29 It’s All About Ignorance:

Reflections from the Blue-eyed/

Brown-eyed Exercise
Jane Elliott

On Friday, April 5, 1968, I entered my third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa,

determined to teach my students about the ugliness of prejudice and the discrimi-
nation that results from it. I had decided, while watching the news the night before,
that the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., who had been one of our “Heroes of the
Month” in February, could not go unnoticed by my students. Our lesson plan for the
day, since we were involved in studying the Native American unit, was to learn the
Sioux Indian prayer that says, “Oh, Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man
until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.” I had decided that I would arrange to
have that prayer answered for my students, on this fateful day, by treating them
fairly or unfairly, based solely on the color of their eyes. I didn’t create this exercise
from nothing, you realize; I modeled it on what I learned in the third grade about
Adolph Hitler sending people into gas chambers, based, in part, on the color of their
eyes. By the end of the day, my students had learned more than I had ever taught
them before, and I had learned more than they had.
The first thing I learned was that I didn’t know anything about racism, its causes,
and/or effects. I had always been taught, by the significant adults in my environ-
ment, that discrimination is caused by prejudice, that prejudice is the problem. All
you have to do is change people’s hearts and behavioral change will follow. I was
certain that the same thing would happen with my students; so, after we had said the
Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag and had sung “God Bless America,” we began to
talk about the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. It was obvious that my students
weren’t internalizing anything that was being said; so I asked them whether they
had any idea how it would feel to be treated as many people of color are treated in
this country. Of course, they didn’t, but they indicated that they’d like to try
something that would help them know a little bit more than they knew about that
situation.
I told them that skin color and eye color are caused by the same chemical,
melanin, and perhaps we could spend the day judging one another by the color in
our eyes. They were more than willing to do what I suggested: After all, most of the
things that we did in that room were fun, so why shouldn’t this be? When all the
students were in agreement with the plan, I told them that brown-eyed people
were smarter than blue-eyed people and I could prove it to them. Immediately,

655

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 656 elliott

brown-eyed Debbie,1 from her desk in the front row, looked up at me through her
thick, corrective lenses and demanded, “How come yer the teacher, here, if you’ve
got them blue eyes?” My first thought was, “Why, you little shit!” And my second
thought was, “Well, now the fat’s in the fire! How do you like being on the receiving
end of your own plan?” I immediately justified my being the teacher by claiming
that my father had hazel eyes and that gave me the right to be a teacher of children
of all kinds, because I could understand people of all kinds.
That was only the beginning of a day of awesome enlightenment. I watched
several brown-eyed dyslexic boys, who could neither read nor spell with any
degree of accuracy, become readers and spellers in the space of a few minutes. I
had, by that time in the year, been trying to teach those kids to spell and read for
eight months, with very little success. And now, suddenly, because I changed my
expectations of them, told them they had magic eyes, and reinforced their
positive behaviors – and, of course, all their behaviors were positive, since
they were brown-eyed – they were free to apply everything they had been
exposed to in the previous days. Was I hysterical? Was my imagination working
overtime?
Not only did my children with learning differences do better on that awful day,
the children who until that day had been model students – bright, happy, smart,
quick, interested, involved, caring little people – became frightened, timid, dull,
disinterested, academically challenged children. They were afraid to speak up
because it was obvious that none of their contributions were going to be positively
reinforced and, indeed, might be ridiculed by those fellow students who, until they
got those great eyes, had been their friends. Those former friends were now
malicious, provocative little brown-eyed despots.
My students had never felt any ill will toward people based on the color of
their eyes until I told them the lie, and then used every mistake the Blueys
made to prove the reliability of my claims of their ineptitude. Of course, I also
used everything that the Brownies accomplished to prove the validity of my
claims of their brilliance.2 I created prejudice where there had never been any
previous to that day, and I reinforced it by either damning or praising their
behaviors. The more I criticized the Blues, the more miserable they became,
and the happier and more cooperative the Browns became. Alarmingly, the
more I praised the Browns, the more they exhibited the same discriminatory
behaviors that they had witnessed in the significant adults in their
environment.
I think that was the most hideous aspect of that horrible day; For the first time in
my life, I got to see the way I look to people of color, because, during that 6-hour
period, my brown-eyed students exhibited the same behaviors they had seen me
exhibit toward the blue-eyed students.

