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Jane Elliott (' Jennison;
born on November 30, 1933) is an American
diversity educator. As a schoolteacher, she became known for her "Blue eyes/Brown eyes" exercise, which she first conducted with her
third-grade class on April 5, 1968, the day after the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The publication of compositions which the children had written about the experience in the local newspaper led to much broader media interest in it.
The classroom exercise was filmed in 1970, becoming the documentary ''
The Eye of the Storm''.
PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
series ''
Frontline'' featured a reunion of the 1970 class, as well as Elliott's work with adults, in its 1985 episode "
A Class Divided". Invitations to speak and to conduct her exercise eventually led Elliott to give up school teaching and to become a full-time public speaker against
discrimination. She has directed the exercise and lectured on its effects in many places throughout the world. She also has conducted the exercise with college students, as seen in the 2001 documentary ''The Angry Eye''.
Early life and career
Elliott was born in 1933 to Lloyd and Margaret (Benson) Jennison on her family's farm in or near
Riceville, Iowa
Riceville is a city in Howard and Mitchell counties in the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 806 at the time of the 2020 census.
History
Riceville was platted in 1855 by three of the Rice brothers, Leonard, Dennis, and Gilbert. Riceville wa ...
. Her father, who delivered her, was
Irish-American
, image = Irish ancestry in the USA 2018; Where Irish eyes are Smiling.png
, image_caption = Irish Americans, % of population by state
, caption = Notable Irish Americans
, population =
36,115,472 (10.9%) alone ...
. She was the fourth of several children.
In 1952, after graduating from
high school
A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
, Elliott attended the Iowa State Teachers College (now the
University of Northern Iowa
The University of Northern Iowa (UNI) is a public university in Cedar Falls, Iowa. UNI offers more than 90 majors across the colleges of Business Administration, Education, Humanities, Arts, and Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences and gr ...
), where she attained an emergency elementary teaching certificate in five
quarters. In 1953, she began her teaching career in a one-room school in
Randall.
Motivation to teach about racism's effects
On the evening of April 4, 1968, Elliott turned on her television and learned of the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She says she vividly remembers a scene in which a white reporter pointed his microphone toward a local black leader and asked things like "When ''our'' leader
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_held_us_together._Who's_going_to_control_''your''_people?"
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A widow (female) or widower (male) is a person whose spouse has died.
Terminology
The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed ''widowhood''. An archaic term for a widow is "relict," literally "someone left over". This word can so ...
held us together. Who's going to control ''your'' people?"
Elliott then decided to combine a lesson she had planned about Native Americans in the United States">Native Americans with a lesson she had planned about Martin Luther King Jr. for February's Hero of the Month project. At the moment she was watching the news of King's death, Elliott says she was ironing a teepee for use in a lesson unit about Native Americans. To tie the two lessons together, she used the Sioux prayer "Oh great spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked in his moccasins."
She wanted to give her small-town, all-white students the experience of walking in a "colored child's moccasins for a day".
First exercise involving eye color
Steven Armstrong was the first child to arrive in Elliott's classroom. Referring to
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
, he asked, "Why'd they shoot that King?" After the rest of the class arrived, Elliott asked them how they think it feels to be a black boy or girl. She suggested to the class it would be hard for them to understand discrimination without experiencing it themselves and then asked the children if they would like to find out. The children agreed with a chorus of "yeah". She decided to base the exercise on
eye color
Eye color is a polygenic phenotypic character determined by two distinct factors: the pigmentation of the eye's iris and the frequency-dependence of the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma of the iris.
In humans, the ...
rather than
skin color
Human skin color ranges from the darkest brown to the lightest hues. Differences in skin color among individuals is caused by variation in pigmentation, which is the result of genetics (inherited from one's biological parents and or individu ...
to show the children what
racial segregation
Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...
would be like.
At first, there was resistance among the students in the minority group to the idea brown-eyed children were better than blue-eyed children. To counter this, Elliott lied to the children by stating
melanin
Melanin (; from el, μέλας, melas, black, dark) is a broad term for a group of natural pigments found in most organisms. Eumelanin is produced through a multistage chemical process known as melanogenesis, where the oxidation of the amino ...
was linked to their higher intelligence and learning ability. Shortly thereafter, this initial resistance fell away. Those who were deemed "superior" became arrogant, bossy, and otherwise unpleasant to their "inferior" classmates. Their grades on simple tests were better, and they completed mathematical and reading tasks that had seemed outside their ability before. The "inferior" classmates also transformed – into timid and subservient children who scored more poorly on tests, and even during recess isolated themselves, including those who had previously been dominant in the class. These children's academic performance suffered, even with tasks that had been simple before.
