Prejudice: Answering Children's Questions

ABC's Peter Jennings hosts this "live" ABC News Special in which Jennings and a studio audience of kids explore the topic of "prejudice." After a couple of quick answers to the question "what is prejudice?," the program examines an experiment conducted by Iowa school teacher Jane Elliott in which schoolchildren with blue eyes were forced to wear green collars. Although a bit heavy-handed, Elliott makes a strong impression on the kids whose every move, remark, and mistake is attributed to the color of their eyes. In another experiment, two boys (one black and one white) take separate trips to a mall carrying a hidden camera. The black boy is very clearly watched and followed by store employees and security; the white boy is not. One of the best segments in the program features ABC News Science Editor Michael Guillen explaining how the various skin pigments came about historically and how, today, it would be more accurate to say that there are about 2,000 types of people on the planet, rather than just a handful. Overall, Prejudice: Answering Children's Questions is an excellent program for children to watch, offering a good mix of straight science, laudable ethics, and simple common sense. Unfortunately, however, it cannot quite escape the circus trappings of commercial television. In the most ridiculous scene in this "live" program, Jennings suddenly turns to a little girl (perhaps 5 or 6 years old) who comes down from the rest of the audience, stands directly in front of Jennings, and wants to know if a skinhead in the audience is a Nazi. After a couple of more questions, the little girl lets slip "that's what my daddy told me to ask." It's fairly clear that the whole scene has been planned, and it mushrooms into a truly embarrassing piece of tripe as an entire choral singing group gets up and launches into a song about the "rainbow," while the lead singer walks over to sing directly into the face of the "Nazi skinhead." These fundamental lapses in reality aside, the program is highly recommended, and will hopefully help combat the messages, both blatant and subtle, that appear in the media and are passed down from parents. (Available from most distributors.)