Blue Eyed, Brown Eyed Inventor & Anti-Racism Expert, Jane Elliot with Jeffrey Van Dyk

The Jeffrey Van Dyk Show | Episode 2 

Blue Eyed, Brown Eyed Inventor & Anti-Racism Expert, Jane Elliot with Jeffrey Van Dyk

Jane Elliott went from a 3rd grade school teacher in Riceville, Iowa to one of the world’s most recognized lecturers on race. The day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In April 1968, she changed her 3rd grade lesson plan to what she became known for – her ‘Blue eyes/Brown eyes” exercise. It exposes prejudice and bigotry for what it is – an irrational class system based upon purely arbitrary factors. She has since led this exercise in civic and corporate settings for many decades, highlighting the arbitrary and irrational basis of prejudice, an issue that Americans continue to grapple with more than five decades after she started. She’s a real firecracker with a huge heart and an unapologetic voice that’s on full display in this conversation!

The Jeffrey Van Dyk Show

by Jane Elliott | Blue Eyed, Brown Eyed Inventor & Anti-Racism Expert

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Show Notes

Jane Elliott is an internationally known teacher, lecturer, diversity trainer and recipient of the National Mental Health Associate Award for Excellence in Education. She has been a guest lecturer at numerous colleges and universities, civil service organizations, elementary schools, corporations and businesses. She’s also been on multiple television shows, including The Today Show, Tonight with Johnny Carson, Donahue, and the Oprah Winfrey show.

Elliott exposes prejudice and bigotry for what it is, an irrational class system based upon purely arbitrary factors. And if you think this does not apply to you. . . you are in for a rude awakening.

It won’t help much to be prepared to face Jane Elliott. This elderly woman will tear down any shield. Even we, the spectators in BLUE EYED, can’t get rid of this feeling of uneasiness, embarrassment, anxiety and utterly helpless hatred when she starts keeping people down, humiliating them, deriding them, incapacitating them. No doubt about this: for three quarters of the time in this documentation Jane Elliott is the meanest, the lowest, the most detestful, the most hypocritical human being hell has ever spit back on earth. But she should be an example for all of us.

Links to Jane’s work:

Web: https://janeelliott.com
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott
Original Blue-Eyed Brown-Eyed video: https://youtu.be/dLAi78hluFc
IG: https://www.instagram.com/janeelliottofficial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/blibrijane