I was first introduced to Jane Elliott's discrimination experiment in college during my psychology courses. I have watched it several times since that first time over 16 years ago and it is still difficult to watch how easily the acts of discrimination and poor treatment of others comes, particularly given these were students that knew each other from class before this experiment. You would think that knowledge would somehow protect against these negative stereotypes and mean behavior, but it doesn't. The act of mere suggestion can cause us to treat each other poorly. The other piece of this experiment that is so powerful to me, is that each student had the opportunity to be both superior and inferior, which allows if only briefly, for being in someone else's shoes and to have empathy for another's experiences. We must learn to be aware of our implicit biases and how we treat others.
