“The looking-glass self refers to the way in which a person’s sense of self is derived from the perception of others.” (1) Everyone judges people when they first meet them and they kind of picture how their personality might be. For me, I like to work out a lot and most people when they first meet me think I’m very athletic and like to play sports and think I might be a bit of a jock, but I’m really not. I don’t play sports at all or even watch any sports, so a lot of people get the wrong idea of me when they first meet me.
The looking-glass self is applicable to “A Class Divided” because in the documentary it was a test to see how racism occurs and when the blue eyed people were being treated better than the brown eyed or vise versa, the group at the time who was treated better looked down at the people that weren’t, so this is the looking-glass self because the kids who were being favored were judging all of the other kids right away when they saw they didn’t have the same color eyes. One part in the documentary, there was a fight between the two different kids because the kid didn’t have the same eye color as the other, which is pretty much like how racism occurs today all over the world, but instead of judging people by their eyes, they judge the people by their skin and assume that since they have a different color skin that they are either more dangerous, uneducated, etc. This test the teacher did in the documentary was a great way to show how racism goes on and that it doesn’t matter what age the person is, that it could happen at any time.
Chris Petersen
11/1/10
Professor Reilly
Essay #3
In the short story, Elise’s dream is to attend medical school, but since she is having financial problems to try and pay for college, she earned a scholarship so she doesn’t have to pay for school. Right now she is having a hard time trying to pay for school because she has to help her mother support the family since she is the oldest out of the four...