On this 1998 {photograph}, former Iowa trainer Jane Elliott, heart, speaks with two Augsburg College college students concerning the issues of racism. Jerry Holt/Star Tribune through Getty Photos
The killing of George Floyd on Might 25, 2020, was a seismic occasion, a turning level that compelled many Individuals to do one thing and do it with urgency. Many educators responded by holding obligatory workshops on institutional racism and implicit bias, reforming educating strategies and lesson plans and looking for methods to amplify undersung voices.
As a journalism professor and writer of a guide on race that spans greater than 50 years, I’ve watched these developments with nice concern. We’ve been right here earlier than, with unsettling and disturbing outcomes.
The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was additionally an occasion that spurred educators to motion, motivating one trainer to check out a daring experiment touted to scale back racism.
The experiment took the nation by storm.
The day after King’s homicide, Jane Elliott, a white third-grade trainer in rural Riceville, Iowa, sought to make her college students really feel the brutality of racism. Elliott separated her all-white class of scholars into two teams: blue-eyed youngsters and brown-eyed youngsters.
On the primary day, the blue-eyed college students had been knowledgeable that they had been genetically inferior to the brown-eyed college students. Elliott instructed the blue-eyed youngsters to not play on the jungle health club or swings. They wouldn’t be allowed second helpings for lunch. They’d have to make use of paper cups in the event that they drank from the water fountain.
On this {photograph} from Sept. 13, 1965, Black youngsters on their solution to faculty in New York Metropolis move by segregationists protesting built-in busing.
Dick DeMarsico/New York World-Telegram & the Solar Newspaper {Photograph} Assortment/PhotoQuest/Getty Photos
The blue-eyed youngsters had been informed to not do their homework as a result of, even when they answered all of the questions, they’d in all probability overlook to convey the task again to class. That’s simply the way in which blue-eyed youngsters had been, Elliott informed the scholars.
On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the youngsters’s roles.
After the native newspaper printed a narrative on Elliott and the experiment, she was flown to New York to look on Might 31, 1968, on “The Tonight Present” with Johnny Carson, the place she extolled the experiment’s effectiveness in cluing in her 8-year-old white college students on what it was wish to be Black in America.
Jane Elliott on ‘The Tonight Present’ on Might 31, 1968.
Charlotte Button
A darker aspect
However Elliott’s experiment had a extra sinister impression. To most individuals, it appeared to counsel that racism may very well be decreased, even eradicated, by a one- or two-day train. It appeared to evince that every one white folks needed to do to find out about racism was restrain themselves from an impulse to have interaction in made-up cruelty. They wanted not acknowledge their privilege or replicate on it. They didn’t want to have interaction with a single Black individual.
However in actuality, I discovered in researching for my guide “Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” that the experiment was a sadistic exhibition of energy and authority – levers managed by Elliott. Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race.
It was about cruelty and shaming.
Subsequent analysis designed to gauge the efficacy of Elliott’s try at lowering prejudice confirmed that many members had been shocked by the experiment, nevertheless it did nothing to deal with or clarify the foundation causes of racism.
The roots of racism – and why it continues unabated in America and different nations – are difficult and gnarled. They’re steeped in centuries of financial deprivation and cultural appropriation. The nonstop parade of sickening occasions such because the homicide of George Floyd certainly is just not going to be abated by a quickie experiment led by a white individual for the alleged good thing about different whites – as was the case with the blue-eyed, brown eyed experiment.
Sought-after variety coach
Nonetheless, Elliott turned as well-known as a trainer might turn into in America.
The Seventies and Nineteen Eighties had been ripe for variety schooling within the personal and public sectors, and Elliott would check out the experiment at workshops on tens of hundreds of members, not simply within the U.S. and Canada, however in Europe, the Center East and Australia. She traveled to firms, banks, prisons, colleges and navy bases.
1000’s of educators throughout the US folded the experiment into their curriculums. She was a standing-room-only speaker at lots of of schools and universities.
She appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Present” 5 instances.
Unsettling insults
Elliott became America’s mom of variety coaching.
The anti-racism periods Elliott led had been intense. To get her factors throughout, Elliott hurled insults at workshop members, significantly those that had been white and had blue eyes. For a lot of, the experiment went horribly awry.
In doing the analysis for my guide with scores of peoples who had been members within the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. At first, she cooperated with me. However when she found that I used to be asking pointed questions of scores of her former college students, in addition to others subjected to the experiment, she made an about-face and stated she now not would cooperate with me. She has since refused to reply any of my inquiries.
Jane Elliott at Riceville, Iowa, Elementary Faculty in 1968.
Charlotte Button
Scores of others did take part. I interviewed Julie Pasicznyk, who had been working for US West, a large telecommunications firm in Minneapolis. She was hesitant to enroll in Elliott’s workshop however was informed that if she needed to succeed as a supervisor, she’d must attend. Pasicznyk joined 75 different workers for a coaching session within the firm’s suburban Denver headquarters within the late Nineteen Eighties.
“Proper off the bat, she picked me out of the room and referred to as me ‘Barbie,’” Pasicznyk informed me. “That’s the way it began, and that’s the way it went all day lengthy. She had by no means met me, and he or she accused me in entrance of everybody of utilizing my sexuality to get forward.”
“Barbie” needed to have a Ken, so Elliott picked from the viewers a tall, good-looking man and accused him of doing the identical issues together with his feminine subordinates, Pasicznyk stated. Elliott went after “Ken” and “Barbie” all day lengthy, drilling, accusing, ridiculing them, to make the purpose that whites make baseless judgments about Blacks on a regular basis, Pasicznyk stated.
Elliott championed the experiment as an “inoculation in opposition to racism.”
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Questioning authority
The mainstream media had been complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. They embraced the experiment’s reductive message, in addition to its promised potential, thereby holding the implausible rationale of Elliott’s campaign alive and effectively for many years, nevertheless flawed and racist it actually was.
Maybe as a result of the result appeared so optimistic and comforting, protection of Elliott and the experiment’s alleged healing powers cropped up all over the place. Elliott was featured on practically each nationwide information present in America for many years.
Jane Elliott, proven right here in 2009, stays an outspoken advocate in opposition to racism.
Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Occasions through Getty Photos
Elliott’s bullying rejoinder to any nonbeliever was to say that nevertheless a lot ache a white individual felt after one or two days of made-up discrimination was nothing when in comparison with what Blacks endure every day.
Again when she launched the experiment to her Iowa college students greater than 5 a long time in the past, not less than one pupil had the audacity to problem Elliott’s premise, in accordance with those that had been within the classroom on the time.
When she separated the category by eye coloration and introduced that blue-eyed youngsters had been superior, Paul Bodensteiner objected at each flip.
“It’s not true!” he challenged.
Undeterred, Elliott tried to attraction to Paul’s self-interest. “Try to be completely satisfied! You will have the proper coloration eyes!”
However Paul, considered one of eight siblings and the son of a dairy farmer, didn’t purchase Elliott’s mollification. “It’s not true and it’s not truthful it doesn’t matter what you say!” he responded.
I usually take into consideration Paul Bodensteiner. How can we educate youngsters to be extra like him? Is it even attainable at the moment?
Stephen G. Bloom doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that may profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.