1 All names have been changed.

2 Blueys and brownies are terms commonly used refer to people with blue and brown eyes in the Blue-
eyed/Brown-eyed exercise.

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 It’s All About Ignorance 657

Robert Burns (1986), the Scottish poet, said, “O would some power the gift to
give us to see ourselves as others see us.” I got that opportunity on April 5, 1968,
and it literally changed the way I see myself and the world around me.
I went to the teachers’ lounge at lunchtime to find someone to whom I could
describe what was happening in my classroom. I needed someone to share this
agony with and, hopefully, help me resolve what I thought I was seeing in my
students. A number of teachers were in the lounge, including the two other third-
grade teachers. I tried to describe for them what was going on and when I’d finished
my agonizing recounting of the morning’s events, one teacher, who was in her early
fifties, said to me: “I don’t know how you have time to do that extra stuff; it’s all I
can do to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic.” Well, in my estimation, she hadn’t
really taught reading, writing, and arithmetic yet, so she might as well have done
the extra stuff.
As I recall, another teacher, who was in her early sixties and had been molding
young minds for more than 30 years, responded to my despair over the killing of
Martin Luther King Jr., by saying: “I don’t know why you’re doing that. I thought it
was about time somebody shot that son-of-a-bitch.” I waited for someone to
contradict her, or at least to show some disapproval of what she had said. Not
one teacher even frowned. No one asked her if she realized what she had just
said. No one reminded her that she could lose her job for saying something so
despicable. Every single one of those teachers either smiled or laughed and nodded.
She had expressed their feelings perfectly, and, as the senior member of the group,
she had the most right to do so. I went back to my classroom determined that no
student would leave my classroom willing to tolerate expressions as ignorant as
those that were voiced by those two “educators,” and, seemingly, supported by the
rest of the teachers in the lounge.
In the middle of the afternoon, we needed to use the pull-down wall map
during social studies class; as I pulled down the map, the ring slipped off my
finger and the map wrapped around and around itself, with that irritating
flapping noise that we all hate. “Well,” I said, “I’ve done it again!” At that
point darling Debbie once again let me know exactly what my place was in
that room: “Well, whaddaya expect? You’ve got blue eyes, havencha?” For
just an instant, and as God is my judge, I was furious at that child, and then I
became furious at myself. I had planned and executed this lesson to teach
students not to treat others badly and here I was reacting the same way. And
then, blue-eyed Alan, in the back row said, “Aw, Debbie. Her eyes ain’t got
nuthin to do with it. You know she never has been able to do that right.” I
didn’t chastise him for making such a negative remark about me; I thanked
him, because he was defending me, not as his teacher, but as a member of his
“race.” If my eyes could make me inferior, then his eyes, which were the same
as mine, might have the same effect on him, and he had to let everyone know
that eye color had nothing to do with the mistake; I was just naturally
incompetent in that area, and always had been.

