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Social discrimination theory
Social discrimination theory
Discrimination of Social Groups
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Back in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, Jane Elliot a third-grade teacher in Iowa watched the news reporter speak on the killing of Martin Luther King Jr and Elliot was shocked and appalled that the news reporter couldn’t understand what the black community was going through at the time. Jane Elliot wanted to teach her third grade students back in Iowa about racisms and came up with an exercise to showcase how discrimination and racism can be done within only a couple of days. Over a week Jane Elliot experience showed how friends became enemies and treated each other different because the colour of their eyes. Throughout the experience that Jane Elliot did, it was being recorded and would letter be called, “A Class Divided”. …show more content…
Within the movie I found five key terms that I believe connect with the message that Jane Elliot was trying to get across and those are, Prejudice, Groupthink, Aggression, Social Facilitation and lastly Conformity. The first term I chose was Prejudice, I picked this term because within the movie once Jane Elliot told all the blue eyes students that all brown eyes student was not as good as the blue eyes where, it started to stereotype people of colour with brown eyes that they were lesser humans then students with blue eyes. Prejudice in my term would be a negative belief or attuited towards a person or group because of the colour of their skin you prejudge them base of their colour or nationally instead of getting to know them. One personal experience that I’ve had was back in middle school when a friend of mine had come up to me and asked me if I could braid hair and I told her no when I really could, she then proceed to say, “Oh I thought all black people could braid hair”. This was Prejudice because of the fact that my friend had stereotype beliefs on an ethic group based of what they have heard. My second term I picked was Groupthink because in the video once Jane Elliot told her students about who was more superior, all the blue eyes started to put down and pick on all the brown eyes students and they did this in group not noticing the actions they caused because of the fact they were all in a group picking on someone. I would describe Groupthink in my own words as people who act out in group settings to belong and not feel left out so they go along with whatever one person in the group is doing so they can fit in. A personal experience that I’ve had would be when I picked on a person to fit in with a group and I lost myself because I wanted to fit into the group atmosphere so I did what they did to fit in. My third term I choose was Aggression because in the movie when Russell who was blue eyed was picking on a brown eye student and teasing him because of the fact he thought he was better than him. The brown eyes student punched Russell in his stomach because of all the anger he had because Russell was picking on him for the fact he had brown eyes and was told brown eyes were not on an equal level as blue eye students. Aggression defined by myself would be built up anger that turns into an outburst behavior which can result in hurting a person. A personal experience I’ve had with aggression was when I was picked on in grade three by a group of girls, they had been teasing me for weeks on end because of my height and one day I snapped and fought one of the girls. I did this because of all the anger I had inside from being pushed around.
My fourth term I picked was Social Facilitation because in one scene of the movie Jane Elliot was doing a number exercise with the brown eye students and the day before they did horrible but the following day when they were on top and each one of the brown eyes student thrived off each other they improved their scores during the number exercise. The definition of Social Facilitation in my own words would be that when people are in a group they tend to work and do better because they feed off each other’s energy. A personal experience I’ve had with Social Facilitation was when I was learning to drive, when I was alone with my dad I wasn’t do as good as I would like but, once my sisters came into the car with us and started to encourage me I feed off the energy and started driving better than I did when I was alone with my father. My last key term that I had picked was Conformity, I decided on this term because of the fact that throughout the movie people would feed off one another while in group settings when they were the odd group out. Conformity in my own word would be, changing who you are while in a group setting to fit in with others. A time that I experienced with Conformity was when I had to get a job and I had to act a certain way in the group the achieve this
goal. Stereotyping and discrimination is hard-wired into our minds in three ways, tv, people we interact with. Television is one of the main platforms for what enters our mind without us even noticing. Tv shows and movies that depict certain stereotypes on race and its brainwashed into our minds and we start to believe that’s how all races act because of what we see on tv. We don’t notice that what we watch teaches us things that our subconsciousness picks up on. Another way that stereotyping and discrimination is hard wired into us it by the people we interact with as well as the environment that we grow up in. I say this because if you grow up in an environment that doesn’t like a certain race, from a young age you are being told that a certain race’s is no good and they are liars or cheaters you grow up believing that this is true because it’s been taught to you throughout your childhood and it becomes embedded into you mind and you grow up discriminating against that race. If we don’t break this circle we will have a society we can’t get along and we will live in hate because of what we are being told about one another, instead of getting to know someone despite their skin colour. Inconclusion I believe that racism is a trait that we learn and are not born with, different environments and life choices change how we view each other but, in the experiment, done by Jane Elliot it shows that within a blink of an eye friends can become enemies when one race or group is believed to be the better one of the two.
