Blue Eyes

Today in in-service we watched the video Blue Eyes about Jane Elliott, a teacher who divided her class by eye color back in the 60s to teach them about discrimination and now does workshops for adults around the same idea. I'm sure lots of you have seen it before. Anyway, this was followed by a round robin sharing of everyones reactions and personal experience with prejudice. I've watched/read similar things and had similar discussions before, but this was the first time I had that discussion in a room where I was actually in the ethnic minority. Still not by much, the room was probably 1/3 white, 2/3 native. It was interesting and I have lots to say about it, but I'm sleepy and all talked out, for now I just wanted to share this story that one man told us and I thought was great-

A native man was traveling around the country and came to a city where he went to a diner that had a sign on it saying "No colored people allowed". He went in, sat down and ordered coffee. The manager said to him, "We don't serve colored people here." The man looked around and saw that he was the only brown skinned person in the room and continued to sit there and order his food. The manager said again, "No colored people allowed in here." Finally the native man went up to the manager and said, "When I was born, I was brown. When I am angry, I am brown. When I'm cold, I am brown. When I'm sick, I am brown. And when I'm dead, I'll be brown. When you were born you were pink. When you are angry you are red. When you are cold you are blue. When you are sick you are green. When you are dead you'll be purple. And you think that I am the colored person??"

Hehe. clever.