Jane Elliott

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For the actress who plays Tracy Quartermaine on General Hospital, please see Jane Elliott (actor).

Jane Elliott (born 1933 in Riceville, Iowa) [1] is an American teacher and anti-racism activist. While she has no formal training in psychology, she created the famous “blue-eyed/brown-eyed” exercise, first done with grade school children in the 1960s, and later became the basis of diversity training. [2]

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[edit] Classroom exercise

While there are variations of the story, the exercise the Elliot developed for her third grade class in Riceville, Iowa was a result of Martin Luther Kings’s assassination. According to one biographer, on the evening of April 4, 1968, Jane Elliott turned on her television to find out about the assassination. One scene she says that she remembers vividly is that of a reporter, with the microphone pointed toward a local black leader asking “When our leader (John F. Kennedy) was killed several years ago, his widow held us together. Who´s going to control your people?” He reports her thinking that it was strange. “After all, wasn’t John F. Kennedy president of black Americans too? Weren’t white Americans outraged at King’s death?” It was supposedly there, in her living room that she decided to combine a lesson she had planned about Native Americans with the lesson done about King for February’s Hero of the Month. To tie the two, she would use the saying “Oh Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.”[2]

However, in an interview with Webfronds, Elliott states that after King’s assassination, she had a class discussion about it and about racism in general. But she states “And I could see that they weren’t internalizing a thing. They were doing what white people do. When white people sit down to discuss racism what they are experiencing is shared ignorance.” She states her lesson plan for that day was to learn the Sioux prayer about not judging someone without walking in his/her moccasins and “I treated them as we treat Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, women, people with disabilities, gays and lesbians.”[3]

Another aspect of the story includes inspiration from a novel called Mila 18 by Leon Uris, published in 1961 which was about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II.[1] From this book, she remember something about the Nazis using eye color to separate prisoners, preferring those with blue eyes[2] and using that criterion to choose who would live or die.[1]

In another version of the story, one major impetus for the creation of the exercise was that none of her 8-year-old students had never met a black person. Jane, growing up in the same small town in Iowa, had not seen one until she was nineteen. For this reason, she felt that simply talking about racism would not allow her all-white class to really comprehend what is really about.[2]

Whether she planned the exercise previous to April 5, 1968 or not, on that day she implemented the exercise (also called an “experiment”) for the first time. Steven Armstrong was the first child to arrive to Elliot’s classroom on that day, asking why King was murdered the day before. After the rest of the class arrived, Elliot asked them what they knew about Negros. The children responded with various racial stereotypes such as Negros were dumb or could not hold jobs. She then asked these children if they would like to find out what it was like to be a Negro child and they agreed.[2]

On that day, a Friday, she decided to make the brown-eyed children the superior first, giving them extra privileges like second helpings at lunch, access to the new jungle gym and five minutes extra at recess.[2] She would not allow blue-eyed and brown-eyed children to drink from the same water fountain.[4] She would offer them praise for being hard-working and intelligent. The “blueys” on the other hand, would be disparaged. She even made the blue-eyed children wear crepe paper armbands.[2]

At first, there was resistance to the idea that blue-eyed children were not the equals of brown-eyed children. To counter this, she used a pseudo-scientific explanation for her actions by stating that the melanin responsible for making brown-eyed children… also was linked to intelligence and ability, therefore the “blueys” lack of pigmentation would result in lack of these qualities.[2] Shortly thereafter, this initial resistance fell away. Those who were deemed “superior” became arrogant, bossy and otherwise unpleasant to their “inferior” classmates. Their grades also improved, doing mathematical and reading tasks that seemed outside their ability before. These “inferior” classmates also transformed – into timid and subservient children, including those who has previously had been dominant in the class. These children’s academic performance suffered, even with tasks that had be simple before.[4]

The following Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, making the blue-eyed children superior. While the blue-eyed children did taunt the brown eyes in ways similar to what had occurred the previous Friday, Elliott reports it was much less intense. At 2:30 on that Monday, Elliott told the brown-eyed children to take off their armbands and the children cried and hugged each other. To reflect on the experience, she had the children write letters to Coretta Scott King and write compositions about the experience.[2]

