Watching the video, I felt so sad to see the children who would hide their faces and hang their heads in the classroom when called out for their eye color. I felt disappointed when hearing the favored children giggling and shrugging off unkindness toward their classmates of a different eye color. I also felt extremely impressed at the descriptions of the experience which the children shared. To think that in a matter of hours, a new form of discrimination could be introduced, and even more shockingly that it could be flipped on its head was a terrifying thought.
I want to be impressed that the teacher and students were able to reflect on the uncharitable nature of discrimination, but there's so much they were missing. In the same era, there was an extreme amount of discrimination against girls and women. There was a systemic apathy for child abuse, as evidenced by the giggling children and teasing of the teacher in reaction to the story about one boy's father kicking him. Why weren't these differences brought into the conversation?
It also makes me wonder what factors my own generation discriminates based upon outside of those listed in this course, and to what extent. Is it possible at this point for racism to ever stop being a systemic problem in the US? Will another kind of discrimination one day, in equally sobering silence, take its place as the most profound factor providing or withholding opportunities to individuals in the US? Is it the primary form of discrimination in all countries, or are there other factors that hold that role in other societies, and what does it all mean for people as they choose or are forced to integrate into new cultures?
