Jane Elliot, a third grade teacher from an all-white town of Riceville Iowa, decided to give her students a very daring experiment, yet, valuable lesson over the meaning of discrimination. After the death of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Ms. Elliott wanted to show her class what discrimination felt like, and how it effects people. In the experiment, Ms. Elliott divided her students by eye color; on the first day, those who had blue eyes were more superior. The blue eyed children were told they was smarter, nicer, neater, and overall better than the brown eyed children. Throughout the day, Ms. Elliott praised those with blue eyes and gave them special privileges such as longer recess, being first to go to lunch, and being the only ones who
could get seconds at lunch. On the other hand, the brown eyes children were not treated with such good privileges. They had to wear collars around their necks so they could be identified as a “brown eyes” from a far distance and all throughout the day these students were ridiculed by their behaviors and performances by Ms. Elliott and the blue eyed children. Some children even got into fights with one another on the playground because they were upset about being called “brown eyes,” they didn’t like the way discrimination felt, Ms. Elliott’s experiment is working. On the second day, the roles were reversed and the brown eyed children were now superior, while the blue eyed children were made to feel lesser.
The forties and fifties in the United States was a period dominated by racial segregation and racism. The declaration of independence clearly stated, “All men are created equal,” which should be the fundamental belief of every citizen. America is the land of equal opportunity for every citizen to succeed and prosper through determination, hard-work and initiative. However, black citizens soon found lack of truth in these statements. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 rapidly captured national headlines of civil rights movement. In the book, Coming of Age in Mississippi, the author, Anne Moody describes her experiences, her thoughts, and the movements that formed her life. The events she went through prepared her to fight for the civil right.
Jane Elliot was a teacher in a school of a small town, Riceville in Iowa, in which she lived. The town was homogeneous and Jane realized that her student had no experience with discrimination. The day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated,
The authors of The Ethics of Teaching, Kenneth A. Strike and Jonas F. Soltis, present ideas about equal opportunity and the democratic community. Kenneth Strike and Jonas Soltis mention what the NEA Code states about discrimination. The NEA states the educator cannot “exclude any student from participating in any program”. (Strike; Soltis, pg. 55). An educator also cannot exclude any student from receiving benefits. Chapter 4 mentions providing equal educational opportunities for every student. Strike and Soltis provide the Brown v. Board of Education as an example of giving equal opportunity to everyone. According to Strike and Soltis, “…segregation is illegal because it does
This passage bothered me. It is probably the part that bugged me the most about this book. There are many African Americans who are better behaved, smarter, more artistic, more athletic, etc. then white children. There are also many African Americans who are less educated and more poorly behaved than white children, but the same for both of these things go with white children. It bothers me that she knows that if the worst child in the class was white she wouldn't care if the best child in the class was white. I think that throughout the book she often generalizes with African Americans and doesn't even realize it. She claims that she is getting better, but I don't think that she really is. She keeps trying to have the African American children become the same as the white children.
As a result, they were powerless to prevent the white from segregating all aspects of their lives and could not stop racial discrimination in public accommodations, education, and economic opportunities. Following the 1954 Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, it remained a hot issue in 1955. That year, however, it was the murder of the fourteen-year-old Emmett Louis Till that directed the nation’s attention to the racial discrimination in America. Till was an African American schoolboy in Chicago, and he went to visit his uncle in Mississippi. He reportedly “wolf whistled” at a white grocery store attendant, Mrs. Bryant, and was kidnapped by her husband and her husband’s half brother that following night.
Jane Elliott Teaches Exercise Against Racism Her experiment on the Oprah Winfrey show in 1992 became world famous. Jane Elliott (62) carried out her brown eyes, blue eyes exercise, and a behaviour training that lets white people experience prejudice. and oppression does to you. What happens if you don't have any power? anymore and are subject to arbitrary discrimination, just cause you.