The next Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, making the blue-eyed children superior. While the blue-eyed children did taunt the brown-eyed children in ways similar to what had occurred the previous day, Elliott reports it was much less intense. To reflect on the experience, she asked the children to write down what they had learned.
Reactions and public attention
The compositions 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", and the story was picked up by the
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. ne ...
. As a result of the Associated Press article, Elliott was invited to appear on ''
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' was an American late-night talk show hosted by Johnny Carson on NBC, the third iteration of the ''Tonight Show'' franchise. The show debuted on October 1, 1962, and aired its final episode on May 22, ...
''. After she spoke about her exercise in a short interview segment, the audience reaction was instant as hundreds of calls came into the show's telephone switchboard, much of it negative. An often-quoted letter stated, "How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children? Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage."
The publicity Elliott was getting did not make her popular in Riceville. When she walked into the teachers' lounge the day after her ''Tonight Show'' appearance, several other teachers walked out. When she went downtown to do errands, she heard whispers. When her oldest daughter went to the girls' bathroom in junior high, she came out of a stall to see a hateful message scrawled in red lipstick for her on the mirror.
Of all her coworkers, Elliott states only one of them, Ruth Setka, continued to speak to her after her exercise went public. Setka said she realized she was the only one who kept speaking to her. Setka believed the reason Eliott's exercise got so much backlash was because the students were very young and the exercise should have been done on at least junior high school-aged students.
In a 2003 interview, Elliot said about 20% of the Riceville community were still furious with her over what she did that day in 1968, and some still called her "n-word lover", but she was grateful for the other 80%.
However, as news of her exercise spread, she appeared on more television shows and started to repeat the exercise in professional training days for adults. On December 15, 1970, Elliott staged the experience to adult educators at a
White House Conference on Children and Youth The White House Conference on Children and Youth was a series of meetings hosted over 60 years by the President of the United States of America, and the first White House conference ever held. Under the leadership of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, ...
.
In 1970,
ABC produced a documentary about Elliott called ''
The Eye of the Storm'', which made her even more nationally known. Subsequently,
William Peters wrote two books—''A Class Divided'' and ''A Class Divided: Then and Now''—about her and the exercise.
''A Class Divided'' was turned into a PBS ''
Frontline'' documentary in 1985 and included a reunion of the schoolchildren featured in ''The Eye of the Storm'', for which Elliott received
The Hillman Prize
The Hillman Prize is a journalism award given out annually by The Sidney Hillman Foundation, named for noted American labor leader Sidney Hillman. It is given to "journalists, writers and public figures who pursue social justice and public poli ...
. A televised edition of the exercise was shown on
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
on October 29, 2009, entitled ''The Event: How Racist Are You?'' This documentary was intended, according to the producers in their agreement with Jane Elliott, to create an awareness of the effects of racist behavior. After the exercise, Elliott said the result "wasn't as successful as I am accustomed to being", leaving journalist
Andrew Anthony with the "nagging suspicion that she's more excited by white fear than she is by black success."
Elliott was featured by
Peter Jennings
Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings (July 29, 1938August 7, 2005) was a Canadian-born American television journalist who served as the sole anchor of ''ABC World News Tonight'' from 1983 until his death from lung cancer in 2005. He dropped o ...
on ABC as "Person of the Week" on April 24, 1992. She is listed on the timeline of 30 notable educators by textbook editor
McGraw-Hill
McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes refere ...
along with
Confucius
Confucius ( ; zh, s=, p=Kǒng Fūzǐ, "Master Kǒng"; or commonly zh, s=, p=Kǒngzǐ, labels=no; – ) was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. C ...
,
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
,
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American c ...
, and
Maria Montessori
Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori ( , ; August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy. At an early age, Montessori e ...
. She has been invited to speak at 350 colleges and universities and has appeared on ''
The Oprah Winfrey Show
''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', often referred to as ''The Oprah Show'' or simply ''Oprah'', is an American daytime syndicated talk show that aired nationally for 25 seasons from September 8, 1986, to May 25, 2011, in Chicago, Illinois. Produced ...
'' five times.
In November 2016, Elliott's name was added to the BBC's annual list of ''
100 Women''.
Origin of workplace diversity training
Elliott is considered to be the forerunner of
diversity training
Diversity training is any program designed to facilitate positive intergroup interaction, reduce prejudice and discrimination, and generally teach individuals who are different from others how to work together effectively.
Diversity training is o ...
, with the "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise as the basis of much of what is now called diversity training.
She has done such training for corporations such as
General Electric
General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...
