Prejudice In John Carreon's A Class Divided

Prejudice is embedded into society and is taught from generation to generation. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee the setting is 1930’s in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama. The people in this town look down on those different from them and have been taught prejudice for generations. Even though it was set so long ago the lessons are still applicable to many situations today. In this story a young girl named Scout is the narrator and her father is a lawyer who is representing a black man accused of raping a white girl. It is obvious what the fate of the man will be but the story highlights how and why an innocent man is sent to prison and later murdered.

A CLASS DIVIDED Thirty years ago Jane Elliott taught the third grade in the white, Christian community of Riceville, Iowa. The day Martin Luther King Jr. was killed she planned an exercise that wouldn't just show her students what racism is - rather, it would give them first-hand experience of what it felt like to be oppressed for something out of their control. Elliott divided her class by the color of their eyes, marked them with armbands and proceeded to treat one group as if superior in capabilities to the other. The superior students performed better than they ever had before, while the inferior students' performance dropped. The next day, the third graders traded ranks and their performance reversed in accordance to their

On the first day of the experiment, the blue-eyed children, or the in-group, were told they were superior to the brown eyed children, the out-group. On top of being told they were better and smarter than the brown-eyed children, the out-group was not allowed to drink from the same fountain, play together at recess, or go back for seconds at lunch-time. The brown eyed children received less recess time, had to wait to go to lunch, and wore collars for easy recognition.

Everyone is likely to experience some form of discrimination or prejudice; as is anyone capable of acting prejudiced towards others. On April 5th, 1968, a teacher in Riceville, Iowa named Jane Elliot conducted an experiment with her third grade class that dealt with the concept of discrimination; and was documented in Peters’ 1985 ‘A Class Divided’. The exercise originally took place the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. The documentary is an eye opener to the world of racism and discrimination. Bucher (2010) describes racism as “discrimination based on the belief that one race is superior to another” (97). According to Bucher (2010) “discrimination is defined as the

In a powerful experiment we were able to see through the eyes of a kindergarten children prejudice dynamics. In a famous experience by Jane Elliot she separated her class between blue-eyed and brown-eyed students. Professor Elliot had separated her students by making one eye group inferior to the other making them have certain benefits and better treatment than the other group of students. Eventually, the students were switched the following day. This experiment have showed this group of kindergarten students how colors and discrimination affected the minority population. After this successful experiment with the kindergarten student’s professor Jane Elliot had done many other experiments using adults using the a similar technique blue-eyed

During the Great Depression, racism and prejudice were the cause of suffering for many people who were greatly affected by discriminating thoughts. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Maycomb County is a town also filled with the evils of racism of prejudice, but that immorality is often hidden by certain of acts of courage and goodness enacted by the citizens of Maycomb. In her novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee portrays the importance of courage through characters Atticus, Mrs. Dubose, and Jean Louise (Scout) Finch, who all persevere through the path of rightness in the face of prejudiced and disapproving opinions, without worrying about the consequences of their actions. Atticus’ decision to defend Tom Robinson brings many disapprovals from others but he still continues to fight for him, although he knows that there is a high chance of Tom Robinson being doomed because of his race. Mrs. Dubose exemplifies courage because even though it costs her life and invited bad thoughts from others, she stays determined to get free of her addiction. Scout, an innocent, young girl, shows courage by defending what she thinks is right, although the consequences may not be good for her.

Imagine living in barracks, starved, then gassed because of your religion. Getting accused of raping someone because of your skin tone, then getting put in prison. Or getting spat upon because you’re a Jew. All of these things occurred at some point in history, and we are shown what this is like through novels, plays and book such as; “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, “The Merchant of Venice”, and real world occurrences such as the Holocaust. Today I will be talking to you about the ways that prejudice is portrayed in all four of the novels, plays and historic time marks.

