Looks

I heard on the CBS News last night that President Obama had said “No American should ever live under a cloud of suspicion just because of what they look like."  I couldn’t agree with him more.

A long time ago, I can’t even remember which class or what grade (I think I was a freshman), just as the bell ending class rang a teacher told us that anyone with blue eyes had a serious problem.  She said she couldn’t explain it to us, but we should be afraid of blue eyed people.  Kids were asking questions but we had other classes to get to.  But there was a lot of discussion about it the rest of the day.  I was quiet.  I have blue eyes.

A day later the same teacher said that what she’d said the day before wasn’t quite right, and I was relieved.  She said that it wasn’t blue eyes, it was people with blue eyes and people with brown hair, and it didn’t matter if you had blue eyes and blonde hair, or brown hair and green eyes, they all had serious problems.  I have blue eyes and brown hair. 

Apparently other teachers were saying similar things, and talk was going around, and kids were starting to act strangely.  I found that some of my friends were all of a sudden avoiding me.  I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t like it. 

We soon learned that we had been a part of a social experiment and we would be discussing it for the next month…  Many years later I remember how I felt, and the lesson I learned.