Stereotypes and Prejudice

Students partnered with Not In Our School in the summer of 2012 to create this PSA. These high school students attended American University's Discover the World of Communication Summer Program held at University of California Berkeley.

Find previews and information about Class Actions at niot.org/ClassActions Written by: Julie Mann, Newcomers High School teacher, and Joe Lobozzo, Lakewood High School teacher Vocabulary:   KKK Confederacy Segregation African-American Dixie Questions: How would you feel as a student of color at Ole Miss while students chant “The South Will Rise Again”? How do you feel about the student group who met to fight against the discriminatory chanting? How do you feel about the chancellor’s decision to stop the discriminatory chant at the football games? Here are the words of the University of Mississippi Creed. What does it mean to you?  

When the white supremacist group National Socialist Movement began organizing in Olympia, student leaders decided to take action by organizing a school wide assembly to address the threat and express their values for a safe and accepting community. (3:00) Discussion Questions: One student spoke about the need for “active participation” to ensure their town was not a place for hate. What does the idea of “active participation” mean to you? Does it apply to everyone in a community?  Why or why not? The students profiled in the video shared that there were small numbers of students of color in their community and that they were each often the only non-Caucasian student in class.   What impact do you think this had on their decision to lead efforts against the neo-Nazis in their town?  Do you think this made it harder or easier for them to take on this challenge? Explain. One student shared that “The enemy is not the Nazis, but any form of hate.”  How do you think that these students could continue to promote anti-hate efforts in their school and community beyond the crisis they faced with the neo-Nazi group?  Are these activities that we could apply to our own school or community? To turn on closed captioning for this film, click play, then click the Subtitles/CC button on the bottom of the video player.

At West Middle School in Rockford, IL, student council members organized a Not In Our School campaign and a school-wide assembly with student-produced skits challenging stereotypes and other intolerant behavior. (2:43)    Discussion Questions: What did you think of the scenarios the students performed?  Were they similar to name-calling or stereotypes you may have heard or seen?   In each performance scene, the target of the name-calling modeled a response or rebuttal. Did you find these responses realistic?  Do you think they would be effective in stopping the name-calling?  Give examples of why or why not.   One student in the video quoted the belief that “In order to improve the future, we must know where we have been in the past.” What does this statement mean to you?  What lessons from our history in the United States do you feel we have learned, or do we still need to learn, in order to improve our future?