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JACOB SANTOS
Special to The Leader
During the month of February, Fredonia’s Black Student Union sponsored a number of events to celebrate Black History Month. Last Wednesday, BSU held two events featuring anti-racism activist and educator Jane Elliott as guest speaker.
She is widely known for her “blue eyes-brown eyes” exercise, where participants can experience discrimination based on the color of their eyes. While speaking at her afternoon workshop and evening lecture, Elliott expressed her dissatisfaction with the lack of white students attending to hear her speak.
“[SUNY Fredonia] has about 4,000 students, 5.6% is black. And you have me to discuss racism in the United States and the room is less than 5.6% white,” said Elliott. “That makes me a little bit cross.”
Elliott was born and raised in Riceville, Iowa, a small rural town with an overwhelmingly white and Christian population totaling less than 1,000 people.
She first began her “blue eyes-brown eyes” exercise with her third grade students in 1968, shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Elliott told her students they’ll be doing an activity throughout the day. She then designated blue eyed students as the superior group, saying they were smarter and better than their brown eyed peers. Students with brown eyes were made to wear collars in order to distinguish themselves, and were given less privileges while the blue eyed children received extra privileges.
It didn’t take long for blue-eyed students to feel superiority, which became most evident in their name calling toward the other students. “Brown Eyes” became an offensive term in the classroom.
The tables were turned the following day, as Elliott reversed the exercise designating brown-eyed students as the superior group. By the end of the exercise, all students experienced discrimination solely by the amount of pigment in their eyes, which she related to the acts of discrimination solely by the pigment in one’s skin.
This past February marks 49 years since Elliott first began her “blue eyes-brown eyes” exercise. She has continued to educate about the reality of racism in our nation ever since.
Here at SUNY Fredonia, many were eager to hear Elliott speak while visiting the campus. Her popularity among college students is largely due to videos posted on social media, where Elliott conducts her exercise with young adults. The most popular video shows Elliott conducting her exercise when a young white woman walks out of the room extremely upset.
“I think what was most valuable was Elliott’s point about how racism created race, not the other way around,” said Victor Morales, a sophomore English adolescent education and political science double major, who attended the evening lecture. “It’s a reminder that we are not essentially different just because of our race. It doesn’t make us smarter or more capable.”
While Elliott is widely recognized for her “blue eye-brown eye” exercise, her time at SUNY Fredonia primarily consisted of her speaking. Her talk contained thought provoking questions, and even had students come up in front of the audience to engage as a whole to understand the differences society teaches as superior among other people.
Elliott received a grand applause at the end of both the afternoon workshop and evening lecture. Her message about combating racism electrified many who had the opportunity to hear her speak.
“I am quite happy that the Black Student Union brought Jane Elliot, [as well as] the spectacular turnout,” said Nalani Love-Harris, a senior television broadcasting major who also attended the evening lecture. “But it’s still disheartening that the people that needed to be there the most were not actually there.”
Elliott’s talks were co-sponsored by the Office of the President, the Departments of History and Sociocultural and Justice Systems, the College of Education, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the EDP program, the Ethnic Studies program, Latinos Unidos, Pride Alliance and Sister Circle.