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
The 1960’s was a time period in which produced a plethora of social movements were taking place and consequently, laws were changed that affected our society as a whole. Some of those social movements were the Women Rights and Gay Rights movements, which were directly influenced by the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement produced many leaders, two of whom are Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz). King’s call for little black children to play with little white children, his admonishment of a black revolution due to the detrimental effects it would have on black and white relations, and his support of white and black children receiving the same education, directly shows that he supported a united effort to tackle discrimination. Consequently, during the 1960’s racial, political, and socioeconomic divisions were abundant and only through inclusion of all people to promote unity could society become better. Therefore, Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy made the most sense for the 1960’s because he promoted the inclusion of people from all backgrounds to produce harmonious living within our society.
Throughout the mid 1900s, many African American citizens were still not secured equal rights within America. An example of this is shown in 1954, in Little Rock, Arkansas, when Arkansas's Governor Orval Faubus defied the ruling of the Supreme Court's decision to put an end to segregated schools ("Melba Patillo Beals"1). One person who strived to make a change, and end segregated schools was Melba Beals. She and eight other of her friends, (known as "The Little Rock 9"), attended an all white school, making a huge, progressive, step forward in the Civil Rights Movement. Beals faced angry, white, mobs discriminating against her, day by day, but still managed to find the courage to go to school everyday, thus making her a worthy hero in our society and in history.
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...
Elliott gave the inferior eye colored children blue collars to wear so as to make them distinguishable from the superior eye colored children ("A Class Divided"). The children who wore these However, there were some adults who were not as easily swayed into discrimination. A few of the adults in the inferior eye colored group were rude, inconsiderate, uncooperative and deliberately insulting of Elliott’s instruction in the workshop ("A Class Divided"). They did not take directions from Elliott and questioned why brown eyed people, the superior eye colored adults, were better than blue eyed people, the inferior eye colored adults.
During the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 60's, women played an undeniably significant role in forging the path against discrimination and oppression. Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson were individual women whose efforts deserve recognition for instigating and coordinating the Montgomery Bus Boycotts of 1955 that would lay precedent for years to come that all people deserved equal treatment despite the color of their skin. The WPC, NAACP, and the Montgomery Churches provided the channels to organize the black public into a group that could not be ignored as well supported the black community throughout the difficult time of the boycott.
Elliott are playing as “the society” and like what we said, those blue-eyes group are the “vulnerable groups”, no matter what the blue eye group was did, they always wrong, they will always get insult, but when the brown-eyes group did the same thing such as having smile on the face, the “society” doesn’t care. Because that’s one of the normal thing people will do, but when the vulnerable groups which is blue-eyes group in the experiment do the same thing, it will not be allowed without any reason. And those behaviors are not only just not allowed to the blue-eyes group, Ms. Elliott will often use insulting words to describe those behaviors and blame those behaviors due to their eye color. There is one time that the blue-eye group didn’t do anything, but Ms. Elliott still insult them by saying that they sweat too much so that make the room smells bad. She telling the blue-eyes group that she made the rule, so they can never win the only way they can win is just win in their mind. Even they have the victory in the mind but the fact had never change and this situation does not make them feel any
“I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.”In 1963, the year of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15th. I was in the living room sipping on some hot coffee and looking at the newspaper, and my daughter Carol came into the room she had on a pink casual shirt with some blue jeans on and some black tennis shoes. So Carol asked me a question that would change our lives forever.
The students that I observed in the classroom were of middle to high school. I went to see 8th, freshman, 10th , and seniors classes, they seemed excited and very curious to why I was there. The middle school was more alive and rambunctious while I observed them. The High school kids were more relaxed, more comical. Some were paying attention while others seemed tuned out to the lecture or involved in socialization with friends within the class. By the end of the class Mr. Hasgil had restored the attention of everyone by using tactics such as history jeopardy with candy as the prize with the high school kids. In both he middle school and high school the kids were mostly Caucasian with a mixture of black, Asian , and Hispanic in the classes.