This exercise changed her life, both as a teacher and personally. Her reflections on what she had witness would influence how she would approach race relations and teaching. “She had not told her pupils to treat each other differently, only that they were different; and yet they developed the characteristic responses of discrimination. Jane Elliott felt that they did this because they had already absorbed discriminatory behavior from their parents and other adults.”[4] Their willingness to accept the inferiority of a group of people was no small part due to the fact that children believe what adults, including teachers, tell them and follow their example. However, the brown-eyed students who had experienced discrimination on the previous Friday, seemed to modify their behavior when it was their turn to be “inferior” on Monday. While they did exhibit some of the same discriminatory behaviors, they were much less intense supposedly because they already knew what it was like.[2] The exercise seemed to prove that black underachievement was a product of “white-dominated constructions of reality”. [1] She believes that what has been taught in schools (1968 to the present) conditions students that whiteness is the objective. Schools teach virtually nothing of what colored people have contributed to mankind while most people would have little trouble naming 10 white males who have done so. “That’s called racism, people.” according to Elliott, as she believes it is racism to deny or ignored what other people contribute. Elliott believes that teachers perpetuate racism by how they interact with their students. Teachers will call on white boys first, then white girls. They also establish a hierarchy based on who they pay attention to, where students are seated and how groups are formed.[3]

Because she believed so strongly in the value of this exercise, Elliott continued it every year, whether her students asked for it or not until 1984 when she quit teaching in the Riceville school system. However, she never involved these children’s parents because “It was the parents who were the cause of the racism that these kids displayed.”[5]

As much as Elliott believes in her exercise, she advises caution and restraint in implementing it. In fact, it is not implemented in most educational settings because, Elliott claims, “it is too controversial and too difficult to do”. To be an “educator” and not merely a “teacher”, one must “lead people out of ignorance.” To do this, Elliott recommends that teachers read books like “The Psychology of Blacks”, “Two Nations” by Andrew Hacker, “A Country of Strangers” and “Arabs and Jews in the Promised Land” as well as papers books written by Judith Katz and Peggy MacIntosh because teachers themselves need to overcome what they were taught before they can educate children. If they cannot do this, they should not do the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise. They must also do the exercise for the right reason – not just to “get their names in the paper”. She also recommends that teachers do it at home first, with their own children, before doing it in the classroom.[3]

[edit] Controversy surrounding the exercise

The first reaction to her “experiment” was in the teachers’ lounge at lunchtime the day she did the exercise for the first time. When Elliott explained what she was doing in her class and why and how a number of shy and slow brown-eyed children were benefitting at the expense of the “blueys”… there was stunned disbelief and a number of teachers had not even known King had been assassinated. Later, the composition that the children wrote about the experience were printed in the Riceville Recorder on page 4 on April 18, 1968 under the headline “How Discrimination Feels” This story was picked up by the Associated Press.[2]

Because of the AP story, Elliott was invited to appear on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. She was scheduled as a short segment before actor James Gardner. She was interviewed and she explained her experiment. At the commercial break, audience reaction to her was instant as hundreds of calls came into the show’s switchboard, most of the reaction was negative.[2]) The most often-quoted letter states “How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children.”[2] [1]

The exercise and the publicity that it was getting did not make her popular with her neighbors.[4] When Elliot walked into the teacher’s lounge the day after being on the Johnny Carson show, several teachers walked out. Her children were taunted are assaulted by other children. [1] Her family was shunned, forcing her father into bankruptcy[4] as her parents’ store was boycotted.[6] All of this convinced Elliott of the need for her exercise.[1] She felt that it would be wrong to do nothing and the people’s lack of understanding and fear of change allows racism to exist and grow.[6]

However, not all the reaction was negative. For most of the time that she remained in the Riceville school system, she had the support of her superiors.[4] as they gave her unpaid leave to pursue outside activities.[2] As news of her exercise spread, she appeared on more television shows, and started to repeat the exercise in professional training days for adults.[4] On December 15, 1970, Elliott did the experiment for educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth, staging it for adults.[2]

In 1971, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) broadcasted a documentary about her called “The Eye of the Storm” and made her more nationally known. After that, two books, “A Class Divided” and “A Class Divided: Then and Now” by William Peters were written about her and the experiment/exercise.[2] “A Class Divided” was turned into an ABC Frontline documentary in 1985, and included a reunion of the schoolchildren featured in “The Eye of the Storm”. In addition to these major reviews of Elliott’s work, Disney has produced a television biographical movie.[1] “Frontline: A Class Divided” is the most requested video on PBS’s website. [7]