“To better understand a person you have to climb up inside their skin and walk around in it.” The quote previously stated by Atticus in the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is an unveiling of the upcoming forms of prejudice. The setting for the novel is a fictitious town called Maycomb. This town is situated in Alabama. The racial prejudice shown in the novel has a lot to do with the town being situated in the southern United States. The backwardness and narrow-mindedness of the community fueled racism in Maycomb. These negative qualities account for the social and religious prejudices in the novel. Maycomb people have very inward looking views and so these views are passed on

The white people are the ones with blue eyes and hence she ranked them lower to make them feel how in everyday lives African Americans feel when they are being labelled as lower to whites. She purposely switched their roles so that they would start having empathy for one another. This was the first-time blue eyed people were told that they are lower than brown eyed people. Since whites are always considered superior in society due to their color, they never got a chance to feel what it is like to be black and thus being labelled as a low status. The label of a low-status reduces the position of an individual in society and causes the society to actively limit their rights. This exercise was more effective in children than in adults. Some white people rejected Jane Elliot's idea that stated brown eyed people are superior than blue eyed people. Therefore, they misbehaved and questioned how she herself feels when told she is lower than the brown eyed

Prejudice and discrimination is looked down upon, yet people still continue to be judgmental and have preconceived assumptions about others. It is a common thing that still happens in today’s society. To be particular, racial discrimination is one example of prejudice and is based solely on the color of one’s skin. In the story To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson is a caring individual who tries his hardest to treat everyone he meets with appreciation and respect. However, he is African American, which influences him and the other characters' lives in different ways. All he wants to do is help out another character, Mayella, which inevitably costs him his life in the end. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses the character of Tom Robinson to illustrate the fact that innocent people are sometimes victimized to a racist society.

Prejudices are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.

The experiment that she conducted was to show her third grade class about discrimation. She conducted an experiment telling her students with blue eyes were smart, better, then the brown eyes. Second day brown eyes were better than blue eyes. It has accomplished that when Elliott told the blue eyes students that they were better, they started making fun of the brown eye students. In a matter of minutes, who the person was before didn’t matter; all that matter was the color of their eyes. It was a surprise because they were all friends at first, then when the teacher told them how blue eyes are better, the blue eyes started making fun of them and they also started becoming more enemies.

This paper will touch on a number of issues from discrimination, prejudice, conformity and the effects of it on us as a society. In a small town in Riceville, Iowa a teacher named Jane Elliott did an experiment on her 3rd grade class, called the Blue eyes – Brown eyes exercise. Jane Elliott hoped that her exercise would help her students understand what discrimination really meant and how it felt. The film deals with racism and prejudice along with frustration, anger and pain, these feelings are not uncommon when dealing with bias and inequity. So I ask you to think about some questions to ask yourself and others you know, who suffers with discrimination today? What is conformity? And what would you say is the cause of racism?

Before people protest, they first create a reason to protest. Racism is not a genetic trait; it is an influence, an ideology from people within the same environment. According to John Hopkins’ study, “Research has shown that these unique experiences make it difficult for some Black and Latino/a students to succeed academically. Students of color often report problems with social isolation and academic integration.” To clarify, racism still has a toll of mental divide among society;furthermore, increases the stress of the minorities that leaves them in a disadvantage. Similar data gather from Jane Elliot in her experiment of the “A Class Divided”, Elliot influenced the third graders that the brown eyes are superior for a day, gaining many benefits, while the blue eye children looked down upon; also, concluded that the children who were labeled inferior statistically did worst on test than when they were labeled superior. Racism an ideology that people portray with their racial slurs in

Jane Elliot was a well liked third grade teacher from a small rural town in Iowa. In 1968 after the brutal assassination of Martin Luther King, the whole nation was in turmoil. Jane, also feeling the disparity and frustration knew that something needed to be done about racial discrimination. She knew that she could not just talk about discrimination to her students; it needed to be more tangible so that the students could truly understand how prejudice feels. Little did Jane realize what a profound effect this would have on herself and her students. Her approach to this experiment was very creative as she needed to take into account her pupils age and also their ability to understand discrimination. Jane was aware that none of her children had ever seen a black person before in person and that their only comprehension of a black person was through the TV.