Christopher Queener

1st period

Mrs Boleyjack

2/24/21

Solving Prejudice

The way prejudice works is interesting. But how does it work? Well, inside of 1968,

April 5th a child asked their teacher why MLK jr was murdered. Later inside of class when every

student was there, the teacher asked them if they would like to see what it would feel like to be

treated like a person of color. They all agreed to do the activity. This study is quite useful in

understanding the beginnings of prejudice. Society should be improved by looking at how

prejudice happens or how it continues and then we need to fix those issues by expressing

ourselves.

The blue eyed – brown eyed study was very useful to see how prejudice happens. Inside

of the text, “The Blue-eyed, Brown-eyed exercise” it is stated that, “On that first day of the

exercise, she designated the blue-eyed children as the superior group. Elliott provided brown

fabric collars and asked the blue-eyed students to wrap them around the necks of their brown-

eyed peers as a method to easily identify the minority group.” This shows that the brown-eyed

children never put on their own collars, instead, being forced to have a certain identity besides

making one for themselves. At another point in “The Blue-eyed, Brown-eyed exercise” it

brought up that, “gave the blue-eyed children extra privileges, such as second helpings at lunch,
access to the new jungle gym, and five extra minutes at recess. The blue-eyed children sat in the

front of the classroom, and the brown-eyed children were sent to sit in the back rows. The blue-

eyed children were encouraged to play only with other blue-eyed children and to ignore those

with brown eyes. Elliott would not allow brown-eyed and blue-eyed children to drink from the

same water fountain.” This shows that the brown-eyed children were treated worse and separated

from the blue-eyed children who were treated like royalty and told that they were better than the

other children.

The poem, “Jabari Unmasked” by Nikki Grimes shows the way to ignore or fix prejudice.

At a certain point in this poem, “The ignorant ignore as best you can, and in the end, mask aside,

freshen your mouth with ferocious lines of potent poetry, with metaphors that mightily reveal the

myriad of emotions you feel – yet, in all their subtleties.” This piece of evidence says to express

yourself instead and ignore the prejudice that may be coming your way. Another piece of

evidence would be, “Still, the world needs the dreams we offer, and should we leave those

dreams bleeding on the road, we’d shrink our own hearts down to nothing, and that we would

regret.” If you express yourself and make who you are normal for the people around, you and

your country then you may be more accepted.

Although some people believe that hiding their identity is safer and in the end, better,

others understand that hiding your true self is unhealthy and can hurt you more than people who

don’t like you because of your identity, so, people should simply express themselves and take off

your mask and be proud of who you are just like the poem “Jabari Unmasked” says to, “let our
anger go, and smile.”

In conclusion, society can be improved by finding how prejudice functions and then

being able to fix it. The Blue-eyed, Brown-eyed activity was very helpful in seeing how

prejudice functions. The poem Jabari Unmasked helps figure out how to deal with prejudice and

at some point, defeat it. If society can uncover any other secrets hidden away about how

prejudice is formed, then it can get started on trying to remove it.

 Works Cited Page

Grimes, Nikki. “Jabari Unmasked.” Commonlit, Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., 2017,

www.commonlit.org/en/students/student_lessons/7459754.

“The Blue-eyed, Brown-eyed Exercise” Commonlit, 2014,

https://www.commonlit.org/en/students/student_lessons/7459762