racism

In the U.S. racism has been a well known issue from racial profiling to other issues such as affirmative action, police brutality against minorities and the history of slavery and the rising resentment against immigrants. Sometimes the term is used to describe the belief that race is the primary determinant of human capacities, or a more general attitude that individuals should be treated differently according to their race. One group who has faced the worst atrocities has been African Americans. Throughout the birth of our country minorities have had to struggle to prove themselves to the superiority of whites. Blues Eyes Brown Eyes an exercise conducted by Jane Elliott portrays the affects of racism.

Jane Elliott was a fourth grade elementary school teacher who taught a group of privileged children about stereotyping and discrimination. Her experiment Blue Eyes Brown Eyes was originated in order to illustrate how destructive the myth of White superiority was to her students. Elliott was an elementary-school teacher in an all-White town in Iowa. The month that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed, her students had named him hero of the month. This confused her students because they did not understand why their hero

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To break the racial barrier with friendships and make allies with blacks can help to do that. To make sure that the students would be able to tell each other apart she had the students wear different color collars. Without the help and consideration of white people racism can not end since they are the main factors of the existence of racism. Friendships across the racial barrier have allowed whites not to succumb to the racism which is filled around them. For example, in the article a teacher discussed how she had realized she had been paying more attention to Latino children than to black children. Jane Elliot through her experiment has not only shown but also proved the horrific affects that such acts of racism have. The students responded with such answers as, ?They?re dirty,? and ?my father says they are not trustworthy. The brown eyed students were ?superior? to the blue eyed students. She had been so oblivious to this fact that it had brought her to the verge of tears.

These issues all connect to the affects of desegregation, busing, and the process of funding distinctions in public schools. The answers that were received were shocking but not surprising since the town they lived in was an all white town. This portrayed the devastating affects that racism has. This illustrated how easily racism could be created.

Elliott wanted to make sure that her students were able to comprehend the effects that racism had.

Approximate Word count = 1105
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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