How Racist Are You? Not the Lesson Intended
Last night I watched Channel 4′s documentary in which American school teacher Jane Elliot conducted a demonstration of how racism feels by dividing a group of volunteers along lines of eye colour and discriminating against the blue-eyed group.
From the outset the blue-eyed group were treated badly by Ms Elliot, being put down and ridiculed by the fierce moderator herself, segregated into an uncomfortable room for two hours, before being put with the brown-eyed group who she had attempted to prime to treat the blue-eyed group as inferior.
Her original aim had been to demonstrate to her own class of all white children how it felt to be discrminated against for something as arbitrary as eye-colour is unfair and illogical. She described that in her original exercise… “I watched how what had been marvelous, wonderful, thoughtful, co-operative children turn into nasty, viscous, discriminating little third-graders.”
Leaving aside how unethical her experiment with the school children placed in her care may have been psychologically, the programme provided a fascinating insight into human behaviour, though to my eyes not the one Jane Elliot intended.
The difficulty is that confirmation bias is part of the human condition. One of the brown-eyed group who contained a number of non-white people who were very sensitive to the focal issue of the exercise, explained to the blue-eyed group that they could have no idea what it would feel like to be standing at a shop counter, next in line, and be ignored in deference to someone else who was behind you in the queue because of the colour of your skin.
[It's probably fair to say that the exercise was compromised by the fact that the blue-eyed group was all white and the brown-eyed group predominantly non-white.]
Of course, most people have been over-looked in a queue whatever the colour of their skin; the issue is to what one attributes the event and what significance one attaches to it. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen as a result of racism, or in any way excusing something so abhorrent, but the issue is as much one of racial sensitivity in the part of the ‘victim’ as it is racism on the part of the ‘perpetrator’.
For me the programme was much more interesting as an exercise in group behaviour; all of the problems that make market research focus group were in evidence: polarised opinions, people moderating their position before becoming more extreme when they felt support existed for their stance, and so on.
The most positive aspect of the exercise were the people who refused to be drawn into it. One of the blue-eyed group stood up to the bullying Ms Elliot and was made to leave so as to enable the exercise to continue. His willingness to stand up to authority in an environment in which someone else was clearly controlling and authoritative is what gives me hope for society.
Most impressive of all was Wanda Summers, a brown-eyed shop manager who despite staying with the process for the duration of the exercise found it so unpleasant, upsetting and unjust that, after battling with her conscience for several hours elegantly undermined the exercise by revealing to the whole group that the brown-eyed people had been given the answers to a test in advance.
Here was someone who couldn’t and wouldn’t sit silently by when injustice was taking place.
She was, in the edit of the programme shown, the only one of the brown-eyed group to do this, but even so it was enormously heartening to see.
Society hasn’t come anywhere near to resolving the problems of racial divide and, given that we humans have a long and lousy history of fear and abuse towards other races, nations and creeds, it’s inevitably going to take some time.
But I can’t help believing that what the world needs is more Wanda Summers, not more Jane Elliots. Is there an exercise someone can design to create more people like her, I wonder?
Philip Graves
Carl F. Horowitz discusses Elliot & her race hustle here:
“You cannot over-estimate the damage to race relations that “diversity awareness” training is causing in this country. It’s having the opposite effect to that intended, causing divisions, resentment, and an increase in judgments based on race, where previously such things were actually quite rare. How do I know this? I was involved in putting together a diversity “toolkit” for a government department, and saw first-hand the effect it had as it was rammed down the throats of staff….
Elliott’s crusade against racism, launched from the far Left, is about manipulation and punishment of Caucasians. It provides no encounter with serious ideas, something she derisively terms “intellectualizing.” Whites are evil and parasitic; blacks are downtrodden unappreciated fountainheads of creativity. In a 1998 interview with an Australian Internet magazine, Webfronds, she pontificated:
You’re all sitting here writing in a language [English] that white people didn’t come up with. You’re all sitting here writing on paper that white people didn’t invent. Most of you are wearing clothes made out of cloth that white people didn’t come up with. We stole these ideas from other people. If you’re a Christian, you’re believing in a philosophy that came to us from people of color.
