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Supplies: Bring magazines that have lots of pictures of different kinds of people. If you want to create a collage, bring scissors, glue, and poster board. A clip from Schindler's List.

Introduction: The Destructive Power of Prejudice

Today's topic is prejudice. But there's always a danger that in bringing up such a touchy subject, we might bring more heat than light to the subject. Do you know what I mean? Here's an interesting quote in that regard (Put it on the blackboard.):

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. (Robert Frost) 

So in order to keep us thinking rationally rather than emotionally, I'm going to lay down a few ground rules at the beginning and send anyone out of the classroom who breaks them. Here they are:

1 - Don't say anything derogatory about another race or group. No sneers, no laughs, no jabs. 

2 - We're not singling out any one person or one group. I think that all of us deal with prejudice in one way or another. If you're not dealing with it now, you probably will at some time in your life. We're all guilty. 

Hate for races or certain groups of people is one of the most destructive forces known to man.

DISCUSSION: What incidents of prejudice have you heard of lately? (Let them share.)

• Students won’t allow a fellow student to sit at their lunch table. Why? He doesn’t wear the right clothes.

• In Australia, some students divide their school bus into a White section and Aboriginal section.

• Three Texans with links to white supremacist groups drag a black man behind their pickup truck until he dies.

It seems like prejudice is everywhere. What causes it? What can we do about it? In this lesson we'll try to come up with some answers

Discussion: We can’t deal with prejudice without first agreeing on what it is. Who wants to take a stab at defining racism? What about prejudice?

For this series, let’s go with these definitions (Put them on the board or overhead):

In the light of these definitions, which of the following statements are racist or prejudiced? (Either put these on an overhead or use the student handout. They could discuss these in small groups. Revise these to fit the prejudices common in your culture.)

1) "Every Hispanic person I know has a bad temper. All Hispanic people have bad tempers."

(Racist because assumes all Hispanics have the same characteristics as the few he knows.)

2) "All Goths hate preppies." (Prejudiced because you don’t know how all Goths feel.)

3) "Many Kenyans seem to have a physical build that makes them better runners." (Not prejudiced because doesn’t lump all Kenyans together.)

4) "White people think they are better than other races." (Prejudiced. You don’t know how all white people feel.)

5) "Pygmies tend to be shorter than people of other races." (Not prejudiced. This can be rationally verified.)

6) Students who go to Central High School are all stuck up snobs. (Prejudiced. You don't know how all the people at Central High School feel.)

7) "All blondes are dumb." [True. This has been scientifically verified in study after study. Just kidding! Obviously a statement of prejudice. See the movie, Legally Blonde.]

When most people think of prejudice, they think only of racial prejudice. But prejudice can be against any group.

MAGAZINE SEARCH: (Hand out magazines to small groups.) Take a magazine and look for pictures of people who represent races or social groups that some people are prejudiced against. As you find one, raise your hand and explain to the group what race or group the picture represents, and why some people are prejudiced against them. Write the groups on the board. (If you have plenty of time, or have a group that needs more activity, you could have them create a collage by cutting out the pictures and pasting them on a poster board.)

Debriefing: Now tell me about other groups that people put down, perhaps not represented by any of these pictures. (Make sure they include all kinds of groups, not just based on skin color. Some people are prejudiced against males or females, those who work at certain vocations, who speak a different language, hang around a certain group, are fat or skinny, jocks or preppies, nerds or different I.Q., from a certain area of country, go to a certain school, are poorly dressed, are well-dressed, ugly or beautiful, uncoordinated or athletic.)

The more you think about it, you realize that all of us are the subject of someone’s prejudice, because each of us belongs to a certain race that others look down on, a certain gender that others look down on, a certain school that others look down on, etc. We can’t escape prejudice.

DISCUSSION: Have you experienced prejudice against you in any way? Would you be willing to tell us about it? (Please, vent only against the nameless individuals who did it, not against their race or group. Otherwise, you may be showing your own prejudice.) What did it feel like?

It’s easy to notice when someone looks down on us. But it’s usually difficult to see the prejudice in our own lives. But when we see all the ways people can be prejudiced, we begin to see our own prejudices. Look at all these groups on the board. I want everyone to think of one or more groups of people that you tend to look down on.  

