The novel detailed the importance of seeing people that look similar to oneself being portrayed in a positive light. Children grow up believing the stereotypes which movies pass on as truth. A study was conducted in a preschool that tested the correlation misrepresentation had with racial stereotyping. Children were shown images of African American males and Caucasian males. They were then asked to decide between the African American man and the Caucasian man who they believed was a criminal.
The self-fulfilling prophecy is a concept that I have always found fascinating. It is difficult to understand how the expectations of others can have such an influence in one’s performance at work or school, but there are numerous researches that indicate a relationship between teachers’ expectations and their students’ performance. Teachers’ expectations are not the only source of influence in students’ performance. In the Independent Lens film American Denial, first aired by Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on February 23, 2015, the authors explain how stereotypes have a strong impact in education.
Manuel Valle In this novel Jay Gatsby is deeply in love with a woman named Daisy but she doesn’t love him back like he expects. Then Jay Gatsby name use to be James Gatz before he met a fellow that changed his life around and could help daisy fall in love with him. In Gatsby’s perspective he thought if he was richer that he could win daisy over. In the book it quotes,” Although gatsby professed to love daisy, there is a sense that he was not in love with her as much as he was in love with the idea of her”.
Their rights to do things, such as play on playground equipment and get second helpings of food at lunch were taken away, and they were informed that they had to drink out of the water fountain with a paper cup. Elliot told the brown-eyed children that they were cleaner and more intelligent than blue-eyed children as well as encouraged them to cause physical harm to and belittle the others.2 This led to brown-eyed students ganging up on the children with blue eyes and beating them up, degrading them, and making comments that were conforming to the stereotypes that Elliot enforced on the children. The next day, Elliot switched the roles in the experiment and made the children with brown eyes inferior. After the experiment, children were 2 Bloom, S. G. (2022, BLUE EYES, BROWN EYES: On Race and Jane Elliott's Famous Experiment on Prejudice.
Leichtman and Stephen J. Ceci titled Preschoolers Remember Sam Stone. They had children assigned to 4 conditions, and had a man come into their day-care classroom, and the day care providers introduce him as Sam Stone. He said hello, commented on something insignificant (such as what they were going over in class) and left the room. Everything was kept the same with each of the groups, and several weeks after the visit the experimenters came back to question the children about the encounter. However, children in the control group were given no information about Sam Stone prior to the visit, the stereotype group received significant information about Sam Stone before the visit unlike the control group, therefore getting an impression him before he arrived.
Spread of negative stereotypes Negative stereotypes have been created by us, as a society, we have allowed ourselves to live with this misconceptions that impact all of us in a certain way. We have contributed to those beliefs that say that social status, income class and ethnicity define our identity. In fact, we have been and also have prejudged others at a certain point in our lives, we prejudge people we don’t know and also the ones we think we know like our own family members. In “The Achievement of Desire” by Richard Rodriguez he discusses his personal experience on how he stereotyped himself and also his family.
Elliot had found in her study that the stress and all the other issues of being discriminated against interfered with the ability to perform well. At the end of the two day experiment the children described their experience as “a dog on a leash” and “feeling like they are in
One would think prejudice is a thing of the past. Unfortunately, that is not the case, prejudice is still a common factor in todays society. Vincent N. Parrillo’s essay “Causes of Prejudice,” helped me to understand how we are affected not just psychologically but in a sociological way as well, as John A. Camacho explains in his A Few Bad Apples opinion piece published in the Pacific Daily News. Both forms of prejudice are continued to be explained through Stud Turkel’s “C.P Ellis,” he gives us an understanding of psychological and sociological prejudice through C.P Ellis’own experiences. This furthers our understanding on how we can be affected by both psychological and sociological prejudices.
I was amazed by the courage of Jane Elliot, and awed by the outcome of her discrimination lesson as I watched A Class Divided. In the beginning, it was painful to see the children suffer from the experience of discrimination, but the lesson taught them a beautiful thing – the intrinsic value of human life and the dignity of every human being. I believe that with such profound a lesson, it was/is an experience worth suffering through. Discrimination is an idea constructed in peoples’ minds, creating concrete barriers that are difficult to overcome. Elliot, constructed the thought that blue-eyed, then brown-eyed, people were superior into the minds of her students, and it was powerful enough to cause a divide amongst the children.
I was shocked that there had been no altercations prior to the experiment but the day of the experiment, the blue eyed children quickly adapted to the idea that they were better than blue eyed students. One of the students said, “I felt like a king,” and continued to state he felt he felt like he ruled the brown eyes(A Class Divided, 1968). By labeling the children and segregating them into specific groups, the
Jane Elliot Split her 3rd grade c lass into two different groups brown eyed group and the blue eyed group; before splitting them she asked them is being discriminating to others right and they answer the way she expected them to answer because it has been taught to them since they have been in her class, she then proceeded to ask them why was it wrong and they could not give her a clear answer she also ask them would they like to know how it feels to be discriminated against and they all said yes. She conducted this exercise for a total of two days she started the first day off letting the children know that the brown eyed students were more smarter and all around better than the blue eyed student. She then withness some of the sweetest kids turn into nasty discriminating adolescence they tease the blue eyed children every chance they could.
With this remark, Ellis reveals that he felt as if it was his obligation to blame the black community because of his father’s example. By the time Ellis shared his experience, he had a better understanding about what was the right thing to do when it comes to dealing with minorities. Ellis’ experiences support the idea that the socialization process theory is one of the causes of prejudice, however; there are other factors such as the action-orientation level of prejudice that can also contribute to prejudiced behavior. In our daily lives, we are often exposed to different scenarios, ideas, judgments, comments, and criticisms, which can influence an individual’s perspective about people from another group.
Everyday Effects of Prejudice and Stereotypes When people look at America today, we see a country that is the most democratic country in the world. The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” but we still see massive disparity in the outcomes for people of different ethnicities and genders. Stereotypes, even when not visible, can have a large effect on people’s lives. In 12 Angry Men, we see lots of prejudice against the defendant, since he is an Italian who lives in the slums. Although only one juror reveals his prejudices bluntly, it is obvious that these prejudices play a role in the juror’s opinion of the defendant.
The experiment of ‘A Class Divided’ is a lesson taught by Jane Elliot about discrimination and how it feels to be discriminated against. She first conducted this experiment in 1968 with her class of third graders, she divides people by eye colour and provides collars for them, and she then makes a group of rules separating them and observes how they’re discriminated against in a controlled environment. The experiment breached many ethical guidelines, this is because the experiment wouldn’t have worked otherwise. The rights of the participants was breached in order to achieve accurate results and so that people would feel the humiliation and cage of discrimination.
This shows the negative effects of the prejudices against