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 658 elliott

The Lessons I Have Learned

The Brown-eyed/Blue-eyed exercise was the beginning of 40+ years of
teaching and learning about prejudice and discrimination. After having done the
exercise with people ages 6 to 78, in most of the states of the United States, and
several countries, I have come to the following conclusions, among others.
We’ve got the axiom wrong: Prejudice does not cause discrimination; discrimi-
nation causes prejudice. It’s a simple scenario: Pick out a group of people on the
basis of a physical characteristic over which they have no control; accuse those who
are afflicted with that physical characteristic of being inferior; lower your expecta-
tions of them, and when they begin to live down to your expectations of them – as
they will, since you won’t allow them to exceed your expectations – use their
incompetency to prove that your expectations were accurate. When they react
negatively to your unfair treatment and/or words, blame their negative behavior
on their inferiority, which is the result of that physical characteristic. In a very short
time, you can convince them, and everyone witnessing this exchange, that you were
right about your description of “those people” in the first place.
And, if you sustain the situation long enough, you can create a group of citizens
who are so convinced of their own inadequacy that they can be led like lambs to the
slaughter. It’s even more profound if, once you get them convinced of their
vulnerability and need for guidance, you convince the superior group members to
contribute some learning or living materials for their use, thereby giving the
superior group members the opportunity to remind everyone of how kind, accept-
ing, and even loving the “good guys” are: “We’re doing this because we love you,
and you really ought to be grateful.” It’s even more powerful if you throw in some
religiosity: “If God didn’t want these people to be treated this way, He would have
put a stop to it.” Or, one of my favorites, “I’m so thankful that God made me
White.”
I suddenly realized, as a by-product of this exercise, how easy it is to hold onto
power, no matter how undeserving you are of having it. All you have to do is appeal
to our desires to be part of the power structure, to be accepted by the majority, and
to be seen as one of the power players, and we will cooperate with despotic
behaviors. I watched students in my third-grade classroom who had been best
friends for years go to the dark side to guarantee that they would not be treated as
the inferior group members were being treated. I saw the same behaviors in a grown
man in an exercise in Kansas City who, when I asked him why he didn’t defend one
of his blue-eyed female peers, said, “Well, I knew it couldn’t last forever, and as
long as you’re doing it to her, you aren’t doing it to me.”
Another lesson I’ve learned, after doing this exercise hundreds of times, is that
we don’t have a so-called Black problem. You can’t blame 100% of the problem on
11% of the population, unless you’re willing to admit that that 11% is more
powerful than the other 89%. Skin color was not a problem until the 1700s, when
Linnaeus began to categorize plants according to physical differences, and ignorant

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 It’s All About Ignorance 659

scientists decided that if it made sense to use his methods on plants, it would make
equally good sense to categorize humans in the same way (see Linnaeus, 1788).
They were wrong, and we are living with their errors to this day. You might say that
we are heirs to their errors. The consensus among scientists is that the first modern
human beings who evolved on this earth were undoubtedly Black, and every person
living on the face of the earth today carries in his or her genetic structure the
memory of those first Black females’ genetic structure (Walker, Smith, & Smith,
1987). We are all members of the same race, the human race. Believing that there
are four or five races on earth is like believing that the sun is a god in a golden
chariot who flies across the sky every morning. That latter belief was an ancient
Greek myth, and so is the story of several different races a myth.
I found out that you don’t have to have people of color in your immediate
environment to have racism. The presence of Black people isn’t causing the
problem. There were no people of color in Riceville, Iowa; yet, when I asked my
students, that year and every year that I did the exercise, what they knew about
Black people, they knew, and vehemently stated, every negative stereotype that I’d
ever heard about Blacks, and some that would never have occurred to me. When I
asked them how they knew these things were true, the answer was always the same,
“Because my dad said so!” Those kids had never been in the company of a person
of color and yet they knew, and were comfortable in repeating, all this garbage.
Those innocent children had been systematically and deliberately taught to be
racists; they were not born that way, nor were their parents. Their racism was the
result of the conditioning that they had been exposed to by the power structure in
this society.
I quickly became aware of the fact that the way White women and people of
color in this country act is not because of a weakness peculiar to their genes; it’s the
way human beings react when they are treated unfairly on the basis of a physical
characteristic over which they have no control. They aren’t acting out because of
the way White men feel about them, mind you. I suspect that most White women
and people of color are more concerned about how they are going to be impacted by
unfair behaviors than they are about others’ attitudes toward them in general. The
first time I really saw undeniable evidence of this is the day I was invited to speak to
a Rotary Club luncheon in a nearby community. At that time, women weren’t
allowed to join the Rotary; but, since I’d been on the Johnny Carson Tonight show,
as a result of an article written in the paper about the Blue-eyed/Brown-eyed
exercise, I was deemed qualified to address their august group.
The leader of the Rotary Club and I decided we should put the members through
the Blue-eyed/Brown-eyed exercise. After all, that Chinese proverb says, “Tell me
and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.” Those men
didn’t understand and they went a little berserk, not because of my prejudice but
because of the way I was treating them. That was 46 years ago, and one of the blue-
eyed males was still so angry at me when I saw him 20 years later, he would cross
the street to avoid meeting me as I walked near the store that my husband and I later
owned in that community.

