What Are The Similarities Between Jane Elliot And Jim Crow Laws

Two of my favorite things to study in any English course are ethics and human rights. Since the beginning of the semester, in our English class, we have been looking deeper into the equity and ethics regarding racism in Canada and the United States of America. The two things that stuck out the most to me we reading the Jim Crow laws and watching the “Class Divided” studies performed by Jane Elliot. These caused me to think deeper, and question my actions, thoughts and words, along with those of the people around me regarding discrimination and racism. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Some common laws include: blacks and whites cannot eat together, a black person should never
She separated her young students into two groups, The Blue Eyes and The Brown Eyes. Students with blue eyes were given preferential treatment, given positive guidance and support, and made to felt superior over those with brown eyes for one day; the same thing was done the next day, but reversed, with Ms. Elliott giving superiority to brown-eyed students. This was an incredible story and we were lucky enough to see in class. It was terrifying to see innocent lovely looking children turn into racist monsters towards one another. Some of the kids turned so sour that one brown eyed kid punched a blue eye kid to get him away and to stop him from going any further with his insults. I was feeling kind of bad for them until I saw the incredible lesson they learned. She showed them in one of the most realistic ways, how it feels to be continually discriminated by something you can control like the color of your eyes or the pigment of your skin. In a society where people are hated against because of the color of your skin, and where that is the social norm, I can imagine how it would have been a harsh awakening for these kids as some of them probably didn’t know any different. My favorite part was when she saw her students again once they were all grown up and how they all worshiped and thanked her for teaching them that
This video hit close to home for me, being that it was only 250km away and not that long ago vs the older, American study she did with the third graders. First nations are treated so poorly, and with so much racism in Saskatchewan that we as a province are considered the Mississippi of the North. So, in order to try and teach and educate people about our wrong ways, she made it so the white and blue eyed people in her study were treated terribly and the First Nations people in the group were treated as superior. She acted like the big, white man in charge and insulted, out powered and manipulated the 11 white people in the study until they felt powerless and beaten down like many aboriginal Canadians today. I couldn’t believe how arrogant and how disinclined some people were to learn. One man in particular, named Joe, almost made me explode with anger as he believed he has seen it all and knows exactly what First Nations people in our society go through, and that he didn’t have to learn anymore. Miss Elliot tried and tried to break him down but no matter what, even when he looked like a fool, would get rid of his know it all ego to learn. This scared me, because Joe is like a lot of other people in our province who refuse to accept change and the need to learn, so we an resolve issues like this. Luckily, there was