We may not be able to stop all prejudice in the world, but we can start by attacking the prejudices in our own lives. 

III. How Can We Deal With Our Prejudices? 

Brainstorm: Imagine that you're a team of counselors from various schools. You've gathered to brainstorm ideas on how to help students who are prejudiced. What are some of your ideas? By the way, these are ideas on how to deal with our own prejudices. (Perhaps they'll come up with some of the following. As they share, ask students to elaborate on certain ideas, or elaborate yourself as they share.)

A. Help them to see the errors in their thinking.

• Illogic: Just because a few people of a race or group share a characteristic doesn't mean that all do. 
• Revisionist history and flawed research. (Example of White Supremacists (A high up in the KKK or white supremacy group - one who defected?) Arians, Mohammed Ali, Malcomb X)

B. Help them to know how prejudice hurts others. Have them think through times that people have misjudged or shown prejudice against them for their hair style, clothes, part of town they lived in, school they attended, etc. "Don't you understand that when you do that to others, they have the same terrible feelings?" (Facilitator: If you have a story, share how you felt when you were put down because of your clothes, social group, race, region, etc.) 

C. Show them that prejudice hurts the prejudiced.

• Businessmen and coaches get fired, athletes suspended for racial slurs. (It's hard to hide strong prejudices. Eventually you slip up and say something.)
• Companies get sued for discrimination. 
• Harboring bitterness hurts us both physically and mentally. 
• You lose your reputation.
• People think you're dumb and backward.
• Some end up in jail for hate crimes.
• Some live in mental agony as they remember their hate crimes. 

D. Help them to get to know some good people of various races and groups. 

If you have time, you could do a crowd-breaker here. The more our students discover commonalities between one another, the less likely they are to stereotype. For many crowd-breakers, click here.  

Conclusion

Where can prejudice lead? One man’s prejudice started when he read some literature which put down the Jews. As his hate grew, he could have caught himself and said, "I’m heading down a dangerous path. This is wrong." Instead, he continued to read racist literature and allowed his hatred to grow. His name was Adolph Hitler. Eventually he would kill 6 million Jews.

ILLUSTRATION: (Perhaps show this clip?) How many of you have seen "Schindler’s List?" This award-winning movie gripped people’s hearts, probably as no other before or since, about the atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich. Of all the heart-wrenching scenes from the movie, the one that haunts me the most is where the Nazi’s decided to rid themselves of the burden of the Jewish children at the labor camp. They lured the children onto trucks with candy and perhaps promises of a special outing. As the trucks began to leave, some parents discovered the plot and screamed helplessly as they watched their children disappear from their lives

Revisionist historians have to ignore tons of eyewitness testimony to deny this kind of stuff happened. The Third Reich kept meticulous records, and even filmed much of the torture and killing.

Feel with me just a moment. The children and parents you saw were actors. But they represent millions who died in the death camps. You can’t really despise prejudice till you realize that those children had real parents and grandparents who cried in joy at their births. Their parents rocked them to sleep at night and held them close when they were frightened. Their moms excitedly recorded on calendars their child’s first step and first word. Their dads taught their sons to ride bikes and took them fishing on holidays. They were real people with real feelings and real dreams for their lives. Yet all were heartlessly murdered because of people who never dealt with their prejudiced hearts.

For Hitler, the torture and destruction of Jews was not just a terrible necessity to develop a better society. His mind became so twisted that he enjoyed the suffering. He ordered his men to film the killings so that he could view them personally. He probably watched with popcorn and coke.

How could he have developed into such a monster? As a young student, he was probably a lot like you. He ran in the fields with his friends, played games, and even at one time dreamed of becoming a priest. If anyone had suggested to him that he would one day murder millions of people, he probably would have laughed out loud at the joke. But instead of dealing with his prejudices, he read hate literature and allowed his own prejudices to grow, until a rage burned within himself.

If we don’t deal with the prejudices in our own hearts, we have no idea how twisted our minds can become. If you're struggling with prejudice on any level, I urge you to deal with it now, before you're mind becomes so hardened and twisted that it's almost impossible to change.

(Copyright November, 2003, Legacy Educational Resources, All Rights Reserved.)