A CLASS DIVIDED STUDY GUIDE
Because the film A CLASS DIVIDED is used in different settings and with various age
groups, this guide is designed to meet a variety of possible needs. Users should select
concepts, activities, and discussion topics most appropriate for their particular groups.
The guide includes:
• A summary of the film
• A list of the most important concepts
• Topics for discussion
• Representative statements of previous viewers with suggested responses
• Suggested quotations for discussion or memorization
• A list of possible activities
• A bibliography
Teachers will find the film relevant for grades three through sixteen in classes in history,
sociology, guidance education, career education, psychology, and business
administration, among others.
The film’s uses, however, are by no means limited to the classroom. Its content has equal
relevance to many groups, among them corporations (from the boardroom to the mail
room); health, mental health, and geriatric services; the military; law enforcement
agencies; professional associations; and service clubs, religious organizations, and youth
groups.
For those wishing to involve their groups in additional training aimed at eliminating
racism, the book White Awareness by Judith Katz, published by the University of
Oklahoma Press (1978-84), contains excellent suggestions.
A SUMMARY OF A CLASS DIVIDED
The program documents both the use and the effects of an exercise in discrimination
based on eye color with two distinct groups: 1 – children in a third-grade classroom in an
all-white, all-Christian community in northeast Iowa; and 2 – adult employees of the
Iowa State prison system at a daylong workshop on human relations.
The program begins with a group of former third-graders, now young adults, who are
gathering for a reunion with their teacher, Ms. Jane Elliott, at the school building in
Riceville, Iowa, fourteen years after she had involved them in a two-day lesson in
discrimination. Moving to a classroom, they screen The Eye of the Storm, a television
documentary film about that exercise, in which they were divided into blue-eyed and
brown-eyed groups. After the film, the former students, some accompanied by their
spouses and young children, discuss with Ms. Elliott the effects of that lesson on their
lives, behavior, and beliefs.
A CLASS DIVIDED continues with a discussion among black inmates at a maximumsecurity prison in upstate New York who have just been shown The Eye of the Storm as
part of sociology class. Their responses to the film and their comments on the effect such
an exercise might have played in their lives lead to a sequence in which the eye-color
exercise is conducted by Ms. Elliott with employees of the Iowa Department of
Corrections. At the end of the exercise, Ms. Elliott and the prison staffers discuss their
reactions to the discriminatory attitudes, treatment, and behavior they have just
experienced.
As the program concludes, Ms. Elliott explains her reasons for using an exercise in which
students actually experience discrimination (as distinct from more accepted methods and
materials of teaching about racism). She expresses her hope that others will use this
startling but obviously effective technique.
CONCEPTS
1. All the people in the film appear to be susceptible to the pernicious effects of
racial prejudice.
White nine-year olds in an all-white classroom and adult prison employees
in a racially integrated workshop reacted similarly when judged and
treated unjustly on the basis of eye color. Members of both groups quickly
became frustrated, uncomfortable, and disoriented and felt dehumanized
and rejected. When asked to do a simple task, those in the inferior position
had great difficulty remembering and following directions. Those in the
superior position performed the task easily and eagerly and then berated
the others, accusing them of inferiority because of their eye color. Some in
the superior position gleefully sought new and creative ways to hurt their
alleged inferiors.
2. Racial prejudice can exist in the absence of minority group members.
Before the classroom exercise began, third-grade students in the class
were asked what they knew about blacks. They expressed — and accepted
as common knowledge — negative ideas clearly received from the
significant adults in their all-white, all-Christian community. The students
had no inhibitions about repeating publicly the too-familiar negative
stereotypes. Yet the only minority group members in their environment
were those seen on television.
3. Prejudice is more often the result of discrimination, rather than its cause.
The teacher told her students that possession of a specific physical
characteristic was an indication of inferiority. Students possessing that
characteristic soon began to act as though the negative traits she attributed
to it were real. Children in the “superior” group saw this as proof that her
statements were factual. A vicious circle was thus created, with the
“inferiors” acting more and more negatively and the “superiors”
discriminating more and more severely against inferiors.
4. People tend to live down to others’ expectations of them.
Placed in a powerless position and accused of being there solely because
of a physical characteristic over which they had no control, the adults —
like the children — became helpless, confused, resigned, passive, and
fatalistic, and lost their natural orientation toward goals and success. This
happened even though both groups had plenty of previous experience to
indicate that the teacher’s negative assessment of them was not valid.
Earlier positive experiences did nothing to diminish their apprehension in
approaching academic tasks. Nor, when elevated to the “superior”
position, did a group’s experiences appear to inhibit their group’s
belligerence and viciousness toward their suddenly “inferior” peers.
