Discrimination in Children: When blue-eyes and brown-eyes were differentiated from one another the children started to act differently. There was an immediate difference in their attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs about one another. Whoever was “superior” for that one day truly believed their teachers word and felt that they were. There was name calling; “brown-eyes” or “you’re stupid” and even fights at recess. In addition, there were differences in math scores from one day to the next. When “superior”, the kids always scored better. It was as if the inferior group’s mindset was so distraught that they could not focus or function as well, something is their head was telling them they were “dumb” or not capable. The inferior students suffered structural discrimination as they did not get seconds at lunch, extra recess time, nor were they able to use the drinking fountain. In addition, they were at an age where they respected authority.
Discrimination in Adults: The discrimination in adults was mainly about a person’s traits. They assumed that blue-eyed people were disrespectful, could not learn as fast, and needed instructions explained several times. They were being prejudice and making a “rush to judgment.” The prison staff was much older and therefore at a much later stage of development. As a result, they were not as respectful to Jane as an authority figure, especially those who were on the bottom and shared the blue eye characteristic with her. The adults had a harder time handling the situation because they were older. The children were able to learn the lesson at a young age and then implement what they learned throughout life.
With the prison staff, Elliot chose to set her experiment up with blue-eyes on the bottom. This was beneficial because there were more minorities, or people with colored skin, in the brown-eyed group, resembling prisoners. However, this time they were superior and supposed to represent the correctional officers. The blue-eyed group was to represent persons in prison. Therefore, roles were switched to emphasize what discrimination is and what it feels like. It was the correctional officers chance to feel what it is like being in their prisoners shoes. If blue-eyed persons would have been on top, the situation at the prison would have still been the same. A majority of whites would be in charge and people with colored skin discriminated against. Therefore, this was their chance to see that no matter the color of your skin, or eyes, everyone should be treated fairly. No one is superior based on these characteristics.
The correctional officers were considered part of the disempowered group. However, in this case, they were able to understand the extent of their disempowerment as the blue eyes went from “superior” to “inferior”. Since they had once possessed power, it was easy for them to tell when they did not. This was displayed when the blue-eyed people spoke back to Jane and she criticized their every word. They soon realized whatever they said did not make a difference. They had no power and had to consent to the status quo, or whatever Jane was telling them. One particular lady spoke up amongst the blue eyes people to try and resist the status quo, but she could not win. The other blue eye individuals did not speak out to help gain power and stand up for themselves. Jane was using the ideology of racism, except that she chose eye color instead of skin color. Jane maintained power by continuing to criticize and provide examples of how blue-eyes were inferior. For example, she used the verbal and written test.
My most memorable part of A Class Divided involved the students. As third graders, they acted in ways that I never expected and they understood what was happening. One student even said, “I felt like a King, like I was better than them.” I could not believe the feelings they expressed having, I didn’t think third graders would be able to fully comprehend what she was trying to teach them. Also, I certainly did not expect there to be such a difference in their math scores.
The experiment conducted by Jane Elliot in Riceville, Iowa was a strong and effective lesson in portraying aspects of discrimination both to the children as well as the adults. Jane Elliot’s purpose was to show the children that everyone is equal underneath, and that’s it’s not what’s on the outside that counts- in response to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. the day before.
ReplyDeleteBefore separating the students, Jane asked a simple question of how different colored people are treated in society. And they immediately responded by being treated bad, or poorly, and being called names. Before the lesson was even taught there was already a presence of a predisposing stereotyping problem. She then separated the class in blue and brown eyes; stating blue-eyed people get all sorts of superiority in the classroom. The blue-eyed children got an extra 5 minutes at recess, could drink out of the water fountains while the browns couldn’t, and also they were segregated from playing with the blue-eyed children on the playground. Immediately there were obvious problems. When Jane said the blue-eyed people were smarter, it showed dramatically when she gave both groups the spelling quiz and the blue-eyes kids finished it before. And then, when Jane switched the segregation around the next day, it was exactly the same. She remarked on how she watched the 3rd graders turn into viscous, discriminatory monsters- all because of what was perceived to be the “norm” from their teacher.
The same situation occurred with the Prison Staff where she conducted a similar experiment except this one was more focused on the personal characteristics of the staff rather than what they could and could not do. The brown-eyed staff was the superior ones here and she explained to them how the blue-eyed people would act; disrespectful and arrogant towards Jane. When the two groups were in the same room, only few resisted the “status quo” that she was labeling as the ways of the blue-eyed. They tried talking back to her and not participating in what was going on. In return Jane would go about saying “see brown-eyes, didn’t I tell you they would react this way…” This made them feel inferior to others; all while the rest of the inferior blue-eyes consented to the normative status quo of the situation they were put in. I think Jane, being a blue-eye, made the blue-eyed people inferior to the brown because she wanted to show that even though she was a blue like them that she was in charge and superior-thus they have to listen to her.