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 660 elliott

In 1985, I was hired to do the exercise with groups of employees in a major

corporation in the western part of the United States. At the end of each exercise, as a
culminating activity, I instructed each of the Brown-eyed people, who represented
the power group in this exercise, to write three adjectives that described how the
Blueys looked to them during the exercise. I instructed the Blueys to do the same
thing – to write three adjectives describing how the Browns looked to them during
this event.
The words were to be written without consultation among the members of the
group. After all had finished writing, first the Browns and then the Blues read their
words aloud so that the entire group could see how the participants viewed those
who were in the opposite group. The words were utterly astounding. The Browns in
that and every group that I’ve worked with in these 40+ years wrote the same
words: distressed, inferior, intimidated, rebellious, docile, withdrawn, stupid,
embarrassed, angry, confused, defensive, and frustrated. We then discussed how
many of these words are the ones we use to describe women on a day-to-day basis.
We had created a stereotype of a group of adult, educated, productive, capable
White males and females that was similar in content to commonly held stereotypes
of frightened White women and people of color. The Brown-eyed people in the
group hadn’t come to the workshop with those stereotypes in mind where the Blues
were concerned; they were describing the way their fellow employees, half of
whom were men, looked as a result of being treated unfairly because of their eye
color.
Most of the words they used to describe their peers were those we most often use
to describe women. When was the last time you heard a White male described as
“docile”? Then I asked the Blues to read their words. They were arrogant, rude,
cold, smug, hostile, uncaring, condescending, ignorant, aggressive, and belligerent.
I asked the Blues why they used those words to describe their brown-eyed peers and
they said, “Because that’s the way they looked during this exercise!” Once, again,
the writers weren’t reacting to attitudes; they were reacting to behaviors. I then
asked the people of color in the group if those are the words they use to describe us
White folks when we aren’t around and they responded with, “Those are some of
the nicer ones.” Prejudice? No, reactions to behaviors. We agreed that if White
people didn’t want to be described in those ways, perhaps they’d better change their
behaviors toward those who are different from themselves; by making those
changes, they might see changes in the way White women and people of color
react to them.
Now, I know that I’m going to be castigated for blaming White people for
racism. Get over that. I’m not talking about blame, here; I’m talking about
responsibility. If we White folks who are so proud of having enough power to
create change in this country don’t want to be held responsible for the use and
misuse of power, all we have to do is share the power, thus making everyone
responsible for what happens on our streets and in our classrooms. Can we all take a
moment to indulge in a fantasy? Let us imagine that the most powerful family-run
businesses in the United States are going to be willing to share some of their power

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 It’s All About Ignorance 661

with those who have no power. What prevents that from happening? Is it because of
the fear that we White people are now experiencing as we see ourselves losing our
numerical majority in the United States? Are we acting in reaction to our dread that
once people of color become the numerical majority, they will want to treat us the
way we have treated them?
I’ve learned, while watching the bloviating shouters and spitters and exaggera-
tors on TV, how powerful the media is and how dangerous it is when it is in the
wrong hands and being used for the wrong reasons. I think it likely that the media,
at the direction of people with unlimited financial resources, is willingly complicit
in keeping this fear and these –isms alive, because, after all, fear sells. That, in my
opinion, is exactly what’s happening. I’m watching the media gin up situations all
over the world, in an attempt, it seems to me, to further line the pockets of the
owners of the military-industrial complex. Keep the masses frightened while we
send their sons and daughters to fight in yet another old White men’s war. And, of
course, making war and soldiers is so much easier if young men can’t get decent
jobs and are programmed to be warriors by being encouraged to spend hours
playing video games in which killing is routine and the winner of the game is the
one who kills the best, the most, and the fastest. Dehumanize young people with
what once would have been seen as unacceptable and immoral programming and
then accuse them of being bullies and savages.
We aren’t born racist. In my view, racism is a learned response and anything
you learn, you can unlearn, if you choose to do so. I watched my father, after
seeing the first film of the exercise that was made in my classroom, turn from the
TV and, with tears in his eyes, say, “I wish somebody’d taught me that when I
was nine years old.” This was the man who, when I was in high school and would
have given my eye teeth to date one of the most handsome and personable boys
in school, said, “Stay away from him. His grandmother was a mulatto and that
makes him an octoroon and you never know when that will show up in the next
generation.” “Mulatto?” “Octoroon?” Where did those words come from? My
dad, whom I considered the most moral man I’d ever known, learned something
from watching my third graders go through that exercise, and he changed his
behavior as a result of it. He wasn’t born a racist and he wished he’d had the
same kind of conditioning that my students were getting. My own children
worshipped the ground he walked on; when my daughter brought her Saudi-
American baby home and put her in my father’s arms, he said, “She’s beautiful,
Sarah. She’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.” And then there wasn’t a dry
eye in the house.
My father never spent much time talking about love, but he knew all about
justice. I didn’t really understand that until I’d done the Blue-eyed/Brown-eyed
exercise and had read bell hooks’s book Killing Rage. We’d all learned the Bible
verses telling us that God is love, and that we are to love one another, and I really
believed that was the right thing to do. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time practicing
it, but I believed it, and I also believed that if we all loved one another, we’d have
peace on earth. All we had to do was follow the Golden Rule and treat others the

