The Racial Prison Experiment

My reactions towards this video by placing it in the context of racial difference are not that much different from what this video originally showed me. Originally, this video made me think of how power can change the way normal, or should I say “good people”, act on an evil environment, in this case a prison.

In the video we see that the guards at first were following their beliefs of how a guard should act in these kinds of situations but it became harder and harder for them to get a grip of reality and ended up believing their situation. And so did the prisoners but in a different way. They started to rebel against the experiment because they knew it was an experiment and them being treated as nothing upset them. But the guards were started to oppress them so hard that the prisoners gave up and felt that they are actually prisoners. In the middle of the experiment, it turned out to be physically and emotionally damaging for some that they had to cancel it.

Now when we see the video in racially directed terms, one can see that in the US, white is the dominant race and the other colored races are still being discriminated against and being oppressed in different ways than our ancestors did. And this is related to how when one group of people has the power, it corrupts them and makes them think they are better than the group that’s different. And also when you see somebody else making the same mistakes that your parents did, or when somebody takes over and starts discriminating against colored people, some tend to stick with what they were told you were suppose to act. And at the end, the prisoners give up their hopes and accepted their position in society and so do the guardians even though they know that they can do something about it to change society.