Inspirational - Teaching our children (and some adults) about racism (452 hits)

This came up during a conversation with my daughter and it made me remember this.

I took a Management Diversity class years ago and we were shown a documentary about woman, Jane Elliott, who decided to teach her 3rd grade class about racism. Her experiment was called Brown/Blue Eyes.

Here is small excerpt:

On the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968, Jane Elliott's third graders from the small, all-white town of Riceville, Iowa, came to class confused and upset. They recently had made King their "Hero of the Month," and they couldn't understand why someone would kill him. So Elliott decided to teach her class a daring lesson in the meaning of discrimination. She wanted to show her pupils what discrimination feels like, and what it can do to people.

Elliott divided her class by eye color -- those with blue eyes and those with brown. On the first day, the brown-eyed children were told they were smarter, nicer, neater, and better than those with blue eyes. Throughout the day, Elliot praised them and allowed them privileges such as a taking a longer recess and being first in the lunch line. In contrast, the blue-eyed children had to wear collars around their necks and their behavior and performance were criticized and ridiculed by Elliott. On the second day, the roles were reversed and the brown-eyed children were made to feel inferior while the blue eyes were designated the dominant group.

To me she was way ahead of her time for the experiment she did.

Before the workshop began for us each person was given a color band for the wrist to show what group you would be in. Someone came out and called for everyone with one of the colors to go into the seminar. The rest were left sitting there not knowing what was going on. They tried to see what was happening. They were ignored, shrugged off, or told to be patient.

We all see something like that and start to wonder why the group with the other color band were selected first. And since it was not about Black and White it was hard to tell. Now the first group were told the people waiting were going into another room. The next day everybody got another color bands and the other group went first. Now it was the other group who started to fidget and see why it was taking so long to open the other room. No one said anything, and again with the shrugs, being told to be patient. The room finally opened.

The last day of the seminar we got no bands and we all went into a huge room. We talked about what we felt when were left outside so long with no knowledge of why or what was going on. We all asked the same questions of why was the other group selected first. It let you see first hand how something as simple as "colored" band can put you in a group, and the group you're in may not be fair. It lets people know they may have a particular "color" giving them preferential treatment, but they could just as easily be on someone else list at the bottom.


Here is a link to that program. Some of those original kids from her experiment came back when they were grown and talked about how the experiment changed their perception on racism because for one day they saw how it felt like to be the one discriminated against.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sh...

Just felt like sharing. So many of our kids now go to schools with many races and though not as blatant there is always going to someone who is not wearing the right "Band" to be treated fairly. Children learn what they see.



MommyFrazz Posted By: Mommy Frazzled
Saturday, March 14th 2009 at 4:13AM
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