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 662 elliott

way we wanted to be treated. What a power trip all that was! How do we know how
all others want to be treated? I’m quite certain that young men and women wouldn’t
appreciate the treatment I appreciate. When a young man offers to put my luggage
in the overhead rack on an airplane, I say, “Thank you very much.” I doubt he’d
appreciate my doing the same thing for him. And do you really believe that we
Christians treat others the way we want to be treated? Do we want to be treated the
way people of color and women and members of the LGBTQA are treated? You
know better and so do I.
My father wasn’t a church-going man, but he taught us that you should never put
a stone in another man’s path. He refused to “judge a book by its cover” and firmly
adhered to the maxim that “A fair thing is a pretty thing and a right wrongs no man.”
He never treated us in a way that the world would consider lovingly, but neither did
he ever treat us unjustly. He seemed to know, without ever saying it, that if you
claim to love someone while you’re treating them unjustly, they’ll never treat you
justly and they’ll never really love you. However, if you treat others fairly, they are
more likely to treat you fairly, and you might end up with a loving society, after all.
We’ll never have a loving society until we have a just one; bell hooks (1996) says
this all so eloquently in Killing Rage: Ending Racism, that I hope everyone who
reads this chapter will read her book too.
I’ve learned that those who become incensed at the sight of me putting my
“poor little White students through that horrible exercise” have a great deal of
difficulty sympathizing with those children of color who go through that kind of
thing every day. I’ll never forget the woman in the audience in Canada who, after
the moderator introduced me and asked for questions from the audience, stood,
and asked, “Don’t you realize that you could do great psychological damage to
those children by treating them that way?” I responded, “How do you feel about
children of color who have to endure worse than that kind of abuse, every day?”
Her bizarre reply was, as I recall, “That’s different; they can take it.” It was a
moment almost identical to one in Denver, Colorado, where, during the debrief-
ing of the exercise in a major corporation, a White woman turned to the Black
woman next to her and said, “This was too harsh. It’s never this bad outside of
this room.” When the Black woman pointed out that she and her children go
through this every day, the White woman replied, “That’s different. You’re used
to it. You can take it. We aren’t used to being treated this way.” Now, there are
some diversity specialists who might call that simply responding to having lived
a life of White privilege. I call it total insanity and unconscionable, self-imposed
ignorance, and I’m utterly flabbergasted by the hypocrisy of calling people of
color inferior to White people while expecting them to be stronger, more
accepting, and more tolerant than White folks are.
And therein lies the rub. Perhaps what every White person needs to do is to walk
in the shoes of a person of color in the United States for a day. Perhaps they would
learn to listen more and talk less. Perhaps they would learn to talk with people of
color, instead of talking at them or to them. Perhaps they’d learn to work with
people of color instead of “doing for them.” Perhaps they’d never say, as that 70

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 It’s All About Ignorance 663

