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Originally Posted by Jackal
Dissecting it out of context just strikes me as looking for problems where none exist.
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The context I established concerned the lingering regret I felt about my own reaction. The problem exists certainly within me, sparked by a few innocent but potent lines. By expressing my concern with in this forum, my purpose is to speak up for the ignorant masses that have been named in their absence. My purpose is to shine the light of righteousness upon the creeping shadows of transgression! Let hosts of judges be called, and may they cast their bones against the label makers, and the pigeon-holers, and those who would whip the enlightened masses into dark corners and teach them to whisper against one another!!!
You know there was once an elementary school teacher who...
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"She divided the class into two groups: the brown eyes and the blue eyes. Anyone not fitting these categories, such as those with green or hazel eyes, was an outsider, not actively participating in the exercise. Elliott told her children that brown-eyed people were superior to blue-eyed, due to the amount of the color-causing-chemical, melanin, in their blood.
She said that blue-eyed people were stupid and lazy and not to be trusted. To ensure that the eye color differentiation could be made quickly, Elliott passed out strips of cloth that fastened at the neck as collars. The brown eyes gleefully affixed the cloth-made shackles on their blue-eyed counterparts.
Elliott withdrew her blue-eyed students’ basic classroom rights, such as drinking directly from the water fountain or taking a second helping at lunch. Brown-eyed kids, on the other hand, received preferential treatment. In addition to being permitted to boss around the blues, the browns were given an extended recess.
Elliott recalls, "It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were." Within 30 minutes, a blue-eyed girl named Carol had regressed from a "brilliant, self-confident carefree, excited little girl to a frightened, timid, uncertain little almost-person."
On the flip side, the brown-eyed children excelled under their newfound superiority. Elliott had seven students with dyslexia in her class that year and four of them had brown eyes. On the day that the browns were "on top," those four brown-eyed boys with dyslexia read words that Elliott "knew they couldn’t read" and spelled words that she "knew they couldn’t spell."
Seeing her brown-eyed students act like "arrogant, ugly, domineering, overbearing White Americans" with no instructions to do so proved to Elliott that racism is learned. Prior to that day in 1968, her students had expressed neither positive nor negative thoughts about each other based on eye color. Yes, Elliott taught them that it was all right to judge one another based on eye color. But she did not teach them how to oppress. "They already knew how to be racist because every one of them knew without my telling them how to treat those who were on the bottom," says Elliott."
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The moral of that story is how simple it is to divide people. The most innocent demarcation can drive a wedge. It's a lot harder to unite people.
Please keep in mind that I'm concerned about Emily's words, not her intent.
I think she could have found a better joke.
