Raid!
My one encounter occured in high school, waaaaay back in the 1970s. My sociology class was held during "zero" hour, which was an early morning elective before the first hour of classes. Essentially, the school was empty except for us. I took the class only as a means of avoiding the undignified school bus; my mother was forced to drive me.
One day at the end of class my teacher announced that the next day the blue-eyed kids would be treated as second-class citizens. We would be segregated and singled out in various ways. Now, not for a moment did any of us suspect that the whole exercise would rise above the level of slight annoyance. Nevertheless, being the priveledged, red-blooded blue-eyed kids that we were, we weren't going to take it lying down. Furthermore, we intuited what was expected of us in the whole unreal exercise. We made our plans.
The next morning, we rushed into the room with ski masks over our faces and toy guns in our hands. My buddy Jim* (career arc: Annapolis midshipman, navy pilot) was supposed to shout some inspiring slogan but to his shame he panicked and shouted "Raid!" instead. We grabbed brown-eyed Ronda (career arc: senior class president, poly-sci at University of Michigan, drunken ex-cheerleader) and hauled her down to the chemistry lab as a hostage.
Our teacher loved it. Loved it. He saundered over to the principal's office, got on the P.A. and urged us to surrender without bloodshed. I really don't remember what happened after that, except it got boring quickly.
What's interesting to me now is how well we understood the conventions of the narrative of oppression and protest. The only thing we forgot to do was call in a local TV news team. (Since the nearest was an hour away, maybe they wouldn't have come. But if we had known how to pitch it, maybe they would.)
Except for full-blown riots, how often do "the people" act spontaneously as a mass? In the modern world, such an event as a truly spontaneous protest must be the rarest of things. Everything you see that pretends to be such is merely a made-for-TV movie.
*The names have been changed.
Umie the Umlaut says, "ask your doctor about the Fredösphere!"
3 Comments:
Reminds me of that other bone-headed experiment of social psychology fame: let's confine students in a mock jail for two weeks and divide them into prisoners and guards. The level of humanity evaporated literally within hours.
http://forejustice.org/zimbardo/p_zimbardo_interview.htm
Wowsers, Fredrick-o-Sphere; I had no idea that you were such the hellian in your adolescent days. Stick it to the man, and that you did! I think that you should revive that "Raid" at your place of employment!
I'm sure it will land you a bonus and possibly a suspected communist title! :) The wifeosphere would be proud.
Given it's rural location, and the era in which it took place, I'm surprized your high school was conducting such "consciousness-raising" exercises as the one you describe. Your response was golly good; however if it were emulated by high school students today they'd be suspended for bringing toy guns to school, just for starters.
My own attempt at "consciousness-raising" in high occurred at the height of the Iran Hostage Crisis. As a member of the student council, I planned to organize an Iranian Flag burning demostration in front of the school. Our student council faculty advisor, your typical milk toast social studies teacher type, shall we say, demurred. I was, however, able to intitute the pledge of allegiance during morning announcemnets until our hostages were freed. Some years later I would lead another consciousness-raising event on a much larger stage at an elite university a couple hours to the east on 94. But that is a story for another day.
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