+-year-old woman in Rochester, Minnesota, said, to a group of vocal Black women,

during the debriefing of the exercise, “Why are you people talking about me this
way, after all I’ve done for you? I’ve tried to help you out, my whole life.” She said
it to the wrong group and in the wrong setting. But, you see, that’s one of the
difficulties in always thinking that the right way is the White way, and that we
White people have all the answers. In my view, we don’t even know the right
questions! I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve heard a White woman say to a
person of color, “Just what’s it like, being Black?”
And now we come to something that we all ought to be aware of: Stop, for the
love of Heaven, saying things like, “I think what we need is a color-blind
society.” Why must we not see skin color? Is there something wrong with it?
Obviously not, since the first modern human beings who evolved on this earth
were people of color. Or, how about this one, said to a Black person, “When I see
you, I don’t see you as Black.” Oh, really? If you don’t see them as Black, why do
you say “Black”? Why don’t you say, “I don’t see you as orange”? Or green? Or
purple? Or, perish the thought, White? And one of my absolute favorites, which
is usually said in an attempt to stop affirmative action policies, “Why do we keep
talking about differences? Similarities are more important than differences and
we’re all the same under the skin.” I’m 80 years old, and I know that the pimply
faced, adolescent boy in the front row at the college lecture is not the same as I
am, under the skin. I also suspect that the person who asks that question would
probably be the same one who says that for two people to get married, they’d
better not be of the same sex.
Practically every time I speak at a corporation or educational facility, someone in
the audience expresses the fear that children are being damaged by being treated in
this cruel way for a day, that they may be irreparably harmed by this exercise. They
say, “Do you ever think about that?” My response to that is as follows: How many
of you demanded that your child get those vaccinations as infants, on the off-chance
that they might someday be exposed to measles, mumps, diphtheria, smallpox, or
polio? Every sensible one of you did, because you didn’t want them to contract one
of those diseases. This exercise is like those inoculations: It is a shot of the live
virus of racism given so that when my former students are exposed to racism, they
will recognize it and confront it, instead of letting it disrupt their lives and injure
their souls. And let me remind you that there’s no “likelihood” of their being
exposed to racism (and ageism, and homophobia, and sexism, and ethnocentrism);
it is a guarantee that they will be exposed to all the idiocy and ignorance of a society
in which, as in the 1700s, we are still treating people unfairly on the basis of
physical characteristics over which we have no control, and still being rewarded for
doing so.
If I could, I’d invent a shot to be given to all children at birth that would make
them immune to their parents’ and grandparents’ ignorance. I suspect, however,
that, instead of giving the shots to the children, I’d administer them to the people
who write our laws and our school curriculums. I’d also get my hands on someone
in the Christian community who would be willing to stop making the pictures in

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 664 elliott

bibles that make the Baby Jesus look like the Pillsbury Doughboy, and his mother, a
Jewess in the Middle East, look like Marilyn Monroe.
In the final analysis, my view is that the problem isn’t racism, because there’s
only one race. It is plain and simple ignorance. And we’re all afflicted with it.
Perhaps you remember the day Dianne Sawyer interviewed Alice Walker on TV.
As I recall, after they’d talked about all the wonderful things that Alice Walker
had said and written and done, Dianne Sawyer turned to her and said, “Alice,
when I see you, I don’t see a Black woman.” “Well, Dianne,” Alice Walker
replied, “That would be pretty impossible.” Sawyer, not to be denied her color-
blindness, said, “But Alice, I don’t see you as Black!” To which Alice Walker
reiterated, “But, Dianne, I am Black!” At this point, Sawyer reached out, took
hold of Alice Walker’s forearm, gave it a vigorous shake, and said, “Oh, no!”
Ignorance! I remember Walter Cronkite saying to three leaders of the Black
community, the night after MLK was killed, “When our leader was killed, his
widow held us together. Who’s going to keep your people in line?” I remember
changing the channel in disgust in time to hear Dan Rather saying to several
leaders of the Black community, “Don’t you think that you Black people should
feel sympathy for White people, during this time, since we can’t feel the anger
that you Blacks do?” I think he used the word, “Negroes,” but I’ve been trying to
work that word out of my vocabulary, so I may be misquoting him, there. But the
sentiment and insensitivity are the same, regardless of the vocabulary. In my
view, these are all examples of ignorance but not necessarily racism.
There is a cure for this ignorance, and it’s called “education.” I don’t mean the
kind of schooling that is being provided in most institutions of learning, today. I
mean Education. The word “educate” comes from the root duc, duce, which means
lead; the prefix “e-,” which means out; and the suffix “–ate,” which means the act
of. To educate someone is to be engaged in the act of leading them out of ignorance
in every area, but particularly in the areas of empathy, understanding, and accep-
tance. That is the kind of education that will not show up on the standardized test
results, but it is the kind that will make for a more empathetic and accepting society,
in the future, for all of us. Rutstein (1993, p. 42) said in his book Healing Racism in
America that “prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance.” In my view he
was right, and the cure for that ignorance is education.

