Applications To Racism
According to one often-cited but controversial non-scientific study of Jane Elliott, the Pygmalion effect can play a role in racial expectations and behavior. Elliott was an American teacher and anti-racism activist who devised an exercise to determine the effects of expectation and discrimination upon children, using differences in eye color to distinguish between perceptions and expectations of "inferior" and "superior". In this exercise, one group was given preference and regarded as "superior" because of their eye color, with the other group intentionally associated with inferiority in intelligence and learning ability. On the second day of the experiment, the groups were completely reversed, with those previously considered inferior one day being regarded as superior the next.
Elliott gave spelling tests to both groups on each day of the experiment. The students scored very low on the day they were racially "inferior" and very high on the day they were considered racially "superior."
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Famous quotes containing the word racism:
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)