Antonio Gramsci’s notion is that different social classes exist, and within them lay the capitalistic society we all live in while social stratification is an underlying problem. Once a social norm is diffused throughout a society, stereotyping and discrimination in inevitable.
The thing that stuck with me the most was the reaction after the experiment with the children was conducted and the children’s reaction to the video at the reunion. While watching it I felt the adults were in a way embarrassed to see and hear what they had to say when they were the dominant group (I felt like a king, ect..). after the experiment was conducted, each of the kids understood what she was trying to get at and as adults, they too still agreed and wished that their kids would be taught the same lesson in their schools today.
I believe there were many differences between the children and the adults put through the experiment. I believe the adults, though immature at sometimes, were more capable of handling and understanding the exercise as opposed to the children. One of the main things that stood out from one experiment to the next was in the classroom all the children were white, as opposed to the adults who were a mix of white and black adults. This was interesting because instead of the adults seeing the color of someone’s skin, they looked past that and only saw the color of people’s eyes. So in a room full of white Americans, who were supposedly discriminate towards black Americans because of their skin color, there was no mention of this even being an issue. I believe this also off set each experiment, because the classroom was only divided by eye color, as to where the adults were divided by eye color, but also to the viewers by skin color. The adults in the experiment were debriefed directly after the experiment, which allowed them to see and understand their actions right away, but since the children were not debriefed until years later, because of this I don’t believe the experiment had the same effects on each group.
ReplyDeleteIt appeared as though the experiment was set up in the prison with the blue eyes being on the bottom because there were no African Americans in this group. It appeared as though this did not allow for the majority of the white people to feel as though they were on top, or better than any other race. This also led to the majority of the white people to feel as though they were being discriminated against. I think the experiment would have had no effect if the blue eyes were on top. Since the majority of the white people were blue eyed, I believe it would have been a normal setting, in the sense that the white people were being discriminate towards the other races, like normal circumstances.
Many of Gramsci’s theories were evident throughout the experiment. It showed that Elliot displayed ideological domination, because she was blue eyed and controlled the entire experiment and the outcomes. This was interesting, because the blue eyed people who were being discriminated against had one of their own ruling the entire population, which led them to believe they were inferior and needed to listen to their so called master. The status quo was the group of the blue eyed people, because instead of speaking up to show they were also normal, they instead spent their time trying to argue and disrupting the others in the experiment. This experiment showed that if the group being discriminated against does not come together, they cannot bring forth a united front to defend themselves and instead resulted to being powerless.
The most memorable event from the video was how serious Elliot was in her experiment. She enforced everything she believed and showed how easy it was to stereotype. In the group of adult she reinforced everything that was wrong with blue eyed people, while being attacked and told that her idea was unrealistic. She was very smart, and would hear none of what was being said to her. She deflected every accusation, and spun it to be something detrimental about blue eyed people. Elliot was very good at deflecting and turning everything to her favor to allow the experiment to run its proper course.
After seeing Frontline’s production of A Class Divided for the 5th time in my life I noticed that the experiment was more productive with the young students rather than the prison staff. I believe that the experiment was more productive with the younger students was because they hadn’t been introduce as much or at all the discrimination in the world. They were just young elementary kids who did what they were told because they didn’t know any better. I believe because the kids hadn’t experienced discrimination it came to them as a shock when they were introduced to what the teacher told them to do. They had never felt the way they did and some of the kids were actually taken back by how a certain group of kids were able to do certain things and others couldn’t. On the other hand when Elliot preformed the same experiment with the prison staff I believe it was a little less successful because each one of the staff had been subjected to some kind of discrimination in their life and they kind of in my mind knew what Elliot was trying to accomplish. I not saying that Elliot didn’t provoke come extreme emotions from some of the staff I just believe that doing the experiment with kids who haven’t yet experienced discrimination, the project was more useful and productive. I don’t believe that by choosing a certain color eyed person to start off with had any effect on the way the project turned out it would have had the same result whether Elliot had chosen browned eyed people over blue eyed.
ReplyDeleteThis experiment left not only the prison staff but all the young kids feeling powerless. Seeing some of the kid’s reactions to not being able to drink out of the water fountain or someone of the faces of the prison staff really made me believe that Elliot had taken the power out of the people’s hands and made them feel like they were being discriminated against. Each one of the groups felt that they had their power taken from them making them feel powerless. One group was dominant over the other group at times because they were allowed to do certain things that the other group was not able to. All though some people were resistant in some cases I believe you need more than one person to stick up for a group in order to defeat discrimination in most cases.
One part of this production that sticks out in my mind is the part where Elliot and the lady wearing the big glass’s get into an argument. You wouldn’t think that an experiment could get so heated as it did between the two.