wouldn’t experience it again. Surprising to me was K. R. , the outspoken blue-eyed woman in the adult workshop.
She was the epitome of someone oppressed. Angry, defiant, rude, and uncooperative, she was determined to somehow claw her way to the top of that class, to be seen and heard. Yet Jane Elliott knew exactly which rungs of the ladder to remove to keep K. R. Down at the bottom, Just as white people have done to people of color for decades and beyond. I don’t believe people of color would find K. R. ‘s reactions all that surprising. There are a lot of ‘K. R. s’ out there who only want to be heard and understood, whether they are a popular minority leader, a women’s liberationists, or a human rights activist. In this program, Jane Elliott chose eye color to create a new social structure… Feeling of two racial groups amongst her students. It became apparent that when normalization, by way of creation and reinforcement of stereotypes, are employed against a group of people… Particularly by a respected authoritarian figure, as third- grade teacher, Elliot, surely was… He almost-immediate effect upon the students was astonishing. Within minutes, the postures of the students who were suddenly ‘on top’ began behaving “like a king” who rules over his subordinates. They sat up straighter in their seats, beaming with pride, ready to take on the world. Those students ‘on the bottom’ bowed or hid their heads in shame, frowning, or showing signs of the desire to rebel against the new establishment of order.
Later in the day, the ‘inferior’ kids had begun to believe they were “stupid” and slow, while the kids ‘on top’ were feeling bright and special, and it was reflected their performance. On the first day of the experiment, the blue-eyed children discovered that name- calling was a way to make teen Tell superior Wendell making ten Drown-eyed c Noreen feel like lesser people. Suddenly being called “brown-eye” was indicative of being tepid or inferior, and something clicked for one of the students when he realized aloud to the class , “… Hat’s Just the same way other people call black people’ naggers. ” Teasing was no longer something the blue-eyed students did for fun and laughs; they came to learn that they were doing it to purposely demean their brown-eyed classmates. The blue-eyed students had successfully discovered another way to reinforce the statuses of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior. ‘ When the teased, brown-eyed boy lashed out and punched a teasing, blue-eyed classmate during recess, he discovered t didn’t change the situation nor did it make him feel more superior.
Rather, it helped to reinforce the constructed stereotype about brown-eyed people being ‘nasty. ‘ The children discovered that the exercise of being singled out by eye color affected how they perceive others as well as how they are perceived in return. Just as importantly, how they learned how it affected their perception of themselves. They recognized their own poor performance in direct relation to the collars that they had to wear… The outward sign of their ‘inferiority that even they could not ignore… Even Hough they were no less intelligent than they were two days before the advent of the exercise. In my opinion, this exercise was the perfect activity to bring home the message of the Sioux prayer, “Help me not Judge a person until I have walked in his shoes. ” It is an excellent exercise in learning how discrimination affects society, no matter what the person’s age or station in life. While this exercise is certainly a powerful one, my hope is that it would keep those who have participated in the activity… As well as those who watch it… Mindful that no man can take off his color.