The Alexander High School chapter of Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) has adopted a theme of “Celebrating Diversity”. The chapter officers: Perrin Story, Jayla Foster, Leasha Patterson, Erick Rendon, Aleia Gray, and their adviser, Julie Chapman decided to make this a focus when discussing the racial strife in our country. They agreed that learning to celebrate differences would benefit all members of the club.
The first thing that the officers did was choose a design for the club t-shirt that showed an image that mingled black and white faces with the saying below “AHS FBLA Part of the Solution.” Tolerance and acceptance were topics at monthly chapter meetings in the fall and culminated with a Diversity themed meeting in December.
The culminating meeting began by following the methodology of the 1968 experiment by Jane Elliott where blue and green eyed people were asked to stand in the back of the room when signing in for the meeting and then were ignored. The brown-eyed FBLA members were welcomed warmly and told to help themselves to snacks. After about ten minutes, the green and blue-eyed people were allowed to get snacks and take a seat. They were asked how they felt. Members reported being mostly confused and unsure of what was going on. They were reminded that populations that deal with discrimination would not have had to wonder. They would have known through experience that they were being discriminated against. Next, members were placed into smaller groups and given handouts titled “Rules to Remember for Difficult Conversations.” The Rules were explained and each group was given a poem to read from the mentoring.org website. Each poem dealt with prejudice, stereotypes or discrimination. The groups then discussed their poems and were encouraged to speak openly and without fear. The meeting ended when students were asked to silently identify their level on the hierarchy of tolerance which was developed by Thomas Haller and Chick Moorman. The hierarchy begins with Tolerance and then moves to Acceptance followed by Appreciation and finally, Celebration. After members identified their place on the hierarchy, they were challenged to do things that could help them move up to the next level.
