Racism Activists: Jane Elliott

Decent Essays
On Wednesday, September 28th, at the SECU Arena, I went to Jane Elliott an American former third-grade schoolteacher, anti-racism activist, and educator, as well as a feminist and LGBT activist. She is known for her "Blue eyes–Brown eyes" exercise. This was a very informative seminar. I must say, I was stunned to hear this elderly woman speak so openly honest towards her own race. She talked about how racism is a learned behavior. She addressed those who believe in white supremacy. Mrs. Elliott picked two audience members an African-American woman and a Caucasian man do help her bring awareness to the rest of us. She asked them both the same questions. Question one was do you think your skin color is more or less superior than another?

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    White Like Me In the documentary “White Like Me,” Tim Wise discusses the hidden or perhaps more accurately, ignored racism present in America. He starts by pointing out that most white Americans are blind to the privilege that being white provides them. When asked what it means to be white, a white person often wouldn’t really know, because they don’t really have to think about it, which in of itself is one of the many privileges of being white. In fact, white people feel that when people attempt to compensate for white privilege, they are being discriminated against.…

    • 650 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The American society has come a long way. There have been numerous advances in medicine and technology over the centuries but a society as advanced as the U.S.A cannot get passed the skin color of a person. The discrimination that blacks face on a daily basis is far from over though it is not as obvious as it used to be. Gone are the days when signs were put up prohibiting blacks from riding on the same bus as whites.…

    • 1116 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    We live in a time where unfortunately, racism is still an issue that many people across many races deal with. In America, it is mainly African-Americans, Hispanics, and Middle Eastern people that deal with the pain and hatred that takes shape in many different forms. In “Understanding White Privilege” by Frances Kendall, Ph.D., the author explores the concept of white privilege with an informative, yet critical tone in order to persuade readers to think differently. Kendall starts off by explaining the purpose of her article, which is to “to become clear about the basics of white privilege what it is and how it works” (2).…

    • 347 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The movie Do the right thing opens with the song lift every voice which is the anthem for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP), this caused me to automatically think of the rational issues being face at the time of this film, the injustice and oppression the African American people have gone through, and seem to still be going through today in the age of freedom and equality. The film then moves on to a young lady dancing to the song “fight the power”, which was a way to tell the African American communities to take a stand. The opening of the film also elutes to the system of unequal power and privilege. Chapter 8 of text has this quote, “In a democracy, the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the…

    • 1188 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Reading Response Paper #1 In the formulating of a “hierarchy of differences,” German physician Johann Blumenbach created a socially constructed classification of races. At the top of tier, the race that was deemed superior was Caucasians. At the bottom of the tier, the race that was deemed inferior, were African decent.…

    • 863 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “White” Like Me At the heart of American culture is the concept of racism; a continuous cycle perpetuated through years of injustice by slavery, violence, segregation, and hatred. Much like the symbolic “tree of life”, racism’s roots extend deep into the earth, drawing sustenance from each member of society. Yet in that survival tactic, it unconsciously steals a little more from one side—this is white privilege. “White privilege” is a mere social construction by which the dominant white group justifies their advantages and higher quality of life through diminution of people of color. To be a member of the white race, it is easy to overlook subtle inequalities—such as the wealth gap, career opportunities, education, etc.…

    • 1432 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Misunderstandings can cause many mishaps, sometimes even destroying the relationships that bind people together. In fact, a common unattributed quote says “The worst distance between two people is misunderstanding.” Take President Andrew Jackson, who served from 1829-1837, as an example. Many people look up to him as a founding father and stalwart of America, but they also associate him with racism, specifically that of the Native Americans and the Trail of Tears (when thousands of Cherokee men, woman, and children were forced to move across the country, resulting in many deaths), and African Americans. They think of him as a cruel bigot who was only interested in serving the white people.…

    • 778 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    To acknowledge a superior advantage is the first step to changing the world. Majority of white people seem surprised at the fact that there is still a divide between races in modern times. They’ve taken the pretentious viewpoint of claiming that they don’t ‘see race’ that they just ‘the person’ and while that might be what most activists are striving towards in modern times, all that really means is that they are benefiting from the privileges of being white. It is almost impossible to relate to someone who is struggling because of their skin color when the privileged have never had to face such unfair and unjust effects because of the way they look. I am white, I am female, and those are facts.…

    • 1582 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It is complicated to recount my experiences as an African-American woman without acknowledging the presence of white-privilege. The construction of white privilege is dynamic, but the term is defined as societal privileges, specifically in western societies, that benefit people identified as white, beyond what is commonly experienced by non-white people under the same social, political, or economic circumstances (SITE). Contemporarily, whiteness in any aspect has come- and continuous to come- with a vast array of benefits and advantages not shared by many people of color, specifically African- Americans. While writing this paper, I recounted the times I have experienced the power and the impact of white-privilege, but one specific instance…

    • 175 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    31). Elliott herself states that she needed to “deal with [the topic of discrimination] in a concrete way, and not just talk about it. [She] had talked about racism since the first day of school” (Peters, 1985). Riceville, at that time, both when the experiment had been conducted with this particular third-grade class, and when the Frontline documentary had been filmed, was a very small, predominately-white Christian community, where the children, while they had a vague idea of what discrimination was, did not seem to truly grasp the concept when Elliott had first brought it up to them. So in order to most effectively teach them, according to The Child and the Curriculum, Elliott would have to “psychologize it—that is, […] to take it and to develop it within the range and scope of the child 's life” (Dewey, 1906, p. 38).…

    • 1178 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An Ever Changing Country Although it has been decades since slavery ended, racism is still a profound controversy in the United States today. Charles Blow describes some of these levels of racism and its effects on people in the United States in his article “White America’s ‘Broken Heart’”. The article, as can be deciphered by the title, is about how white Americans today are handling the changing situations of equality in the United States. Blow published this article February 4, 2016, on The New York Times’ Opinion Pages on their website. Many Americans assume that racism is almost completely gone in today’s society, but Blow believes that it still lingers and is affecting the health of Caucasians in America.…

    • 1010 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr Jane Elliot a third-grade teacher performed an experiment with her students about racism. In the video, fourteen years later her former students who were in her third-grade class come back and watch the video to watch how she taught them about discrimination in a distinctive way. This experiment was conducted in two days on her third-grade students. In her experiment, she on one day made one group of her students the blue eyes superior and the brown eyes inferior. To conduct her experiment, she told the class that the superior group the blue eyes were smarter and are better than the brown eyed people.…

    • 856 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Persuasive Essay On Racism

    • 1028 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Sometimes I ask myself, “what would it be like to live my life fighting off the discrimination of the world because of the color of my skin?”. Personally, I can not imagine living a life where I am treated differently and pushed to the outside by the images of society just because of the color of my skin. Every human being is unique in their own way, whether it be personality, looks or even a special talent, but the color of skin should not matter. Racism is a huge human rights issues in today 's time, it challenges the right of equality to all humans. Everyone has learned about slavery and the civil rights movement in a history class.…

    • 1028 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    She believes the whites should not be superior and the blacks…

    • 1017 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background or his religion. People learn to hate from young age , and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite” (Mandela). The act of racism and inequality within the school system can be dated back to 1896 with the Plessy V. Ferguson case, which resulted in “ separate facilities for education” and an “ equal education”(123helpme). The lack of cultural diversity and ignorance exist all around us within today's society.…

    • 727 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays