a Daring Discrimination lesson
Paul Cloutier, former NABWMT Co-Chair and 2010 lifetime achievement award recipient
What can young white kids from the cornfields of rural Iowa teach us about the impacts of
discrimination? PBS chronicled this educational lesson on bigotry in the Frontline Documentary, A
Class Divided.
"One day in 1968, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into
blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that
lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its enduring power thirty years later."
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/)
Says Paul Cloutier, a former NABWMT Co-chair from Los Angeles: "I thought I knew what
discrimination felt like, though I had never been the victim of it. Of this I was disabused when I saw
for the first time A Class Divided: A Frontline Documentary. In it, Jane Elliott, a school teacher in an allwhite town in rural Iowa asks her third-grade class, 'Do you think you know what discrimination
feels like?' She then divides the class by eye color, and gives them a short, but powerful gut level
feeling of what it's like to be the victim of discrimination. The documentary reunites that group of
students 14 years later, and it was clear that the lesson in discrimination had had an enduring impact.
Just as interesting, Jane Elliott gives the same lesson in discrimination to a group of prison guards
and staff, with astounding results. The participants get a brief, but deep taste of the hurt, grief, anger
and pain that discrimination evokes.
This documentary teaches the power of discrimination to hurt, and the power of reversing
discrimination to heal. It should be seen by people of all ethnicities.
I still do not know what discrimination feels like, but now I know that I don’t know. I cannot
empathize with those who have felt discrimination, but I can sympathize. I can also make a
commitment to combat racism.
See Jane Elliott’s website for ways to do that:
http://www.janeelliott.com
Paul Cloutier is a member of the BWMT-Southern California chapter, a past NABWMT Co-Chair, and recipient of
NABWMT's 2010 lifetime achievement award.