Know what’s so funny about this? How the blue-eyed White folks know this is an exercise (as in not real life!) and can’t stand taking the shit people of color deal with for a couple of hours before they’re screaming and crying and storming off. They know it’s fake, and they still can’t deal!
Yet these are the people who are supposedly so much smarter than me, so much more reasonable than me, so much more civilized than me!
Seriously, she’s bawling over there because she’s getting a PERCENTAGE of what so effing many people have to deal with constantly on a regular basis. Grow the fudge up, doll face. Welcome to a different set of shoes, now walk it off. This exercise is great, and should probably be taught to even younger people. Empathy needs to be engrained in when people are young. Not hate.
Actually, Jane Elliott was a schoolteacher who developed this exercise shortly after the death of MLK for the 3rd grade class she taught. Check out A Classroom Divided.
Funny how the kids handled this better than the adults. Remember, they were in White-assed Iowa. In the 60s. There was a follow-up some 25 or 30 years later, but I can’t find it right now.
I think this exercise needs to be taught to adults, too, because I think it may serves as a reality check of not only what they say/do themselves, but understand how they enact this in roles like the workplace and, if they are around children, what they model for kids in terms of bigotry and privilege.
This should be required viewing and practice everywhere in every field. I think it really puts things into perspective.
What made me laugh is the white girl who cried and stormed off after just a few minutes of experiencing what POC have to experience on a daily basis. But I don’t think she came away learning anything from this experiment because in the end, she can go back to being white and privileged and never have to worry about being singled out like that again.
This should be an ongoing thing for an entire semester.
“My feelings were hurt”
I bet she never forgot a paper and pencils for the rest of her life.I’m sorry I agree with this exercise but not the commentary. As a white “blue - eyed” women I certainly don’t understand completely the experiences of every individual in this world (race, gender, religion, nationality, etc) The whole point of the exercise is to show people how oppressive society works, the environment it creates. To take someone from one environment to another radically different social environment can be traumatizing exercise or not. I have participated in these exercises before and they are frustrating, I am not defending anyone’s actions. I am not trying to be an apologist. I think these exercises are valid. Yet to mock someone for their response? It makes you no better than the oppressors that this whole exercise condemns. You are creating and perpetuating the system.
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeally?
This teacher wins all of the awards.
I had to watch a video like this for my Sociology class a few quarters ago - about the same woman, but she was doing the test on a different group of adults, as well as her original test with kids, and I couldn’t believe the reactions of the adults when dealing with being marginilized. The children were having a rough time of it, sure, but they dealt with it better, and I figured the reason was because they were kids. They were used to being told to shut up or that their opinion was less important. However, the adults just went nuts. Even knowing the exercise, they just freaked out when they weren’t given proper respect.
I felt bad for the people being oppressed in the exercises - the kids were clearly close to crying, and the adults looked like they were going to kill someone. I didn’t really get much enjoyment out of watching them suffering, but I think this is a good exercise to practice at work places, schools, etc., etc. when tensions between groups and harrassment could get out of hand.
When handled by the right instructor, of course. Not doing it properly can scar the participants, rather than teach them.
This comment got me thinking about the instructors that POCs got about racism.
That’s the kicker that everyone misses. Who was careful and kind and gentle with us as we learn ( and are LEARNING ) racism.
