Windows to the soul

  EDWARD LIN/Daily Bruin Jane Elliot
speaks about racism, discrimination and diversity during her
presentation at Pauley Pavilion Wednesday.

By Lisa Klassen
Daily Bruin Contributor

Many people will never know what it feels like to experience the
anger and hurt caused by discrimination, but Jane Elliott hopes to
change all that.

Elliott, a former elementary school teacher, gave a presentation
to more than 800 people in Pauley Pavilion Wednesday, stressing the
impact of racism in contemporary society.

“I am a racist,” Elliott said when she began her
presentation. “Look to the right of you, there’s a
racist there. And to the left, there’s a racist there
too.”

Pointing out everyone’s inherent racism was the main point
of Elliott’s presentation.

“We’ve been conditioned to the myth of white
superiority and colored inferiority,” Elliott said.
“And this needs to change.”

And Elliott has changed, or at least challenged, traditional
racist ideology, making her mark on educators and students
alike.

“Every time I hear her speak, I learn something
new,” said Shane Waarbroek, secretary of the Interfraternity
Council and a participant in Elliott’s presentation.
“And I’ve also learned about her work in my psychology
and sociology classes.”

Elliott’s presentation drew people not only from UCLA, but
also from other schools and from the general public. Members of the
Panhellenic and National Pan-hellenic Councils, IFC and the Asian
Greek Council were required to attend ““ these organizations
also sponsored the event.

“I don’t attend UCLA, but I wanted to come here to
hear Jane Elliott speak,” said Debra Fisher, a mother who
attended the event with her husband. “I’ve seen her
videos, but I wanted to come here tonight to see her in person. It
was enlightening to see how people actually reacted to her
presentation.”

When Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, Elliott
set out to demonstrate what racism was to her class of
third-graders in a predominantly white town in Iowa.

After discussing King’s assassination, Elliott told her
students that they were going to experience what discrimination
felt like. She divided her class according to their eye color
““ a trait that Adolf Hitler had used to determine racial
superiority.

On the first day, people with blue eyes were told that they were
superior to those with brown eyes.

“Brown-eyed people are stupid. They’re dirty
too,” Elliott told her students. “Blue-eyed people are
not to play with brown-eyed people on the playground.”

Surprisingly, Elliott’s students took her comments to
heart. Within minutes, she had created racism in her own classroom,
as she witnessed her students “become what I told them they
were,” Elliott said.

The next day, Elliott declared brown-eyed people to be superior
to blue-eyed people. This had unexpected results, as several of
Elliott’s students turned against their blue-eyed
teacher.

On the third day, Elliott told her students that the experiment
was over. She then discussed the results of the experience with her
students, who all had a new understanding of racism after the
experiment.

“If I hadn’t done that exercise, I wouldn’t
have known how racist I was,” Elliott said.

Although the “Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes Experience,” as
it came to be known, brought understanding to Elliott and her
students, it did not win approval from the community.

Other teachers and parents of students in Elliott’s class
complained about what she had done.

“People kept saying “˜I don’t want my kid in
that nigger-lover’s class’ and even the other teachers
were saying things like that,” Elliott said.

While residents of her town did not approve of the Brown Eyes,
Blue Eyes Experience, they could not ignore the issues that Elliott
addressed. Soon, others became curious about Elliott and her
work.

Elliott’s project caught the attention of the media, and
her story was told in an ABC special titled “The Eye of the
Storm,” which was honored with a George Foster Peabody Award,
which recognizes achievements in television and radio.

Two other programs documented her experience, and she later
appeared on several television shows to address racism.

Elliott also received the National Mental Health Association
Award for excellence in education.

Despite her national impact, Elliott faced backlash from members
of her community.

The hostility from the community was so strong that many of
Elliott’s friends stopped associating with her and her
father’s business was forced to close.

“If I had known that my father would have lost all his
friends and his business because he raised a
“˜nigger-lover,’ I would never have done this,”
Elliott said.

Her father, however, praised her work and assured her that it
was worth the price.

Elliott’s presentation was part of the ongoing Fraternity
and Sorority Education Program, which seeks to educate the UCLA
community on various social issues.

“On a big campus like this, diversity is important,”
said Dean Ho, president of IFC. “Jane Elliott teaches people
by pushing their buttons and making them uncomfortable. The way she
presents is very straight-forward, which really brings her points
in.”

Beth Kissack, a second-year political science student, said
Elliott’s work is valuable.

“Everyone should see this,” Kissack said. “It
expanded ideas I already had and made me think about things
I’d never thought about before. I think everyone should at
least know about her study.”

Although Elliott no longer teaches school, she still wants
people to take part in the Brown Eye, Blue Eye Experience. She has
given many presentations to both children and adults, and has also
given seminars

to major corporations.

To her surprise, adults behaved differently than the children
did during her seminars.

“The adults were worse than the kids,” Elliott said.
“I’ve given presentations where people have threatened
me, pulled knives on me and even hit me.”

In addition, Elliott said, other teachers have repeated her
experience.

“Numerous other teachers and schools have repeated this
experience,” Elliott said. “Some people have even lost
their jobs for doing it.”

This, she said, simply demonstrates how racism is still very
much a part of people’s lives and how they are trained to
hate.

Despite the difficulties Elliott faced, she feels that her
struggle was worth the problems it caused.

“The only two years I’ve regretted teaching were the
two years that I didn’t do the experiment,” Elliott
said. “I regret those years because I sent kids away without
giving them information that could have changed their
lives.”