A Diversity-Training Tool We Don't Need(kids need to experience prejudice to understand prejudice?)

Sacbee.com ^ | June 18, 2004 | LINDA SEEBACH

[fight_truth_decay]

(SH) - One of the more sadistic exercises practiced by some operators who drive the diversity machine goes by the name "Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes." You may have heard of it, because an elementary-school teacher in Iowa first perpetrated it on her fourth-graders in 1968 and it quickly became notorious.

Jane Elliott divided her students into two groups based on their eye color. The blue-eyed children were forced to wear collars symbolizing inferiority, and were constantly humiliated by the brown-eyed children, egged on by their teacher. Elliott once told an interviewer, "It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were." She described how one of the blue-eyed girls changed from a "brilliant, self-confident carefree, excited little girl to a frightened, timid, uncertain little almost-person." You would think that any normal person would realize that she had just done an evil thing. But not Elliott. She repeated the abuse with subsequent classes, and finally turned it into a fully commercial enterprise, hawking workshops, lectures, books and videos. You can find her on the Web, but I won't give you the address because I think she is a disgrace.

Here's how her Web site advertises the workshop: "This is a one-day seminar in which participants will be exposed to an exercise in discrimination based on eye color. Blue-eyed participants will be identified as the inferior group and all the negative stereotypes ordinarily applied to people of color and women by white people and men will be applied to them. Those people having green or hazel eyes will be designated inferior or superior as the instructor sees fit." One of the many companies that sell her videos describes the results this way: "In just a few hours, we watch grown professionals become distracted and despondent, stumbling over the simplest commands." Why am I telling you about this now? Because an extremely and righteously angry woman wrote me recently that her son, a ninth-grader at Peak to Peak Charter School in Lafayette, Colo., had been subjected to this abusive treatment in his English literature class, which was studying "Othello."

[fight_truth_decay]

My Disclaimer: sacbee material must be excerpted so don't shoot the messenger!

Background:

This experiment coupled with the great experiments performed by Stanley Milgram in the 1960s explain how Nazi Germany, Rowanda and 'inhuman' atrocities of Bosnia occured.

From: An Interview with Jane Elliott --(Time frame: 1968-today) "Elliott chose of eye colour because during the second world war eye colour was one of the ways for the nazi's to determine if someone was send to the gas chamber or not. Brown eyes could be fatal even if you had a beautiful German name. "I had no idea how it would work out. If I had known the enormous impact it had on my students and the community, I would not have done it." says Elliott. As a direct result of the success' of the exercise her four children were taunted, spit on and molested by their teachers, their classmates and the parents of their classmates. "From get the Elliott kids it became get the nigger-lover's kids" says Elliott."

"Not only her children got it. The day after her appearance on the very popular Johnny Carson Show, the people in Riceville also decided not to buy from her father anymore. They feared black people would think that they all thought like her' and blacks would think life was good in Riceville and move over there in droves. Father Elliott went bankrupt. Of course this didn't go down very well in Jane Elliott's family. "My mother thought I'd gone crazy and asked me: can't you just stop with this nonsense? She has never forgiven me. My brothers, self-made millionaires and conservative Republicans wondered what the hell my problem was?". Her father, however, has never stopped her. In fact, it was his contradictory attitude that made Jane the odd one out in her family. "My father always said:'never put a stone on another man's path' or justice will never be disadvantageous to man' or a just cause is a good thing'. At the same time he wouldn't have his daughters marry a black man. I thought that wasn't right . I was crazy about my father. It's a shame he was so prejudiced".

This exercise is used today and teaching aids are available. Parent, non-parent, student and/or teacher/professional opinion? A good lesson on diversity, abuse, criminal, parents overreacting, or do kids need to experience prejudice to understand prejudice?

[gitmo]

One of the many companies that sell her videos describes the results this way: "In just a few hours, we watch grown professionals become distracted and despondent, stumbling over the simplest commands."

Bull Hockey.

[steplock]

For this phase of the communist plan, see:

C-3, C-4, D, F-(all)


Antonio Gramsci, 1891-1937

...A. The New Order (L'Ordine Nuovo)
......1. Italian Communist newspaper, founded 1919
......2. Co-founder of Italian Communist Party, 1921
......3. Pre-Prison Writings, ed. Richard Bellamy (Cambridge, 1994)
......4. Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Intl. Publishers, 1971)

...B. Lenin was wrong, and the Leninist revolution will fail
......1. The workers will see the revolutionary government as a new boss
......2. When the revolution fails, the west will re-import Capitalism

...C. Gradual revolution through infiltration & subversion by revolutionaries
......1. Infiltrate the State: elective & appointed office; judgeships
......2. Infiltrate the military: enlist & subvert from within
......3. Infiltrate justice: undermine and discredit state constitutions
......4. Infiltrate education: professors & administrators
......5. Infiltrate & discredit religion: scoundrels as clergymen
......6. Register, then license, then confiscate all privately held weapons

...D. Form or infiltrate international organizations to promote goals such as "global understanding," "economic development," "transfer of resources"

...E. Both Capitalism and Judaeo-Christian culture must be destroyed before a Communist revolution can succeed
......1. Religious sentiment cannot be destroyed through legislation, as Lenin believed, but must be redirected from the divine to the state
.........a. Terror will only drive Religion underground
.........b. Religion will then reemerge when Leninism fails
.........c. So Religion must be destroyed in the minds of men

......2. Infiltrate religious academies and become priests and clergymen
.........a. Subtly promote heresy within religious organizations
.........b. Infiltrators must act so as to discredit the church
............(1) Cause financial and sexual scandals
............(2) See that this is given a high profile in the news
............(3) Like-minded infiltrators in the media will cooperate

......3. Once religion is discredited from within, continuously promote the idea that only the state can solve the problems that have been traditionally brought before the church

...F. When propagating revolutionary ideas, cloak them in polite terms
......1. National Consensus
......2. Popular Mandate
......3. National Pacification
......4. Pluralism
......5. Global Community
......6. Economic Justice
......7. Economic Democracy
......8. Liberation Theology
......9. Direct Action

...G. Marxists "must enter into every civil, cultural, and political activity in every nation, leavening them as yeast leavens bread."

