It still chills me to the bone when I see the first hints of power, dominance, and supremacy in the blue-eyed people. The children simply and easily fall into feeling superior and then create narratives that support their supremacy. The hush that falls over the brown-eyed people when they are told about the arbitrary rules--recess, drinking fountains, playing separately--it's so powerful! The mere suggestion of inferiority, supported and pronounced by a figure of authority, is all it takes for the superior group to adopt, cling to, reinforce, and reward their own narrative of betterness and otherness. The other deeply meaningful lesson for the adults is the way that pervasive messages and thoughts of negativity and inferiority can deeply affect performance, confidence, and most of all empathy and connection. How did that feel--the greatest gift we can take from all of this should be empathy!
