Racial Discrimination And Its Effect On Society

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Racial Discrimination and Its Effect on Society Matthew T. Hill Ivy Tech Community College Abstract This paper explores a lesson conducted by an Iowa schoolteacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience in the meaning of discrimination (Peters, 1985). The lesson was based on race discrimination and did not address the issues of sex, age, disability, or religious discrimination. During the exercise, Jane Elliott, the Iowa schoolteacher, divided her class into blue and brown-eyed groups. The exercise was conducted over a two day period in which each group of blue or brown-eyed students experienced the role of being in both the superior and inferior group. This paper examines Jane Elliott’s lesson and the effect it had on her students, as well as my own personal experiences from watching the video. It is proposed that additional exercises should be conducted to eliminate discrimination. Racial Discrimination and Its Effect on Society Lawmakers have tried to address the act of racial discrimination since the end of the Civil War. However, the act of discriminating against another individual, because of his or her race, still continues today. After the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Jane Elliott was astonished by the questions white news anchors were asking members of the black race. In order to address the issue of racial discrimination, she designed a daring lesson for her third-grade students in which she divided them into the blue or brown-eyed groups. This paper examines Jane Elliott’s lesson and the effect it had on her students, as well as my own personal experiences from watching the video. It is proposed that additional exercises should be conducted to eliminate discrimination. On the first day, the students were divided into brown and blue-eyed
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