Blue Eyed
(1995, 93 minutes)
“Elliott's exercise, initiated in 1968 as a ground breaking experiment
in anti-racist training, has been featured on Today, the Tonight show,
Donahue, Oprah, ABC News and PBS' Frontline. Elliott believes, "Blue
Eyed is by far the most comprehensive and useful video on my work
available; it sums up 28 years of experience in schools, universities
and corporations."
Elliott contends that "A person who has been raised and socialized in
America has been conditioned to be a racist... We live in two
countries, one black and one white." In contrast to the more usual
encounter group strategy, the feisty Elliott believes it's important
for whites to experience the emotional impact of discrimination for
themselves.
In Blue Eyed, we join a group of 40 teachers, police, school
administrators and social workers in Kansas City - blacks, Hispanics,
whites, women and men. The blue-eyed members are subjected to
pseudo-scientific explanations of their inferiority, culturally biased
IQ tests and blatant discrimination. In just a few hours under
Elliott's withering regime, we watch grown professionals become
despondent and distracted, stumbling over the simplest commands.
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Facilitator’s Guide available at;
http://www.newsreel.org/guides/blueeyed.htm
Shorter versions are also available:
The Essential Blue Eyed (50 minutes)
http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0027
The Thirty-Minute Blue Eyed
http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0153
A Class Divided (PBS – Frontline Documentary)
On the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in April 1968, Jane Elliott's third graders from the small, all-white town of Riceville, Iowa, came to class confused and upset. They recently had made King their "Hero of the Month," and they couldn't understand why someone would kill him. So Elliott decided to teach her class a daring lesson in the meaning of discrimination. She wanted to show her pupils what discrimination feels like, and what it can do to people.
Elliott divided her class by eye color -- those with blue eyes and those with brown. On the first day, the blue-eyed children were told they were smarter, nicer, neater, and better than those with brown eyes. Throughout the day, Elliott praised them and allowed them privileges such as a taking a longer recess and being first in the lunch line. In contrast, the brown-eyed children had to wear collars around their necks and their behavior and performance were criticized and ridiculed by Elliott. On the second day, the roles were reversed and the blue-eyed children were made to feel inferior while the brown eyes were designated the dominant group.
What happened over the course of the unique two-day exercise astonished both students and teacher. On both days, children who were designated as inferior took on the look and behavior of genuinely inferior students, performing poorly on tests and other work. In contrast, the "superior" students -- students who had been sweet and tolerant before the exercise -- became mean-spirited and seemed to like discriminating against the "inferior" group. "I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third-graders in a space of fifteen minutes," says Elliott. She says she realized then that she had "created a microcosm of society in a third-grade classroom."
Elliott repeated the exercise with her new classes in the following year. The third time, in 1970, cameras were present. Fourteen years later, FRONTLINE's "A Class Divided" chronicled a mini-reunion of that 1970 third-grade class.
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Teachers Guide
The Color of Fear
(90 minutes)
“The Color of Fear is an insightful, groundbreaking film about the state of race relations in America as seen through the eyes of eight North American men of Asian, European, Latino and African descent. In a series of intelligent, emotional and dramatic confrontations the men reveal the pain and scars that racism has caused them. What emerges is a deeper sense of understanding and trust. This is the dialogue most of us fear, but hope will happen sometime in our lifetime. “
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Ethnic Notions
“Marlon Riggs' Emmy-winning documentary that takes viewers on a disturbing voyage through American history, tracing for the first time the deep-rooted stereotypes which have fueled anti-black prejudice. Through these images we can begin to understand the evolution of racial consciousness in America.”
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White Privilege Conference
The annual White Privilege Conference (WPC) serves as a yearly opportunity to examine and explore difficult issues related to white privilege, white supremacy and oppression.
WPC provides a forum for critical discussions about diversity, multicultural education and leadership, social justice, race/racism, sexual orientation, gender relations, religion and other systems of privilege/oppression. WPC is recognized as a challenging, empowering and educational experience. The workshops, keynotes and institutes not only inform participants, but engage and challenge them, while providing practical tips and strategies for combating inequality. The WPC is pleased to announce the initiation of the WPC Youth Leadership Conference!"
NOTE: This conference is being held in Memphis on April 1-4, 2009 at the Hilton Memphis (939 Ridge Lake Blvd. See web site for more information)
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