Simply put, it was moving.
It made me feel all kinds of awful. Embarrassed. Ashamed. And just generally sad.
This was not the first time we watched such a video, we recently watched a video called "A Girl Like Me". Same idea.
While these videos moved myself and my classmates, I wonder how effective they would be in my classroom. Don't misunderstand, I find them to be incredibly moving, and extremely effective ways of teaching something as profound as racism.
But taking the side of Devil's Advocate for a minute, did I find "For Angela" effective because I could never see myself doing something like what those boys did? Was it moving to me because I would already be repulsed by somebody acting that way towards another person?
What if I showed that movie in class and a student laughed? What if a student found the jokes that were made funny? What if, even worse, he used those jokes himself later?
Do these videos have an impact on those of us who already tolerate such awful behaviour?
It's an interesting question, and not one that I have an answer for.
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