BRATTLEBORO — All Souls Church in West Brattleboro will launch its film series “Looking Inward at White Power and Privilege” with two screenings of A Class Divided on the weekend of Oct. 20-22.
The first film in the series documents an elementary school teacher's experiments with inequality and the lasting results on her students.
The first showing will be Friday, Oct. 20, at 7 p.m. The second will be Sunday, Oct. 22, at noon when viewers are invited to bring a bag lunch if they wish. All shows in the series are free and open to the public. The church is located at 29 South St. in West Brattleboro.
The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small town in Iowa, tried a daring classroom experiment.
The 1985 PBS Frontline film A Class Divided documents what happened when Elliott launched a two-day “blue eyes/brown eyes” exercise to reinforce the unfairness of discrimination and racism. Students with blue eyes were given preferential treatment, given positive reinforcement, and made to feel superior over those with brown eyes for one day. The procedure was reversed the next day, with Elliott giving favorable preference to brown-eyed students.
In addition to teaching students about the effects of discrimination, Elliott documented an unexpected result. Whichever group was favored performed enthusiastically in class, answered questions quickly and accurately, and performed better in tests; those who were discriminated against felt more downcast, were hesitant and uncertain in their answers, and performed poorly in tests. She found these effects to be true each year she conducted the exercise.
The film also explores how the experiment affected the students years after they had left third grade behind, plus how Elliott has conducted the same exercise with adults. The film has spawned a number of supporting efforts, including teaching guides for educators who want to repeat her unique classroom experiment.
The film series is sponsored by the All Souls Church Social and Environmental Action Committee.
Catie Berg, a committee member, said in a news release “our exploration arises in part from uncomfortable realizations of systemic racism in hiring practices within the Unitarian Universalist Association. Plus, our nation struggles with the divide that erupted this summer between supporters of white supremacy and supporters of racial justice,” most notably in Charlottesville and Boston.
“The demonstrations in these and other cities show the challenge our nation faces in dismantling a system of gross inequality with roots nearly 400 years old,” Berg added.
This year the church's committee will explore several questions, Berg explained, such as, “What is white power? What is white privilege? Do people - black and white - assume this power and privilege exist, just as the air we breathe exists? Does it surround us - and we expect no less?”
“With these films and our discussions, we hope to separate the air we reflexively breathe from the systems of power and injustice that we reflexively experience,” she said.