,
Exxon,
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...
, and
IBM, as well as lectured to the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
,
IRS
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...
,
US Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
,
US Department of Education
The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...
, and
US Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U. ...
.
The Riceville school system granted Elliott unpaid leave to conduct workshops and training that were based on her exercise to organizations outside of her school system. However, the increasing demands to be away from the classroom eventually caused problems with her public school teaching career.
Elliott left teaching in the mid-1980s to devote herself full-time to diversity training, redeveloping her classroom exercise for the corporate world. This was promoted positively as a way to promote teamwork, profits, and a "winning together" atmosphere. For this corporate exercise, Elliott divides a multiracial group based on the color of their eyes and then subjects the blue-eyed individuals to a withering regime of humiliation and contempt. In only a few hours, Elliott's treatment makes the blue-eyed workers become distracted and despondent, stumbling over the simplest commands.
Companies found the idea of offering such training attractive, not only because in the 1970s and 1980s there were increasing numbers of people of color in their organizations, but also because of U.S. court rulings and federal policies to promote
multiculturalism
The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for " ethnic pluralism", with the two terms often used interchang ...
brought about by pressure from
civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life o ...
groups during the same two decades.
[NLPC Special Report The Authoritarian Roots of Corporate Diversity Training](_blank)
by the National Legal and Policy Center by Dr. Carl F. Horowitz
Many companies at that time came to see diversity training as a way to ward off negative legal action and publicity. Elliott said, "If you can't think of any other reason for getting rid of racism, think of it as a real money saver." Elliott-inspired diversity training has been used outside the United States. 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 by the
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 70% of those firms have diversity policies in which diversity training plays a major role. Many of these courses follow Elliott's model in regards to understanding the issues presented.
Legacy of the original exercise
Dean Weaver, who was superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972 to 1979, thought Elliott was an outstanding teacher who did things differently and made other teachers envious of her success. Ex-principal Steve Harnack commented she was excellent at teaching academics and suggested she would have had fewer problems with the community if she had involved parents.
Elliott's former colleague Ruth Setka, the one who had maintained a relationship with Elliott, also had enough. Commenting on Riceville's attitude on Elliott, Setka said:
"I think third grade was too young for what she did. Junior high, maybe. Little children don't like uproar in the classroom. And what she did caused an uproar. Everyone's tired of her. I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. That's not true. Let's just move on."
Academic research
Academic research into Elliott's exercise shows moderate results in reducing long-term prejudice
[ but is inconclusive on the question of whether the possible psychological harm outweighs the potential benefits. Two professors of education in England, Ivor Goodson and Pat Sikes, argue what Elliott did was unethical, calling the exercise psychologically and emotionally damaging. They also stated ethical concerns pertaining to the fact the children were not told of the purpose of the exercise beforehand.]Utah State University
Utah State University (USU or Utah State) is a public land-grant research university in Logan, Utah. It is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. With nearly 20,000 students living on or near campus, USU is Utah ...
were virtually all the subjects reported the experience was meaningful for them. However, the statistical evidence supporting the effectiveness of the activity for prejudice reduction was moderate; and virtually all the participants, as well as the simulation facilitator, reported stress from the simulation.[
Another program evaluation in 2003, conducted by Tracie Stewart at the ]University of Georgia
, mottoeng = "To teach, to serve, and to inquire into the nature of things.""To serve" was later added to the motto without changing the seal; the Latin motto directly translates as "To teach and to inquire into the nature of things."
, establ ...
, showed white college students had significantly more positive attitudes toward Asian-American and Latino individuals, but only marginally more positive attitudes toward African-American individuals.
Personal life
Elliott was married to Darald Elliott (1934–2013) from 1955 until his death, and she has four children.Osage, Iowa
Osage is a city in Mitchell County, Iowa, United States. The population was 3,627 at the time of the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Mitchell County.
Geography
Osage is located at (43.284618, -92.812129).
According to the United States C ...
and Sun City, California
Sun City is a former census-designated place (CDP) in Riverside County, California, United States, and now a neighborhood of the city of Menifee, California. Along with the neighboring communities of Quail Valley and Menifee, it was incorporated ...
.honorary degree
An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...
''Doctor of Humane Letters'' by CSU Bakersfield.
See also
* '' Blue Eyed'' – a 1996 German film based on the "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elliott, Jane
Schoolteachers from Iowa
American women educators
American anti-racism activists
Anti-racism in the United States
1933 births
Living people
People from Riceville, Iowa
University of Northern Iowa alumni
Activists from Iowa
People from Osage, Iowa
People from Menifee, California
BBC 100 Women
Eye color
21st-century American women