The birth of discrimination: The Psychology of The A class(Assassination Classroom)
Discrimination has always been an recurring issue in the history of civilization. It’s almost like it’s something that has been hard-wired into us, that we evolved into separating ourselves with different clans or groups and gained happiness by comparing our group with other groups. In school, we judge people based on the grades they get, on how much their dad makes. And when someone is underneath you when you feel someone is inferior to you, you waste no time in taking a fat dump over that person while connecting with the people similar to you in tastes or SAT scores.
So where does this desire for dominance and comparison come from? Why, after thousands of years of civilization, does society still suffer from the age old problem of racism, and what can we do to solve it?
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Assassination Classroom is an anime that takes a very extreme perspective on discrimination in schools. Set in the prestigious Kunugigaoka Junior High School, the school is separated into 5 different classes: the A class, B class, C class, D class, and E class. While the 4 classes of the A class, B class, C class, and the D class are all in the main campus, the E class are separated, taking a class in a remote and secluded location. They’re the laughingstock of the entire school, the dumb kids who didn’t care about schooling in the first place.
The philosophy of this 5-class program was to fuel the students to not be the E class. Everything about the E class was laughed at, in public service announcements, they would be scorned, in assemblies they would be mocked. No one wanted to be those kids, everyone wanted to be the ones laughing, not the ones being laughed at.
While they laugh and mock the E class, the irony of the situation is that they are feeling more stress and pressure than any of the E class students. In wanting to prove that they are better than the E class, they throw themselves into studying, completely and utterly, without pressure, always under the pressure that they could sink into the hellhole that is the E class.
They’re told that the E class are students that don’t try, that don’t care. They’re like the rich kids in high school, who know they’ll be fine in the future anyway and never try, except the E class don’t have anything they can fall back on.
95% hard workers, 5% slackers, that’s the way the Kunugigaoka Junior High School operates and presents itself. It gets its students genuinely hate the E class, giving them the perspective that they are a bunch of dumb kids who have the leisure of not being under the pressure that the main campus has to undertake in order not to be in the E class.
That’s why during the assembly we see the A class and the rest of the main campus greatly affected when they see the E class laugh and have fun. They contribute nothing to the school, don’t suffer pressure, and they get to have fun? What a load of bullshit.
Sound familiar? That’s because it directly parallels racism in today’s culture. In the 1950s and 60s, where the civil unrest was at its peak, most white Americans viewed African Americans as the trash of society, low-class idiots who contributed nothing to society. While they were mostly okay with them hanging around, they wanted them to submit, to keep their heads low and not cause any trouble for them. Seeing them laugh and have fun was infuriating and anger inducing, because they feel that they didn’t deserve that happiness when all they did was sit around on their ass not doing anything for the good of the society.
And when they do break through, when African Americans get the well paying jobs or the E class start doing well on the state exams, they can’t bear it. The only thing the A class had going for them was really doing better than the E class, studying so hard to be better than them, and yet somehow, the E class are doing well, they’re getting good, no, better grades than the A class, while having fun and screwing around while the rest of the school is bogged down with pressure and stress of performing.
They start studying harder, faster, stronger, they don’t want to fail, because that would mean everything that they’ve worked up to has meant nothing, that they’ve failed their parents and the school’s system. Especially with the principal egging them on, reinforcing the fact that they are the schools chosen elite and that they cannot fail, it adds to the pressure, and they ultimately crack under it, beaten by the long inferior E class.
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No one is truly evil in Assassination classroom, or at least not in Kunugigaoka Junior high. They’re all part of a greater whole, the product of years and years of discrimination and domination over the E class’s submissiveness. Even the principal isn’t the evil, manipulative person the show originally cuts him out to be, he was just the product of hatred, hatred of society’s poor and the steps they will take to get what they want, catching innocent people in the crossfire.
It’s a introspective look at where discrimination and racism comes from, a feeling fueled by hatred and passion. All it takes is one man for years and years of discrimination to come, something that is reflected by Assassination Classroom’s Gakuho Asano, the principal of the Junior High, as he brings so many years of discrimination against the E class.
What I’m trying to say is that the idea of discrimination isn’t something that is purely evil, it’s something that’s in everyone, whether you’re the most left-wing liberal or the most right-wing conservative.
No, it’s not something that can be destroyed with facts and knowledge. Most of these discriminatory instincts are emotion based, meaning that people only remember the anger and pain they feel when someone brings it up, even when they are proven wrong.
That’s something that I think AC does well, making sure that these ideas aren’t lost on people. Sure, most of the children in the A class have snobby and dickish designs that make them look like assholes, and the principal’s son looking almost like a child dictator in the holocaust with his red armband, and it’s made sure that we do get a glimpse into the psyche of the high school, even if the glimpse was a little bit weaker than what I would’ve hoped for.
To beat discrimination, we must first understand discrimination, what drives it, why it’s here, and assassination classroom offers that first glimpse at the the driving forces behind it.
