Reality check on ethnic traits that should be extinct
In 2006, Kiri Davis documented how things haven’t changed much since Jane Elliot conducted a social experiment in her classroom in 1970.
Jane Elliot
Elliot, a third-grade teacher, segregated her class by eye color. She told the kids with blue eyes that they were better than the brown-eyed children. She even made them wear collars.
The children began to treat each other differently when Elliot told them that the brown-eyed kids were stupid, or lazy, or other negative behaviors that were flat-out lies.
The brown-eyed third graders began to believe that they were inferior, because their classmates were treating them like they were second class.
When Elliot flipped it around and enacted a classroom policy that made the brown-eyed children higher in the social hierarchy, it became even more disturbing.
The kids engaged in violent acts. Self esteem plummeted. Solely because the person in a position of authority told them that was how things were-and they accepted it, internalizing atrocities of inequality. That was 1970.
More than 30 years later, Kiri Davis made this film called A Girl Like Me which astonished me by capturing the present-day psychological repercussions of historic oppression of young women of color. The doll experiment is particularly disturbing. “Which doll is nicer?” Davis asks the girl. Her response makes my eyes water and my stomach churn.
This acceptance of a relationship between a skin color and a behavior trait or ability isn’t confined to African-Americans.
Mexicans, Native Americans, Persians, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Pacific Islanders, all people whose skin colors aren’t white observe that light skin and straight hair equates to preferential treatment in so many situations in these United States of America. I know I did when I was young. That is another blog post.
I hope that tomorrow at noon things really do begin to change.
Great! Thank you!
I always wanted to write in my site something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog?
Of course, I will add backlink?
Sincerely, Timur Alhimenkov
You’re welcome. You may. All I ask is that you credit me and link back to my site.
-V
You was so brave! : )
Keep going on! Never give up!
Nice book, I have been reed it..
So cool! Thanks.