A few days ago, The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about a teacher and a principal who taught a 1968 lesson about racial tolerance, using the equally arbritrary blue eyes-brown eyes discriminant as the teaching prop.

A Letter to the Editor response decried both the lesson and the pride in it that was conveyed in that article.

…one of the most disturbing and emotional things I had ever experienced. Teachers whom I once looked up to were subjecting me to irrational and arbitrary treatment based on my eye color. … My father … called my school’s leadership and received a complete apology.

How sad, that letter writer and his father missed the point of the lesson and missed precisely that “disturbing and emotional thing” that real victims of irrational and arbitrary treatment experience.

On the other hand, a commenter in the Letters thread asked this:

Does this same reasoning that this was child abuse apply to the teachers lecturing about “white privilege” and setting up situations to guilt trip children based on their skin color?

How sad, too, that that discrimination is actively practiced today.