[cyborg]

I remember this idiot Jane Elliot on the tv... even when I was little I hated her guts. How about that for some youthful prejudice! *lol*

[GSlob]

For millenia (as far as we have records, starting with schools in ancient China - Confucius comes to mind) mankind educated its offspring without any specific diversity education. As there were no particular problem, one must conclude that it was not needed. It is a recent phenomenon, and artificial one, to boot.

[3catsanadog]

Is this on the web somewhere? Everything listed is what is happening now.

And to think I pooh-poohed the very idea of communists taking over this country when my dear father would utter warnings 30 some years ago.

[Larry Lucido]

You must be one of them blue-eyes. LOL!

[Reactionary]

Ah, "brown eyes, blue eyes." It's the perfect game for the fascist pig multiculturalists.

[cyborg]

Jane Elliot is from that generation who can't let go of past racial issues. Also, her life earnings depend on making mountains out of molehills. BTW, I didn't know about ethnic diversity or racial issues till I went to college and people started preaching to me the need for racial diversity. I didn't need it in my life and it wasn't essential to my education.

[cyborg]

hehehe yeah! LOL

[ClearCase_guy]

do kids need to experience prejudice to understand prejudice?

I've told my kids not to drink drano. I tell them it's bad. But I'm not sure they "get it". Perhaps I should have my kids drink drano -- then they will understand the problem better ...

[fight_truth_decay]

Bull Hockey

Wow am psychic!...thought that might be exactly the first response = BS.

[steplock]

Sorry to answer this way (I'm a bit on the busy side right now) but...

Go to http://school.gohotsprings.com
on the left column simply type in 'gramsci' in the Search Box.

There are several sources on line there - but if you want everything ....

There is always www.google.com type in "antonio gramsci" (include the quotes)

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

You would think that any normal person would realize that she had just done an evil thing.

They see it as a good thing. Rather then stopping children from picking on other children as children are wont to do she legitimized it. Everybody is now a victim. Nobody will rescue the victim because their fears have been activated and enforced. Bullies now have all the power and unless you become a bully you will be a victim.

What a evil little twit.

[randog]

I saw Jane Elliott's lecture (lunatic rant, actually) about 7 years ago, when I was in college. It was a required lecture for my "diversity" class (which did more to convince me that liberals are f*@#*& crazy than make me a smiley, happy, compliant "citizen").

I had never heard of this blue-eye/brown-eye experiment before, so I have to admit I was curious before the lecture. It was touted as a "groundbreaking" experiment, so I went in with an open mind to see what all the fuss was about.

What a crock! I couldn't believe that this woman (womyn?) was heralded as a great "researcher" for what basically amounted to harrassing people and observing that they felt bad about being bad-mouthed. Wow, stop the presses.

If that wasn't enough, Elliott ended her lecture/rant by going off on how the map of North and South America is all wrong--South America is, according to her, misrepresented on all our maps and should be shown to be about twice the size of North America (S. America = ~6.8M sq. miles; N. America = ~9.4M sq. miles). This was proof, of course, that us gringos were all racists. Gosh, who knew? Elliott then set up shop after her dog-and-pony show and sold "anatomically-correct" maps of the western hemisphere. If that wasn't funny enough, there were people that were actually buying them (I have no doubt that those people are already in line for Fahrenheit 9/11).

Needless to say, it was at this point that I felt like the last human in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and ran, not walked, from the lecture hall.

[Fintan]

I remember this idiot Jane Elliot on the TV... even when I was little I hated her guts. How about that for some youthful prejudice! *lol*

 

True story.

 

About a year ago, my company sent me to (ahem) "Diversity Training", a six-hour seminar. The early part of the day was spent watching a video of the original PBS (of course) documentary of Ms. Elliott's early experiments in mind control.

Of the 30 participants in this class, I'd say 10 thought it was just "wonderful" what this woman did to very young, impressionable minds. The rest of us were outraged, including one participant (I won't say who) who compared this cretin's "experiment' to something that would put a smile on the faces of Dr. Mengele or Pavlov.

This part of our seminar was only supposed to take one hour, including "discussion" groups. Needless to say, the 2/3 of us who found it repugnant completely disrupted the tight schedule and pretty much screwed up the moderator's plan.

[Nea Wood]

I've seen this creature and her experiments on television. She is a nasty, humorless, self-righteous witch. She ought to be horse whipped for what she's done to kids.

[cyborg]

Wow I had the same experience sitting on two diversity panels once. Amazing... I didn't tell them what they wanted to hear I suppose.

[Siamese Princess]

A great deal of what is called "prejudice" should actually be called "postjudice" -- common sense tempered with experience. As unfashionable as it is to say, there are such things as group cultural characteristics, good and bad, and stereotypes are generally accurate, though they may be exaggerated. Members of Group A may be fully justified in mistrusting, avoiding and even despising members of Group B. Human beings also, by nature, prefer to associate with those they consider their own kind. Diversity is NOT a source of strength.

Combatting "prejudice" and promoting equality is a splendid excuse for a government to massively increase its power and interfere in every aspect of its citizens' lives.