Jane Elliott is an American educator known for her work in the field of diversity training. She is best known for her “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise, which demonstrated the power of discrimination. Jane Elliott is an American educator, anti-racism activist, and author. She is known for her “brown eyes, blue eyes” exercise, which she first conducted in 1968.
Last year, I visited a nearby city to do an anti-bullying presentation for their school. As a child, I saw a documentary with Jane Elliott and her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes teaching, when the school only allowed Caucasian children to have blue eyes, and made the kids with brown eyes wear a brown paper bag over their heads so they would not feel ‘different. ‘ Elliott was in the same town, appearing at a health conference. She still lives there today and has earned herself. A connection was made between her and the school’s principal. He wanted to include Elliott in his school’s program, which included an ‘inclusion of disabled’ unit for students. This unit focused on leadership and respect, and was given to all classes, except for the 9th grade – it was reserved for gifted students only.
Jane Elliott Quotes
“I’ve got news for you: There are going to be people other than Christians in the hereafter. What are you going to do about it? Are you not going to go?” — Jane Elliot
“When is this racism — when is this situation going to end for people of color in this country,” she asked, frustration heavy in her voice. “And when is anti-Semitism going to end for people who are of the Jewish faith in this country? And when is hatred of Muslims going to end for people who are Muslim in this country?” — Jane Elliot
“Should the color of some other person’s eyes have anything to do with how you treat them?” — Jane Elliot
“We don’t know anything about racism. We’ve never experienced it. If words can make a difference in your life for seven minutes, how would it affect you if you heard this every day of your life?” — Jane Elliot
“And people who say, ‘We aren’t all racists.’ If you graduated from high school in the United States of America and you didn’t learn how to be a racist you need to take the whole program over again, because that’s what the program is: how to be a good American.” — Jane Elliot
Jane Elliott Quotes Goodreads
“They need to realize that one of the things, one of the driving forces in this election was the knowledge people have that within 30 years white people will have lost their numerical majority in the United States of America.” — Jane Elliot
“What did you people who are wearing blue collars now find out today?” — Jane Elliot
“450,000 Iraqi children have died from starvation and lack of medicine as a result of our embargo. If you believe God loves little children – and hundreds of thousands more Iraqi children will die if there is war – you have to believe that God will judge us very harshly for this.” — Jane Elliot
“This country isn’t a melting pot. Think of this country as a stir fry. That’s what this country should be. A place where people are appreciated for who they are.” — Jane Elliot
“I get the same results with the exercise in Berlin or in the Netherlands that I do in the U.S. or Australia or Curacao. And what’s even more distressing is the fact that I’ve gotten the same results using the exercise with adults in Scotland and Australia in the year 2002 that I got using the exercise with children in Riceville, Iowa, in 1968.” — Jane Elliot
Jane Elliott Quotes Stand Up
“You convince those who are analogous to the brown-eyed people that they are superior, that they are perfect, that they have the right to rule. And you convince those who take the place of the blue-eyed students that they are less than. If you do that for a lifetime, what do you suppose that does to them?” — Jane Elliot
“…It’s time to insist that educators recognize the myth, teach about the myth, but teach the truth, that there’s only one race: it’s the human race.” — Jane Elliot
“White people’s number one freedom, in the United States of America, is the freedom to be totally ignorant of those who are other than white. We don’t have to learn about those who are other than white. And our number two freedom is the freedom to deny that we’re ignorant.” — Jane Elliot
“White people in this country are tweaked. We are raised to believe a myth of White superiority. Malcolm X, in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, said that White people’s “belief that they are ‘superior’ in some way is so deeply rooted that these things are in the national White subconscious.” — Jane Elliot
Best Jane Elliott Quotes
“Nobody’s born a bigot, you have to learn bigotry. Bigotry is a learned response.” — Jane Elliot
“I don’t wanna go to my grave knowing that we didn’t make a difference.” — Jane Elliot
“To sit back and do nothing is to cooperate with the oppressor.” — Jane Elliot
“We are still conditioning people in this country and, indeed, all over the globe to the myth of white superiority. We are constantly being told that we don’t have racism in this country anymore, but most of the people who are saying that are white. White people think it isn’t happening because it isn’t happening to them.” — Jane Elliot
“I am absolutely opposed to political correctness. You cannot confront hate speech until you’ve experienced it. You need to hear every side of the issue instead of just one.” — Jane Elliot
Dr Jane Elliott Quotes
“I loved raising my kids. I loved the process, the dirt of it, the tears of it, the frustration of it, Christmas, Easter, birthdays, growth charts, pediatrician appointments. I loved all of it.” — Jane Elliot
“We don’t need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in different things. You want the vegetables — the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers — to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.” — Jane Elliot
“I’m a practicing Christian – and I’m going to keep practicing till I get it right – but I don’t feel everyone has to practice the same religion that I do. You have a right to worship who you choose and how you choose to.” — Jane Elliot
“About 10,000 years ago, males and females were acting equitably and were treating one another as equals, and then males took over the power because they have physical power and physical strength.” — Jane Elliot
What Jane Elliott Taught Us: Insightful Quotes on Equality, Race, and Humanity
Jane Elliott is a teacher who is best known for her “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise, which taught about the effects of discrimination. She has said many insightful things about equality, race, and humanity.
Jane Elliott is an American educator and anti-racism activist who became famous for her “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise, in which she divided her elementary school class into two groups based on eye color and then treated the “blue-eyed” children differently.
Jane Elliott is an American educator and anti-racism activist. She is best known for her “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise, which she first conducted in 1968.