Among her honors was being featured by Peter Jennings on ABC as “Person of the Week” and textbook editor McGraw-Hill lists her on a timeline of notable educators along with Confucius, Plato, Booker T. Washington and Maria Montessori.[1] She has been invited to speak at 350 colleges and universities as well as appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show four times.[2]

[edit] Origin of workplace diversity training

Jane Elliott is considered to be the “foremother” of diversity training,[8] with blue-eyed/brown-eyed scenario is the basis of much of what is called diversity training. [1] She has done such training for corporations like General Electric, Exxon, AT&T, IBM, and Wal-Mart as well as lectured to the FBI, IRS, US Navy, US Dept of Education and US Postal Service.[2]

As Elliot began to do workshops and other training based on her exercise to organizations outside of her school system, the Riceville school system granted her unpaid leave to do this.[4] However, the increasing demands to be away from the classroom eventually caused problems with her public school teaching career.[2] Elliott left teaching in the mid 1980’s to devote herself full time to corporate training. Her standard fee since then has been at least $6,000 per day for companies and governmental institutions.[1]

The exercise that Elliott developed for her classroom was redeveloped for the corporate world. The exercise was promoted positively as a way to promote teamwork, profits and “winning together”. On the negative side, it was claimed that not doing such diversity training could make these same companies open to bad publicity, boycotts and lawsuits.[1] In 2004, Coca Cola CEO E. Neville Isdell asked a court to extend federal supervision of its diversity policy citing such oversight as a valuable resource. The rationale given for this acceptance is that it not only helps with complying with US federal law but helps profits [1] by reducing employee turnover and increasing a company’s ability to reach certain markets.[9]

Diversity training based on Elliott’s methods has been mandated by colleges and universities such as Wake Forest University and Johns Hopkins University. Often these are required after incidents such as the Halloween party invitations done by the Sigma Chi fraternity chapter at Johns Hopkins which were accused of being racially offensive. [10] [11]

Elliott-inspired diversity training has been realized outside the United States as well. Diversity training was little-known in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 1990’s; however when The Race Relations Amendment Act 2000 passed in the United Kingdom, it listed 100 diversity training firms in the Diversity Directory. According to a survey done by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 70% of firms have diversity policies in which diversity training plays a major role. Many of these courses are designed to have a “lighter touch” than Elliott’s approach, but those based solidly on Elliott’s model are also promoted.[12] Elliott has personally held workshops in Australia, focusing on racial issues brought up by Pauline Hanson and the lack of acknowledgement of contributions made by aborigines in this country.[3]

Jane Elliott sells videos and other materials to be used by diversity trainers such as “Blue-eyed”, “The Angry Eye”, “The Stolen Eye”, and “The Essential Blue-eyed,” as well as the documentaries done by PBS and ABC. These videos are promoted by the National MultiCultural Institute, a Washington DC based organization,[1] and by BusinessTrainingMedia.com Inc Training Media

[edit] Criticism of Elliott-inspired diversity training

According to supporters of Elliott’s approach, the goal is to reach people’s sense of empathy and morality. Another issue this approach seeks to address is a sense of apathy that many people have because they do not think the problem affects them or that they do not believe that they act in a racist manner.[9] Another aspect to Elliott’s approach is that racism is not inherent. “You are not born a racist. You have to carefully be taught to be one.” she states.[6] And while Jane Elliott created the exercise as a response to racial discrimination, her approach is equally touted to point out sexism, ageism and homophobia as well.[4]

However, it is the manner in which these training sessions are conducted and Elliott’s role as a trainer that has drawn criticism. First, she usually puts the “brown-eyed” participants in the superior position. If the group attending the session is of various races, the ones experiencing discrimination are most likely to be white.[4] In the description for “Indecently Exposed with Jane Elliott”, the website promoting it by Business Training Media states that the purpose of putting brown-eyes in the superior position is to allow Native Canadians to “turn the tables” on the blue-eyes because “Even nice Canadians are racist”. [13]

The corporate version of “blue-eyed/brown-eyed” is still based on demeaning a chosen group of people and then letting the temporarily favored group taunt them, much the way the brown-eyed children of the original exercise did.[1] Like in the original exercise, she does not explicitly tell participates to mock other but uses choice of language and tone, removal of basic rights (such as being allowed to speak without permission) and a constant changing of the rules to discomfort the blue-eyed participants. At the same time she uses positive language, praise and encouragement to the brown-eyed people.[4] One way she does this is with the use of an alternative IQ test called the “Dove Counterbalance Intelligence Test” which asks questions about the black experience of the 1950’s and 1960’s. “… which presumes that most whites would not be able to answer, thus mimicking the experience that blacks supposedly have with more conventional IQ tests. [14]

At seminars given at U.S. federal agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), white males were verbally abused by black peers and then forced to walk a gauntlet to be touched by female workers.[10] Jane herself states “When we have multicultural diversity training, one of the first things they have is a dinner where they serve foods from all different lands. Except white. We don’t study white culture ‘cause that’s the right culture’. We already know white culture. We don’t call it white culture, we call it reality.”[3] This has lead to accusations that she demonizes white people.[10]

Another criticism of such these training programs is that they do not permit genuine debate or discussion about the issues to be addressed. A diversity program that has been used by AT&T Chevron and Nabisco asked employees to sit in circle and response with a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down” sign to a series of questions about affirmative action, interracial marriage, AIDS, etc asked by the trainer while employees are at their worksite. The purpose of this is to allow the trainer to determine the participant’s political and social views to see who is most deviant from the workshop’s objectives. In addition, those who espouse such beliefs are pressured to admit that such are harmful or face possible negative consequences to their careers.[1] A more recent example of such tactics occurred at the University of Delaware, when dormitory residents were required to attend diversity training sessions students complained about being silenced when they objected to the notion that “all people of European descent are racist”.[8] The idea that whites are automatically considered to be racist (whether stated or implied) with the inability for participants to present opposing points of view have lead Elliott-inspired diversity training sessions to be compared to Mao re-education camps and show trials.[10]

These criticisms on approaches based on the Elliott model have much to do with Elliott’s own teaching style. The BBC opines that her training style is “uncompromising, brusque and authoritative. She tells her captive audience, she is there “resident BITCH for the day – Being In Total Control Honey”.”[12] Strong critics of Elliott, such as Carl F. Horowitz to call her the “Dominatrix of Diversity” [15] who wages “…psychological warfare against employees – more specifically, white employees…”[1]

She has also been accused of not recognizing the social and political changes that have occurred since the time period in which she originally developed the exercise. Alan Charles Kors, a professor of history at University of Pennsylvania, writes that Elliott’s exercise teaches “blood-guilt and self-contempt to whites,” adding that “in her view, nothing has changed in American (sic) since the collapse of Reconstruction.””(p19)[2]

However, Elliott seems to feel that such an approach is still necessary. She is quoted as saying “I’ve reached a point now where I will no longer tolerate the intolerable. I’m a ball of barbed-wire and I know it.” “After 30 years of dealing with this subject of racism, I am no longer a sweet, gentle person. I want it stopped.”[16] She has also expressed frustration at the idea that she still needs to do this exercise, “It shouldn’t be necessary in 2008,” she says, to “…say things that are difficult for people to hear. I’m not kind about it. But neither are the racists.”[17]

[edit] Legacy of the original exercise

Two decades after she stopped teaching in Riceville, Iowa schools, she is still not welcome in the community. She supposedly “is detested by residents as an arrogant, self-centered opportunist who turned against her town and inflicted untold harm on hundreds of Riceville’s children.” (p9) She has not been included in Riceville’s official chronicles and was not invited to celebrate the town’s 150th anniversary in 2005. However, Dean Weaver, who was superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972-1979 thought she was an outstanding teacher, who did things different and made other teachers jealous of her success. According to ex-principal Steve Harnack, she was excellent at teaching academics and would have had fewer problems with the community if she had involved parents.[2]

