Social Categorization and Its Influence on Communication

In 1968, Martin Luther King Junior a civil right rights leader was assassinated, the American people were filled with grief. It was hard to explain to the student the shooting of Martin since the notion of white people are better than black had been planted in their mind. The issue of racial discrimination was at its highest which blacks, Indians, Chinese being categorized as inferior people based on their different colors. The Indians were red, the Chinese yellow, and the black population with their dark skin were seen as not equals to the whites.

A third-grade teacher wanted to dramatize and educate the pupils of the color effect that people tagged on each other and how it affected their lives. He used their eye color to show them how labeling one as superior or inferior would change their lives and performance e in daily activities. In the first day, she exhibited that blue-eyed pupils were better than those with the brown eye. The students were separated, and the brown-eyed felt discriminated which affected their performance in class. They also felt superior, and the brown felt inferior in all manners. The following day the same things happened, but the teacher told the blue eyed pupils that they were the inferior and that brown eyed were superior. The blue eyed people turned to be miserable on their day of discrimination. During the assessment of the exercise, the teacher asked them what kept them from performing better the previous day; their response was the discrimination based on eye color that made them inferior. The brown and blue eyed pupils were asked to share their view on discrimination based on color, and it was conclusive that it was a horrible thing to do. The same students came years later for a reunion with each other and their teacher, who did another assessment of what her teaching had yielded. The students said people should not be judged based on their outside and their inside. The pupils confirmed equality of all and that they acted differently. It was noted that the color difference either on skin or in the eye did not have an effect on peoples performance or in anything else. The color was just a mindset that people had and could always be changed to allow people exploit their potential.

The same exercise was carried by the same teacher but this time among the staff members of a correctional facility. Brown eyed members were made superior which kept the ones with the blue eye the inferior in the room. She later explained to them what she was doing, and that accepted that the color was just a tag that made other people feel rejected in the society. One of them said he felt like his power to do anything had been taken away and that he could not do anything special. The point of racial discrimination was made clear and that all people are equal despite their color. They recognized that being made to feel like the minority and the unappreciated was very unfortunate and denied them a lot of privileges. The brown eyed people felt relief for being people with the right color of the eye in the face where blue and brown was in the comparison. The blue-eyed felt resentment, but at the end, it was conclusive that color should not be used to discriminate people.