Diversity speaker Elliott delivers the shocking truth about racism in America
Racism is not only alive and well in America, it permeates every level
of our society and is taught in our schools and homes, diversity trainer
Jane Elliott told a Lab audience recently.
"I am a racist. I was born, raised and educated in this country.
But I wasn’t born a racist. There is no gene for racism, there is
no gene for homophobia and no gene for ageism or sexism. Those are things
you have to be taught," she said, lambasting the white-centered education
most American children receive. "It is not human nature. It is carefully
taught."
And until people start speaking out when they see discrimination occurring,
it will continue unchecked, she said.
"We could stop it if we chose to," Elliott said. "You need
to think about what you’re doing…You are responsible for what
you think, what you say and what you feel. Make a difference."
Elliott, whose talk was sponsored by the Affirmative Action & Diversity
Program, is widely recognized for her "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes"
discrimination experiment, which she first used with her third-grade class
in 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. In this
exercise, participants are labeled inferior or superior based on the color
of their eyes.
As she took the stage in the Bldg. 123 auditorium last week, Elliott wryly
noted that she would probably offend everyone in the room in the first
five minutes of her presentation. "And I don’t care," she
said, launching into her talk.
"I realize some of the things Elliott says are provocative, but I
don’t think her comments are intended merely for shock value,"
said Tommy Smith, manager of the Lab’s Affirmative Action & Diversity
Program. "She tries to help people understand that these attitudes,
which are harmful, are not innate. Rather, they are created by society,
which means they can also be corrected by society."
During a lively, two-hour presentation, Elliott was entertaining, provocative
and inspiring at the same time. She interspersed her lecture with funny
one-liners, eye-opening statistics and poignant anecdotes.
A frequent presenter at universities and businesses, Elliott has no illusions
about why she is so successful.
"I know full well why I’m hired to do this presentation. I’m
short, I’m female and I’m old, so I’m not threatening to
anybody. I’m white, so I have credibility," she said. "If
I were black and saying these things, you’d be saying I have an agenda…I
know why I get hired and it’s a crime. But as long as you continue
to commit the crime of racism, I’m going to get hired."
Elliott invited two Lab employees to join her onstage to illustrate her
point about who has power in American society. She asked each one separately
if they valued their height, their gender, their skin color and their
age, and refused to accept some of their answers.
For example, when she asked them to state their race, one answered black
and the other replied Caucasian.
"Wrong," Elliott exclaimed. "That’s your skin color.
You’re members of the human race. Next time you fill out an application
and it asks you your race, write human. If they want to know your skin
color, they should ask you that question."
Elliott recommended that her audience read two books, "Lies My Teacher
Told Me," and "Rage of a Privileged Class" to become better
informed on the subject of race.
"It’s time to get educated. You think you’re well educated.
You’re not. You’re well schooled," she said. "Education
perpetrates discrimination in this country."
She railed against America’s treatment of Middle Easterners since
Sept. 11, noting that two of her seven grandchildren are half Saudi Arabian.
"We have now created a new class to hate. What will it take to undo
the damage that is being done to Middle Easterners?" she questioned.
Elliott talked about how she first decided to do her "Blue Eyes,
Brown Eyes" discrimination experiment 34 years ago. She wanted to
teach her third grade students in all-white Riceville, Iowa, about discrimination,
so she chose a characteristic they couldn’t change.
The day after King was killed, she divided her class by eye color and
told her brown-eyed students that on that day, they were intellectually
superior, were more responsible and would have more privileges. The next
day, she reversed the exercise and the blue-eyed children were on top.
The results were shocking, she said. Suddenly, the children placed in
the "privileged group" were standing taller, performing better
on their classwork and putting down their classmates who had different
colored eyes.
"I learned a lot about anger in that exercise. I learned a lot about
power. I didn’t know about racism until then," she explained.
"I learned that day more than I wanted. I didn’t want to know
I was a racist, that I was part of the problem."
She performed the experiment every year from 1968 to 1984, at great personal
cost, because she believed so strongly that her exercise could serve as
an "inoculation" against racism.
As a result of her work, her own children were ridiculed by their classmates,
teachers and other parents, her husband lost all of his friends and her
parents lost their business after the community stopped frequenting their
restaurant.
"If I had known what would happen, I wouldn’t have done the
exercise in the first place," Elliott said. "I will go to my
grave with what happened to my children, my husband and my parents."
Outside of her Midwestern town, however, her work has been widely praised.
She was chosen as a "Person of the Week" on Peter Jennings’
ABC Evening News broadcasts. Evening and several television documentaries
have been filmed, including "Essential Blue Eyed," and "A
Class Divided." Copies of those videos are available to lend from
the Affirmative Action & Diversity Program. For more information,
contact Michele Cardenas at 3-2796.