5. Racial prejudice is a learned response.
Both the schoolchildren and the adults in the film were manipulated by an
authority figure into accepting and basing their behavior on the totally
irrational idea that one should evaluate oneself and others by the amount
of melanin in the eyes. After seeing those designated as inferior begin to
act in an inferior manner, it became increasingly easy to believe that eye
color was in fact the cause, since that was the only real difference between
the two groups. Within a very short time, it seemed obvious from the
behavior of members of both groups and in the absence of any information
to the contrary that the myth was a fact.
6. The way minority group members and/or women sometimes behave is not the
result of weakness in their genes. It is the way human beings tend to react when
judged on the basis of a physical characteristic over which they have no control,
and then treated in negative and unjust ways because of that characteristic.
Sophisticated, intelligent, and educated white adults, both male and
female, behaved much like nine-year-old children during the exercise.
They became belligerent, angry, uncooperative, irrational, confused,
extremely emotional, paranoid, anxious, defensive, and unresponsive,
depending on their personalities and their individual reactions to stress.
People of color who participate in the exercise consistently express
amazement at the intensity of the reactions by whites to this kind of
treatment. People of color say they were unaware that whites were
susceptible to such feelings of inadequacy.
7. Learning even the simplest material is extremely difficult under stress, regardless
of age, sex, race, or eye color.
Both nine-year-olds and adults had great difficulty learning while being
treated as inferiors even though they knew it was part of an exercise that
would be over soon. Members of both groups indicated that working under
that kind of stress for even a short time was depressing, debilitating,
frustrating, and dehumanizing.
DISCUSSION TOPICS
1. What is a minority? How do we identify a minority? Is majority based on
numbers, power, or both? What about South Africa, women, or the white
population of the world?
2. What is “the problem?” Is it people of color, or is it the negative reactions of
majority group members to the differentness of others? Whose problem is it?
3. What propaganda techniques did the leader use to influence the outcome of the
exercise? Which techniques do you see being used in society at large to support
racism, sexism, and/or ageism?
4. Can you cite parallels from today’s society to the attitudes and behaviors of the
participants during the exercise?
5. Participants in this exercise are exposed to discrimination for a short time; relate
their behavior and performance to that of minority group members in our society
who are exposed to discrimination for a lifetime.
6. From what you’ve seen in this film, who do you feel is responsible for the
existence and elimination of racism in our society? The school? Your parents?
Religious leaders? The government? The heads of major corporations? The legal
system? You?
7. Respond to the following adage, either pro or con: “You can’t teach an old dog
new tricks.” Justify your response by citing examples from the film.
8. Minority group members and women tend to see many white people in positions
of power in much the same way that members of the “inferior” group perceived
Ms. Elliott during the exercise. What effect might such a perception have on the
productivity of a business; the effectiveness of education; the respect or
acceptance afforded law enforcement personnel; the credibility of political
figures; or the perpetuation of our democratic way of life?
9. Participants in the exercise reacted in different ways to the unfairness of the
authority figure. Identify the kinds of attempts made to cope with this situation
and analyze the effectiveness of each in defeating the oppressor or lessening the
pressure. Can you suggest something that might have worked better?
10. What were some the major factors perpetuating the status quo in the society
created by the leader in the eye-color exercise?
11. Why, in your opinion, didn’t members of the designated minority groups defend
each other as they were being verbally abused? Does this have any relevance to
your understanding of some of the events that happened during the Holocaust?
12. If you had been in the minority group created by the exercise, what would you
have done? What would the logical consequences of such an action have been?
Would they be the same for minority group members who react that way in
today’s society?
TYPICAL STATEMENTS
Here are some typical statements that may be made by people who see this film. The
responses are simply suggestions, but they may help discussion leaders who are having
trouble coping with their own racism to understand the implications of some of these
remarks if they are made.
1. Everyone suffers discrimination at some time. You just have to learn to cope with
it. You learn that as you grow up. Why can’t blacks do that?
Response: Discrimination against individuals by individuals is quite different
from discrimination against an entire race of people by a whole society. People
who make this statement are ignoring the fact that most blacks face daily
discrimination by society as a whole. How, for example, did the whites in this
film cope with just a few hours of that kind of treatment? Were they not grown
up?
2. We solved all these problems in the 1960s and 1970s. Let’s stop talking about the
past and get on with the task of making the future better.
Response: The problem of racism has never been solved. Racism is in the past
only for white people. It is very much in the present for people of color and will
continue to exist in the future for all of us, unless and until members of the
majority group recognize and deal with their responsibility for it.
