Here is a video about a classroom racism exercise conducted by Ms. Jane Elliot. She leads her students through a very powerful awakening experience -- indeed she uses her power as a facilitator to attempt to compel students to see the exercise through to the end. Personally, I think she is changing minds and changing lives. The lessons are incredibly valuable and, at the same time, I have some strong ethical cautions about exercises like this.
Before I would bring a provacative exercise like this into my classroom -- and my teacher did a similar exercise in my elementary school class in the 70's -- I would ask students (and if they were minors, their parents) for fully informed consent. I would want students to know that the exercise is very important, powerful and emotionally and intellectually challenging. I would want students to know they may wish to leave and they may learn a lot if they completed the exercise. I would want students to know that they had the right, regardless of colour, to withdraw from the exercise at any time. In addition, I would want the student to know that though this exercise focuses on Race, we would have similar discoveries if we did the same exercise around Sex/Gender or an even more in-depth exercise to show how Sex/Race/Social-class can combine to have devastating interactional effects on a person's access to freedom, respect, and resources. Perhaps Ms. Elliot obtained exactly this kind of consent before the video camera began rolling? We can't see the ethical consent process in the following clip, but I want to emphasize I do not believe an exercise like this is appropriate without very careful and very detailed prior informed consent.
Please watch Ms. Elliot's work with students and monitor YOUR process of thinking and re-thinking about Race. In addition, decide how YOU feel and what YOU think about her use of this exercise as a racism teaching tool. Are her methods justified her message? Of all the points made by Ms. Elliot and her students, which statements do YOU believe are the most critical for ending conscious and unconscious racism?
Credit: Thanks to the Upworthy folks for sharing this video.
