Responding to racism

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal.”

Almost 49 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered these words from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963. It has been almost half a century since that game-changing day, but King’s legacy is going strong, and the Multicultural Center at PSU is one of several campus organizations celebrating MLK week.

On Jan. 20, the center will be showing the documentary film A Class Divided as a tribute to Dr. King.

The film is centered on the story of famous third-grade teacher Jane Elliott. In 1968, Elliott subjected her third-grade class in Iowa to an exercise/social experiment in which they were divided into two groups: the brown-eyed group and the blue-eyed group. Over the course of two days, one group of students was on the receiving end of hatred, segregation and belittlement as they watched their teacher praise the other group. The next day, they switched off.

“The day Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, I decided to do an exercise that would help my students to understand racism,” Elliott told reporters in a video titled Angry Eye. “I tried to make a difference.”

Elliott said that the children in the favored group would become full of hatred and power hungry while the children in the non-favored group would become sad, disinterested and performed poorly on tests.

The film A Class Divided recounts this story and other circumstances in which Elliott has taught this lesson to raise students’ awareness of racism and its effects. It also touches on the impact her exercise continues to have on them years later.

“I think you could damage a child with this exercise very, very easily, and I would never suggest that everybody should use it,” Elliott says in the Angry Eye interview.

Biology freshman Emily Chandler is planning to attend the screening.

“I have heard of the story before and thought it was a good experiment. I’m really curious to find out how it impacted those students when they grew up,” Chandler said. “I don’t know if it was too harsh of an exercise, but watching this experiment would definitely help people who have never had to experience racism before become more empathetic to [victims of racism].”

Junior Hector Villegas, who is double majoring in international business and linguistics, agrees with Chandler.

“King fought for equality for people of color, and [Elliott] is trying to prove a point of what racism is,” Villegas said. “I don’t know if what she did was ethical, but in a sense it [should] make people realize what is wrong with discrimination. It gives you a way to recognize when you’re being discriminated against or when you are discriminating against other people.”

Discrimination is something Chandler has had to deal with in her life.

“When I was little, my parents faced racism on many occasions. My mom is white and my dad is black, and when they got married, it created a lot of controversy,” she said. “One time we were in a restaurant in Atlanta. My dad was waiting outside with the strollers, so my mom went in the building to get seats. As she was about to be seated, my dad walks in the restaurant and the waitress takes one look at him and tells us their restaurant all of a sudden became full and there was no room for us.”

Situations like these are what prompted Elliott to dedicate her life to educating people on racism. In the same Angry Eye interview, she explains that her job still is not over.

“When am I going to quit? When racists quit,” she says with tears in her eyes. “Do I have a job for a lifetime, I’m afraid so.”