3. We wouldn’t have these problems if people didn’t keep coming along and stirring
things up.
Response: People in Riceville, Iowa, said this to and about Jane Elliott and her
blue-eyed, brown-eyed exercise just before they began to beat up her children and
call them “Nigger lovers.” Did her bringing up the problem cause it, or was it
there before she began doing the exercise?
4. When I see people, I don’t see them as black or white, I just see them as people.
Why can’t everyone do that?
Response: Because not everyone has to deny reality before they are able to relate
positively to those who are different from themselves. People are not all alike.
Nor should they have to be alike to be treated as equals in this society. Color, sex,
and age are real differences among members of the human race and should be
recognized and appreciated.
5. Christian love is the answer to this problem.
Response: Women should not have to wait for men to love them before they are
allowed to receive what the Constitution guarantees to all Americans. Nor should
people of color or those whose lifestyle is not acceptable to Christians. Women
and people of color don’t want love; they want justice.
6. I heard that Ms. Elliott was fired as a teacher in the Riceville schools as a result of
using this exercise with her students. Is this true?
Response: No. Ms. Elliott taught in Riceville for sixteen years after her first use
of the exercise, and she used it many times during that period. She resigned from
her teaching job solely to conduct the exercise full-time with men and women
who work in business corporations throughout the United States.
SUGGESTED QUOTATIONS FOR DISCUSSION OR MEMORIZATION
“Calculations of the slow changes that take place in human DNA over the millennia
indicate that everyone alive today may be a descendant of a single female ancestor who
lived in Africa 140,000 to 280,000 years ago, scientists at the University of California
have reported.”
Source: Working Woman, September 1986
“Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s
indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is
not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and
watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and to do
nothing, that’s being dead.”
Source: Elie Weisel, U.S. News and World Report, October 27, 1986
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet
depreciate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want
rain without thunder and lightning…Find out just what any people will quietly submit to
and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed
upon them, and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or
with both.”
Source: Frederick Douglass, in Foner, Phillip S., The Life and Writings of Frederick
Douglass, Vol. II.
“That man over there says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over
ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or
over puddles, or gives me the best place, and ain’t I a woman? Look at my arm! I have
ploughed and planted and gathered into barns and no man could head me, and ain’t I a
woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man when I could get it and bear the
lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen most of ‘em
sold into slavery and when I cried out with my mother’s grief none but Jesus heard me
and ain’t I a woman?”
Source: Sojourner Truth, in Hoffman, Edwin D., Pathways to Freedom: Nine Dramatic
Episodes in the American Democratic Tradition, 1851
“If you don’t have the capacity to change yourself and your own attitudes, then nothing
around you can be changed.”
Source: Anwar Sadat, quoting the Koran.
“You can forgive others for what they do to you, but you don’t have the right to forgive
them for what they do to others.”
Source: The Jewish People
SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES
•
Research one or more of the following subjects:
• The Kingdom of Kush or any of the several other highly developed
civilizations existing in Africa prior to the birth of Christ
• The Holocaust
• Estanavico (Spanish Conquistador)
• Frederick Douglass
• Sojourner Truth
• Dr. Charles Drew
• Elie Weisel
• The U.S. Constitution and its treatment of Indians, blacks and women
• The treatment of white abolitionists, in the North and South, before the
Civil War
• The Women’s Suffrage Movement
• The Trail of Tears
• Chief Joseph
• Sequoyah (Cherokee Indian)
•
Compile a set of current advertisements whose verbal or pictorial messages are
racist, sexist, or ageist. Send each, with your comments, to the responsible
company. Send copies of each letter to the company’s competitors and to your
Senators and Representatives in Congress.
•
Create an oral history by interviewing women over seventy years of age to see
how they perceive the status of women today as compared with the time of their
youth.
•
Investigate the stated positions and actual activities of political candidates in the
area of reducing racism, sexism, and ageism.
•
Write to companies that engage in racist, sexist, or ageist advertising and let them
know that you and those you are able to influence will boycott their products until
their advertising changes. Keep copies of the letters you write.
•
Write to companies doing a good job of promoting non-racist, non-sexist, or nonageist behavior and indicate your approval and appreciation.
•
Volunteer to tutor disabled readers; teach your trade to a young person; supervise
recreational activities; or do one or more of the dozens of much-needed tasks that
go undone for lack of public or private funding.
•
Refuse to tolerate racist remarks, regardless of the situation that appeared to
prompt them. Don’t accept the “Well, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone” excuse.
Unintentional racism is no less painful than deliberate racism. Your silence in the
face of bigotry only encourages bigots.
