I just watched this very powerful video that aired on PBS Frontline in the 1980s. It deals with the brown eyed/blue eyed class exercise that a third grade teacher did with her class right after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed (in which she has her class pretend that kids with a particular colored eyes are somehow inferior). I'd read about the activity before, but it really blew my mind. She's apparently continued to do this exercise with kids and adults around the country--it's well worth following the link to the interview transcript with her, in which she talks about what she's doing today and why.

A couple of things really struck me about the video. One was the way the kids performed much better on tests or assessments she gave them on the days when their eye color was "in" (i.e., they were the superior ones), and far worse on either the previous day or the next day, when their eye color was the inferior one. Really. Repeatedly. (There's some experimental psych research to corroborate the finding that the experience of discrimination persistently lowers test scores, which is also linked to the program page). And we're using these test scores to decide that majority-minority schools are "failing"???? I am horrified anew at this whole system.

It was also striking to me that the teacher said in her interview that people have threatened her life for doing this exercise--and that some African Americans, particularly, have objected to her running it as a white woman (although it didn't seem from the interview transcript as though they were the ones sending death threats). But apparently some African Americans, when they've participated in the exercise with their workplaces or classes or whatever, have been blown away--one woman said it was the first time in her life that she felt sure she wasn't imagining what she perceived as discrimination, that she understood that it was real and not some oversensitivity on her part. That's powerful. I remember that feeling myself, when I first understood that women in the community I grew up actually were treated like second class citizens. I had thought (and had been told multiple times, usually by other women) that there was nothing wrong with the way we were treated, it was just me.

I think about my students, who, when asked last week to write an essay on things you can tell based on how a person dresses (I was thinking things like, what sports teams they like, maybe where they work, what cartoons they watch), all explained to me that if someone wears sagging pants (hiphop style), you know that person is disrespectful, has a bad attitude, and is a thief. They all used the word "thief" particularly. I was flabbergasted, and I asked if all people who wear sagging pants (there were some notable examples sitting right there saying this!) are disrespectful or thieves. No, they said, there are some exceptions. But usually it's true. I was sitting there thinking a lot about internalized racism. What can you think when you're told you live in a "post-racial," post Obama world, you can legally go to school with whites (although in practice few of them will go to your school), but anyone who looks like you is constantly being portrayed/treated as if he or she has a bad attitude or is about to steal something? What else could you think? You'd notice that there are black people who aren't treated the same way as you are, or only in more subtle ways-Obama, for instance. Who doesn't wear saggy pants. It's easy to see how this theory could be constructed.....I think I am going to show this video when school starts up again next week. You'd think we'd have made some progress in the 50ish years since the death of Reverend King, but we seem to be moving backward instead.