Summary: A Class Divided

When researching the topic of bias, it doesn’t take long to realize the expansiveness of the topic and how far reaching this topic is. This topic also has crossover it areas also called, favoritism, discrimination, diversity, etc. When looking at the resources for this topic, such as chapter two of the text, Berman, Bowman, West and Van Wert (2015), which is dedicated to Legal Rights and Responsibilities. This also emphasizes the fact that this is not just a race issue and addresses sex, age, religion, disability, pregnancy, etc. This is covered based on unintentional as well as intentional discrimination, to include Affirmative Action.

I thought the video, A Class Divided, did an excellent job of illustrating the damage that discrimination can do. From the start of the exercise I, who was just watching an old video, became very uncomfortable and sickened by the feeling I had. As I watched the uncomfortable feeling blanket those children, I became angry. I don’t think I could do what the teacher did. I wanted to hug the kids. Of course, that’s the whole idea and subsequently, exactly why this exercise is so powerful. As stated in the video, it took less than 15 minutes for the kids to start calling names (brown eyes). …show more content…
The children’s description of how they felt was interesting as well. I recall one child saying he felt evil, but empowered, like a king and that he was better than the