More than 450 children went through her experiment from 1968 to 1984 and many say that she is “a hero, a teacher extraordinaire, whose simple experiment, which lasted just two days, forever changed their lives.”( p9) Almost all these students say that they remember the exercise very vividly and that it made them think, and try to be different. As to whether they want their own children or students to experience it, results are mixed. Special education teacher Jay McGovern, who was one of Elliott’s grade school students, says that she was an outstanding teacher but he feels uncertain about what he experienced in her exercise. “The way she did it, she put people down… Today, … You don’t ridicule or berate people to try to make your point. Back in the ‘60’s, there wasn’t that body of research.” (p18) However, another student, Dale McCarthy, who went through the exercise in 1969, recalls that while he found the experience “nearly impossible to endure,” he realized the benefit the first time he met a black man and shook his hand. He also states that one of his brothers-in-law is black and there is no problem. However, he also adds that if his own daughter had to do that exercise, he would complain to the school. (p20-21)[2]

Academic research into Elliott’s experiment is inconclusive about whether it reduces long-term prejudice or if the possible psychological harm outweighs the potential benefits. She has been accused of scaring people, breaking the school rules, humiliating children, being domineering, angry and brainwashing. Two professors of education in England, Ivor F. Goodson and Pat Sikes, claim unhesistantly that was Elliott did was unethical, calling the experiment psychologically and emotionally damaging. They also stated ethical concerns connected to the fact that the children were not told of the purpose of the exercise beforehand.[2] Long term results of the diversity training for adults are also unknown. In some courses, participants can wind up feeling frustrated about “their inability to change” and instead begin to feel anger against the very groups they are supposed to be more sensitive to. It can also lead to anxiety because people become hyper-sensitive about being offensive or being offended.[12]

“For nearly 40 years this native of rural Iowa has been engaged in a Torquemada-style quest to eradicate racism, real or imagined, from every nook and cranny of American life. She casts a mighty long shadow. Everytime a corporation forces new employees – at least Caucasian ones – to endure intensive and prolonged anti-bias training, it is ratifying the legacy of Jane Elliott. Every time a college requires incoming white freshman to be “cured” of racial, ethnic and religious prejudices presumably lurking within, it is fulfilling Elliott’s vision.”[10]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Horowitz, Carl F.. "The Authoritarian Roots of Corporate Diversity Training: Jane Elliott’s Captive Eyes and Minds.". NLPC Special Report. 
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Bloom, Stephen G (Sept 2005). "Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes: The Experiment that Shocked the Nation and Turned a Town Against its Most Famous Daughter.". Smithsonian Magazine (online). 
  3. ^ a b c d e Webfronds Interviews- Jane Elliot. Webfronds. Retrieved on 2008-04-03.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Cloviscat (Aug 2003). "accessdate = 2008-04-03 Jane Elliott and the Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes Exercise BBC Edited Guide Entry". H2G2-BBC. 
  5. ^ Bloom, Stephen G (Sept 2005). "Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes: The Experiment that Shocked the Nation and Turned a Town Against its Most Famous Daughter.". Smithsonian Magazine (online): 28. 
  6. ^ a b c McPhee, Nicole. "Doing diversity right: Renowned Iowa schoolteacher and discrimination educator get to the heart of the matter", Gauntlet News, 2001-08-09. Retrieved on 2008-05-30. 
  7. ^ Frontline: A Class Divided. Retrieved on 2008-05-30.
  8. ^ a b Watson,, Jamal (Jan 2008). "When Diversity Training Goes Awry". Diverse Online. 
  9. ^ a b Venderley, Paul. Paul Venderley’s Blog. Retrieved on 2008-05-30.
  10. ^ a b c d e Horowitz, Carl (Jan 2007). "Jane Elliott and her Blue-Eyed Devil Children". FrontPageMagazine.com. 
  11. ^ Cassie, Ron. "Johns Hopkins fraternity suspended after racially themed Halloween party", The Examiner, 2006-10-31. Retrieved on 2008-05-30. 
  12. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Mirza
  13. ^ Practical Business Strategies. Retrieved on 2008-05-30.
  14. ^ Fulford,, James (April 2003). "Jane Elliott: 35 Years of Rage". VDARE.com. 
  15. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Horowitz_2
  16. ^ Shah, Allie. "Race relations expert urges her audience to ‘unlearn racism’; Elliott takes a confrontational tack", The Star Tribune, 1998-03-06. Retrieved on 2008-05-30. 
  17. ^ Cooper, Desiree. "She’s living, teaching the King dream", Detroit Free Press, 2008-01-08. Retrieved on 2008-04-03. 

[edit] External links