Lance Vader

When I was in 6th grade, my English teacher had us read a book called The War Between the Classes by Gloria D. Miklowitz. It's a novel about colored arm bands being used as class markers. Blue is the highest, then green, then light green, then orange. When we finished the book, the entire class was then forced to participate in this "social experiment." A withered old hag of a teacher explained to us that we would be given our colored bands "randomly." When we got them, we all immediately noticed that white students were all given orange bands and non-whites were given blue and green. Some white female students got light green, but no white males got anything but orange. I figured this out in about 20 seconds. I did not put my band on. The teacher would notice and then make me put it on in front of everyone. I would take it back off. This would repeat over and over. The non-white students, most of whom were bussed in from the inner city, then proceeded to verbally abuse the orange-banded students and give them orders and commands. If they said you had to carry their books you had to. The enforcement was just "tell teacher," who then handed out detentions. One such diverse equal of mine, a female who was quite a lot larger than me at the time, cornered me in recorder class (the recorder is that stupid plastic flute you play in school music class). My equal gave me humiliating commands, wit which I did not cooperate. She then shoved me into a table, bruising my ribs. When I told the teacher about this, the response was that I should have obeyed. The blue-banded bus rider was not punished, and I was given a warning. Some kids I knew skipped school to get away from this lunacy. It lasted 2 weeks. Some of them happily complied, not understanding what was happening. When it was over, the dried-up old witch whose idea it was revealed to us: "IT WAS NEVER RANDOM AFTER ALL! I gave out arm bands according to how privileged I thought you were so you could see what it was like for everyone else!" The less-intelligent students, most of whom were bus-riders, were SHOCKED. There was just no way they could have known this was happening. This all happened in 1996. Does that help this world we're living in make any sense to any of you out there?