White people, she added, “invented racism.” At least Susan Sontag, in her infamous diatribe of some 40 years ago likening the white race to “the cancer of human history,” credited whites with producing, among other things, Mozart, Kant, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare and parliamentary government. Elliott credits whites with virtually nothing except oppression of people of color. Less a heartland Susan Sontag than a white Louis Farrakhan, Elliott is consumed with the need to force whites to experience shame and atonement. She’s in good company. As Ryan O’Donnell pointed out in these pages nearly four years ago, virtually all the early leaders of the diversity industry began as hard-Left activists in the Sixties.”
Hi Phil,
this is indeed a fascinating post and exercise.
because that kind of prejudice, well, I attended a major seminar at Auschwitz Birkenau the summer of the 50 anniversary of its release.
Racism/ethnocentrism is about any kind of fear belief system and indeed about human behavior.
ok, and on ANOTHER level
The Milgrim experiment.
Part of what is SO fascinating.
is these were volunteers.
notice all who allowed it?
everyone who participated in it
and even those who allowed themselves to be removed from the room?
without taking everyone with them?
I love studying the nuances of Milgram’s authority experiments.
there are so many nuances and applications in life.
And you thought I was just blonde and blogged about dating
Most intriguing, Phil.
Happy Dating and Relationships,
April Braswell
Single Boomer Dating Expert
Hi Phil, glad you took on a lite subject that was so easily commented on! i don’t believe racism will ever go away. there are certain people that feel it is their obligation to ensure that it remains and flourishes. There are even groups of whites who are against whites!
when the human mind can decide if it likes someone just by hearing a name and never meeting the person how on earth are people to overcome racism!
Don Shepherd
cENTRAL oREGON eXPERT
Phil,
Interesting post!
You remind me what Kevin Hogan talked about Drug Awareness Program actually increased drug abuse, NOT reducing it!
John Ho
Numerology Expert Helps Understanding Personality for Better Influence & Persuasion
It is possible to elicit Ms Wanda’s stratagy, as well as the man, Mr Blue-eyes who stood up to Ms Elliot. All it takes is the willingness of people to see the value in doing so which is IMHO the biggest challenge.
Keri Eagan
AlternativeHealing*Insight
I recently heard a story of racism that involved friends of mine when I was a child. I don’t remember the incident, though I was there. It made me very sad. I had heard about this experiment before, and many others that could never be conducted these days but had startling results.
Lisa McLellan
Babysitting Services – Babysitter in your area
Phil,
Great post on an oft-explored and controversial topic. It’s my first time hearing of this experiment. It is encouraging to see that there are Wanda Summers and Mr. Blue Eyes type people out there that refuse to play the “race-game” that is so prevalent in the US.
Health, Fitness for Working People — Darryl Pace
Did Wanda Summers really know what the exercise was about? I think not! all she seems to be concerned was how jane elliot was treating everyone. yes she was hard but this was her role that she needed to play, hard and no shit taking. the world needs more of this woman take a good look and the youth of today and society we let small things out of our hands and only deal with them when its a big problem for everyone else. thanks wanda for being the brain dead person that you are. you stuffed it up for so many people bacause you weren’t LISTENING! and now we will never know the true outcome.
@David David, all I can say is that you and I clearly have a very different interpretation of what took place.
History is littered with examples where people have been told authoritatively that they should do something morally reprehensible and have gone along with it. If more people were like Wanda Summers fewer bad things would happen.
The “true outcome” is the outcome that took place (the fact that it failed to make Jane Elliot’s point doesn’t make what occurred invalid, nor does it make Jane Elliot’s original thesis invalid).
From my perspective Wanda Summer’s brain was the only one shown to be morally alive in the brown-eyed group.