•
Desegregate your job, your school, your club, your professional organization,
your home, your group of friends, your personal library, cupboard, and coffee
table. It is educational to note the reactions of majority group members to
publications written by, for, and about members of minority groups in places
where they aren’t expected.
•
Subscribe to and read a publication written for minority group consumption.
•
Choose one of the following ideas and, in view of what you saw in the film,
support or refute the idea.
1. Why is it so bad to use the word “nigger?” I hear blacks use it to each other
all the time.
2. The most important things minority groups need are education and the vote.
3. I should not be held responsible for the behavior of my ancestors.
4. If you could just get people to feel good about themselves, there would be
less racism.
5. The Irish and Italians made it in this country in spite of discrimination. Why
can’t blacks pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, too?
•
After careful research, debate the following topics:
1. White supremacy is a myth.
2. American history should be called Euro-American history since it generally
excludes the contributions of people of color.
3. The discrimination suffered by women in this society is just as harmful as
that suffered by people of color.
4. Celebration of Columbus Day should be dropped in favor of Native
American Day, since they, and not Columbus, discovered America.
5. The ownership of the Black Hills should be restored to the Sioux.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
This is only a suggested list of a few books with which to start your exploration of the
problems of racism, sexism and ageism.
ANTI-SEMITISM
Fenalon, Fanya, Playing for Time. Berkeley, New York, 1983.
Leitner, Isabella, Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz. Dell, New York, 1978.
Seigel, Aranka, Upon the Head of the Goat. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 1983.
Weisel, Elie, A Jew Today. Random House, New York, 1978.
Weisel, Elie, Night. Bantam, New York, 1982.
Yaseen, Leonard C., The Jesus Connection Crossroad, New York, 1985.
Zyskind, Sarah, Stolen Years. Lerner, Minneapolis, 1981.
RACISM
Allport, Gordon, The Nature of Prejudice. Addison Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts,
1979.
Clark, Kenneth, Prejudice and Your Child. Wesleyan, Middletown, Connecticut, 1986.
Cobbs, Price, and William Grier, Black Rage. Basic Books, New York, 1980.
Deloria, Vine, Custer Died For Your Sins. Avon, New York, 1970.
Deloria, Vine, God is Red. Dell, New York, 1983.
Deloria, Vine, We Talk, You Listen.\ MacMillan, New York, 1969.
Hosokawa, Bill, Nisei, The Quiet Americans. Morrow, New York, 1969.
Houston, Jeanne and James D., Farewell to Manzanar. Bantam, New York, 1974.
Mathabane, Mark, Kaffir Boy. MacMillan, New York, 1986.
Mirande, Alfredo, The Chicano Experience: An Alternative Perspective. Notre Dame
Press, Notre Dame, Indiana,1985.
Morrison, Toni, The Bluest Eye. Washington Square, New York, 1972.
Peters, William, A Class Divided: Then and Now. Yale Press, New Haven, 1987.
Rodriguez, Richard, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. Bantam,
New York, 1982.
Rosenthal, Robert, Pygmalion in the Classroom. Irvington, New York, 1986.
Ryan, William, Blaming the Victim. Random House, New York, 1972.
Silberman, Charles, Crisis in Black and White. Random House, New York, 1964.
Smith, Lillian, Killers of the Dream. Norton, New York, 1978.
Walker, Alice, The Color Purple. Washington Square, New York, 1982.
Wattenberg, Ben, Birth Dearth. Pharos, New York, 1987.
Williams, Juan, Eyes on the Prize. Viking, New York, 1987.
Wright, Richard, Black Boy. Harper and Row, New York, 1969.
Yette, Samuel F., Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America. Cottage Books, Silver
Spring, Maryland, 1982.
SEXISM
Atwood, Margaret, The Handmaid’s Tale. Ballantine, New York, 1985.
Eiseler, Raine, The Chalice and the Blade. Harper and Row, New York, 1987.
Smith, Lillian, Killers of the Dream. Norton, New York, 1978.
Wilson-Schaef, Anne, Women’s Reality. Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1985.
AGEISM
Spark, Muriel, Memento Mori. Putnam, New York, 1982.
GENERAL
Carter, Forrest, The Education of Little Tree. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque,
1986.
Clavell, James, The Children’s Story. Delacorte, New York, 1981.
Golden, Harry, Only in America. World Publishing, Cleveland, 1959.
Golden, Harry, For 2 Cents Plain. World Publishing, Cleveland, 1959.
Golden, Harry, Enjoy, Enjoy! World Publishing, Cleveland, 1960.