A Class Divided

After watching the video "A Class Divided," Frontline (1995-2014). A Class Divided. Retrieved from http://http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/etc/view.html, I had so many mixed emotions. I am a black woman, so to see a demonstration that was a class full of white children with a white teacher teaching them about prejudice and discrimination had me with mixed emotions. I find the teacher Jane Elliott admirable for what she did because she was an individual conducting this demonstration for positive reasons and not for self gain.What I liked about the video is that you have this white woman that took it upon herself to create a demonstration to each third graders about prejudice and discrimination. That in itself I like because this is a woman that was from a town and teaching in a town where the majority were white individuals. She wanted these children to have true knowledge and a encounter of discrimination in a way that they would really understand. I also liked in the video how they also applied this demonstration to adults because it showed the difference in the understanding of the situation. Children are more impressionable than adults. I have to honestly say that I did not like how in the video when Ms. Elliott did the demonstration with the adults how the white woman that was in the blue-eyed group that was being discriminated against said, "You don't have to be black or Jewish to feel discriminated against..." Though this is a true statement, it still showed that she did not understand true discrimination. She is a white woman that wakes up white everyday that is not targeted or looked down upon because of the color of her skin. Though she was the one being targeted in this discrimination, she will never truly understand the pain that us minorities feel and have felt. With her being a white woman she will never understand a black persons problems and struggles of being looked at and treated lesser just because of the color of our skin. I was not surprised of how the blue eyed children treated the brown eyed children. They are children and children are impressionable. Once the teacher taught and embedded in their mind that just because they had blue eyes they were superior, there was no doubt in my mind that they were going to belittle and treat the brown eyed children like trash. That is how racism, discrimination, hatred was formed because individuals felt that they were superior than another group of individuals and had the right to mistreat them and began teaching this hatred to others and their own children. I feel the scenes that I will still remember a month from now is the how the children treated each other just because they felt they had a since of power, the statement that the blue eyed lady made that was being mistreated, saying that you don't have to be black or Jewish to be discriminated against, and the response that the brown eyed lady had in response, and the statistics that showed that because the one group that was being treated superior did better on the learning exercises than the group that was treated lesser. I feel that these scenes will stick out to me even a month from now because I find all of these things remarkable. Though this was a demonstration that was developed because of mark on history which was the assassination on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., these are still issues that we face and will continue to face. Racism, discrimination, and hatred are still alive, if it wasn't then we wouldn't be out here still having to show that BLACK LIVES MATTER.