Diversity trainer and human rights activist Jane Elliott said racism has increased under President Donald Trump, and his supporters were determined not to let a woman run the country for four to eight years after having an African-American in charge.
"The last election, as far as I'm concerned, was a direct response of having a black man in the White House for eight years," Elliott said.
While she was in town, the creator of the acclaimed “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise, sat down with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist James E. Causey to talk about race relations in America; white privilege; the Donald Trump effect; and how racism is a learned response.
Elliott, 84, came up with her “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise while teaching third-graders at a school in Iowa. She conducted the exercise in discrimination the day after Martin Luther King. Jr. was killed.
Elliott took her class of all-white, all-Christian children and split them up according to the color of their eyes. She treated white children with blue or green eyes the way America has treated minorities. The next day, she gave the brown-eyed children the power.
“We learned more that day then we wanted to know,” said Elliott, who was the keynote speaker at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in September.
The study taught Elliott that racism is a learned response.
“You have to treat bigotry and that’s what we do in this country,” she said. “I found out what if feels like to be on the receiving end of racism because I’m blue-eyed and the brown-eyed children were on the top in the first day.”
The next day the roles were reversed, and students on the bottom were subjected to the same discrimination.
Diversity trainer Jane Elliott talks racism, white privilege and Trump effect
Creator of the acclaimed "Blue Eyes/Brown eyes" exercise talks about race relations and why things don't change.
www.jsonline.com