During the 1950s, African Americans struggled against racial segregation, trying to break down the race barrier. Fifteen year old Melba Patillo Beals was an ordinary girl, until she’s chosen with eight other students to integrate Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. They are named the Little Rock and fight through the school year, while students and segregationists are threatening and harassing them. Warriors Don’t Cry—a memoir of Beals’ personal experience—should be taught in schools because it teaches students to treat each other equally and to be brave, while it also shows the struggle of being an African-American in the 1950s. Another lesson taught in the retelling is that everyone can make a change.
“A class divided” is a video documentary produced by FRONTLINE which illustrates the story contained in a book originally written in 1971. This book was readapted in 1987 by William Peters with a new title called “A class divided: Then and now.” This video tells the story of a third grade teacher, Jane Elliot, who decided to treat kids with blue eyes as though they were superior to those with brown eyes. It also shows the effect her action had on these students up to date.
The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered (in April 1968,) Jane Elliott’s third grade students were confused and upset. Growing up in a small, all-white town, they were not exposed to racism, and did not understand the meaning of it. Therefore, Jane Elliot decided to show her class what discrimination feels like. She informed the class that they were going to change the way things were done. The students were then divided by eye colour-blue eyes and brown eyes. The blue-eyed children were praised, and told that they were smarter, nicer, and better than the brown-eyed children in every way. Throughout the day, they were given special privileges that the brown-eyed children did not receive. Those privileges included extra recess time, access to the jungle gym, a second helping of food at lunch, sitting at the front of the classroom, and being allowed to participate in class discussions. In contrast, the brown-eyed children were forced to wear brown collars around their necks. They sat at the back of the classroom, and their behaviour and classroom performance was constantly criticized by the teacher. The students from the superior group (even those who were usually sweet and tolerant) became mean, and began to discriminate against the inferior group. The students from the inferior group would struggle with class assignments, and perform poorly on tests. On the second day of the experiment, the roles were reversed, making the brown-eyed children superior to the blue-eyed children. The results were similar, but the brown-eyed students didn’t treat their blue-eyed classmates quite as bad as they had treated them. When the exercise ended, the students hugged and cried with each other. Jane Elliott once said: "After you do this exercise, when the debriefing starts, when the pain is over and they're all back together, you find out how society could be if we really believed all this stuff that we
In the 1940‘s racial segregation gripped southern American life. The notion of separating blacks from whites created immense tension. Separate water fountains, bathrooms, restaurants, etc. were variables that helped keep races apart. “Jim Crow” laws in the south were intended to prevent blacks from voting. These laws, combined with the segregated educational system, instilled the sense that blacks were “separate” but not equal (174). Many people of color weren‘t able to survive through this time period because of the actions of whites. One individual who overcame the relentless struggles was Ralph Ellison. Ellison, a famous author, depicted racial segregation in the 1940’s through a fictional short story entitled “Battle Royal.” Battle Royal symbolized the actions of what “other” people became accustomed to. Blacks were thought to be socially inferior and live in the shadows of whites. The idea which Ellison uses to paint “Battle Royal” consists of that when one sex or race treats another as an object or animal, both become dehumanized (174). Ellison’s use of hidden meanings conveys his theme more effectively.
Throughout Hughes’ Not Without Laughter, we see the long-term effect of generations of prejudice and abuse against blacks. Over time, this prejudice manifested itself through the development of several social classes within the black community. Hughes’, through the eyes of young Sandy, shows us how the color of one’s skin, the church they attend, the level of education an individual attained, and the type of employment someone could find impacted their standing within the community and dictated the social class they belonged to. Tragically, decades of slavery and abuse resulted in a class system within the black community that was not built around seeking happiness or fulfillment but, equality through gaining the approval of whites.
Mary Mebane used her own experience on the bus to show how segregation affected her life. Mary Mebane points out, white people “could sit anywhere they choose, even in the colored section. Only the black passengers had to obey segregation laws.” When Mebane was young, she saw a conflict on the bus. The driver asked a black person who sat in the ‘no-man’s-land’ to move back to colored section to give the seat for the white person who was standing on the bus because the bus was full. Segregation on the bus represented how white people unequally treat black people. When black people refused this driver to move, the driver try to send them to police. Black people were living in the shadow of racism and segregation at that time. However, that situation still affects school system and community now. Mebane asserts, “It was a world without option.” Black people have lower economic and social status because they are restricted to a small box because of segregation. “In Six Decades After Brown Ruling, in US Schools Still Segregated”, Dexter Mullins claims that in some schools like Valley West Elementary School in Houston, about 90% of people are not white people. These kinds of schools do not have enough funds to support adequate school resource to these students, and these students have lower opportunities to contact with cultural diversity. Both reasons negatively impact on the
In public schools, students are subjected to acts of institutional racism that may change how they interact with other students. In the short story “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” by Packer, readers are allowed to view firsthand how institutionalized racism affects Dina, who is the main character in the story. Packer states “As a person of color, you shouldn’t have to fit in any white, patriarchal system” (Drinking Coffee Elsewhere 117). The article “Disguised Racism in Public Schools” by Brodbelt states “first, the attitudes of teachers toward minority group pupils” (Brodbelt 699). Like the ideas in the article “Disguised Racism in Public Schools” Dina encounters institutionalized oppression on orientation day at Yale.
The book “why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria”, written by Beverly Daniels Tatum, Ph.D., Adresses the situation of racism and how it effects everyone blacks and whites. This Book was intended to inform adults. Adults do not tend to educate their children of the facts of racism and the seriousness of it. Sometimes adults are scared they might create a problem rather then to fix it. Beverly wrote this book to educate educators that way they can better teach or train. In certain situations kids don't understand or know how to react because they have not been told the truth on what was happening. The impact of racism begins early. She uses her own circumstances to connect with her audience using ways that she had to deal with certain racial
It would be comfortable for me to continue believing that the Civil Rights Movement forced an end of de jure segregation and routine discrimination, ignoring the continuing de facto segregation and injustices faced by African Americans, viewing incidents such as Michael Brown’s shooting as isolated incidents. I could continue to shake my head and say that these events are tragedies, but surely they do not justify nation-wide protests. If there is no systematic pattern of disadvantage and abuse, then I am not morally obliged to take action. In this class it is impossible for me to simply brush off the complaints of groups like Black Lives Matters as overreactions. Like the rest of the nation, I now have to engage in the serious work of examining reality, acknowledging that racism is alive and well in America, and begin actively working to correct
The film A Class Divided was designed to show students why it is important not to judge people by how they look but rather who they are inside. This is a very important lesson to learn people spend too much time looking at people not for who they are but for what ETHNITICY they are. One VARIABLE that I liked about the film is that it should the children how it felt to be on both sides of the spectrum. The HYPOTHESIS of the workshop was that if you out a child and let them experience what it is like to be in the group that is not wanted because of how they look and then make the other group the better people group that the child will have a better understanding of not to judge a person because of how they look but instead who they are as people. I liked the workshop because it made everyone that participated in it even the adults that took it later on realize that you can REHABILITAE ones way of thinking. The exercise showed how a child that never had any RASIZM towards them in the exercise they turned against their friends because of the color of their eyes. The children for those two days got the chance to experience both sides of DISCRMINATION. The children once day felt SEGRIGATED and inferior to the children that were placed in the group with more privilege. Then the next day the children that were placed in the privileged group were in the SEGRIGATED group. The theory is if you can teach a child how to DISCRIMINATE against a person that you can just as easily teach them how not to. Sometimes a person needs to feel what another person feels to understand how they treat people.
Whenever people discuss race relations today and the effect of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, they remember the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was and continues to be one of the most i...
Segregation in educational institutions taking place in the United States is not often talked about. People may consider apartheid schooling taking place presently to a nation that does not respect basic human rights. Thus, the injustices taking place in public schools are not easily classified because it is commonplace to many. It can be argued that apartheid schooling was never completely dismantled in the United States. Jonathan Kozol’s book The Shame of the Nation (2005) provides evidence and insight to apartheid within the educational system that children are currently experiencing. The structure in children’s curriculum, the way they are spoken to as well as the funding public schools are funded are examples to the inequalities that children face. Conceptually, structural violence is what keeps educational injustices to recur.
The children who were being discriminated against took five minutes to complete the flash card; however, the superior group completed the flash cards within two minutes because of the stereotyping. Because of the statement, brown eyed people could not learn brought about insecurities.... Think of a child who had to endure it thru out their elementary years of schooling; they would have learning disabilities, personality conflicts, self-esteem would be low into adulthood. A parallels form today’s society to the attitudes and behaviors of the participants in the exercise is the gay rights and blacks being killed by police in the news. (Mother,
Faced with the segregation of white and blacks; rich and poor, communist and anti communists, the intellectuals and illiterate, the “haves” and the “have nots”, Richard Wright, a black boy from down south struggles to prove himself to not only his family and the rest of the world, but himself. Richard struggles with a black culture that tries to reshape him according to what it believes he should be which is less bookish, more obedient, and more religious. In the book Black Boy; by Richard Wright, Wright reveals a fundamental insight into human nature: that there is nothing that really separates people except for what they separate themselves by.
In 1968 Jane Elliot a third grade teacher in Iowa, wanted to teach the children in her class about discrimination. To begin she asked the class, who were a mixture of white skinned children aged 8-9, about their opinions on people who are a different race and have a different skin colour. During this discussion, racial slurs and derogatory terms such as “Nigga” and “Dumb” was used (by the children) and the general consensus was that African American people and other ethnicities are ‘below’ white people. In order for Jane to teach her lesson she needed the children to “walk in someone else's moccasins for a day” she did this by separating them into two groups, brown eyes and blue eyes. “Blue-eyed people are smarter than brown-eyed people. They