Some Statements to Consider

So what does all this mean? It means that using the eye-color exercise has
provided me with some enlightening experiences that have caused me to draw what
I consider logical conclusions. You can argue with my conclusions, but you can’t
deny my experiences; so here are some statements for you to dispute:
1. We are not equal. I am not equal to any of the people I’ve met in the past 80
years; every one of them can do something I can’t do or knows something I don’t

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 It’s All About Ignorance 665

know. However, while we aren’t equal, we in the United States are guaranteed
equitable treatment under the law. I’m not demanding equality; that’s an
impossible dream. I’m demanding equitable treatment under the law for all of
us. And I want it now. Now, some of you will say that in the eyes of God we are
all equal. Fine, but while I talk to God constantly, I work constantly with fallible
human beings like myself, and we are the ones responsible for guaranteeing
equitable treatment for all.
2. Racism isn’t the problem only of the uneducated, the poor, or the lower class.
They aren’t the people who write and publish the textbooks, or who run for
elective office, or who produce the television shows, or who teach in our
schools. And all those entities contribute to the growing level of racism in this
country.
3. Love is not the answer to the problems of the –isms in our society; the answer is
justice. If we claim to love one another but do not treat one another justly, we
will not have a loving society, or a just one. However, if we treat one another
justly, we may very well find ourselves coming to love one another because we
have no reason not to! A Black man at the premiere of the film “Blue Eyed” in
Kansas City stood during the discussion following the film and said to the group,
“All I want is for Whites to love and respect me.” Look at the conundrum we
have created with this ignorance: On the one hand, we teach that we must love
and show respect for one another while we teach that only White people are
truly lovable and deserving of respect. And we send that negative message
throughout the media and our educational institutions, in our courts and our city
councils, in our real estate associations and our lending institutions, in our
libraries and our bookstores, in our country clubs and our fraternal organiza-
tions, in our military and maternity wards, in our cathedrals and our country
churches. What we do speaks so loudly that it’s hard for people of color to hear
what we say. And it’s even harder for them to believe what we say. But they keep
on trying, and I’m damned if I know why.
4. We don’t need a color-blind society – unless there’s something wrong with skin
color. What we need is a society that is no longer blinded by color. White people
have been, and continue to be, conditioned to the myth of White superiority by
the most powerful institutions in our country: the government, the churches, the
education system, and the entertainment industry. Those are the agencies that
shape our environments, and as long as they are directed by people who see
differences as negatives, that’s how long we will have racism in this country.
5. Racism can create mental health problems. In 1958, racism was identified as a
powerful factor contributing to mental illness among children in the United
States by the President’s Joint Council on Mental Health in Children (Albee,
1958). And they weren’t talking about only children of color. All children in a
racist society are negatively impacted by racist policies, laws, and behaviors.
You see, if you base your worth as a human being – or judge other peoples’
worth – on the basis of the amount of a chemical in your, or their, skin, you aren’t
dealing well with reality and you need to get some therapy. Soon.

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 666 elliott

6. White superiority is a myth. It is a myth that has been foisted on us by about 500
years of conditioning calling itself “education” or, worse, “history,” or, even
worse, “science.”3
7. Racism is not something “out there.” It is not found only in large cities or in the
South or where people of color live. Racism is within each of us and it has been

3 Now I realize that some of those who read this material may decide to write me a letter to tell me how
wrong I am about all this. Good idea. You do that. But if you’re going to be a racist, you’re going to
have to be very creative when you write that letter, because a good racist will want to give up all the
things that people of color have made available for them in the United States. So you’d best write that
letter before night since the carbon filament typically used in the lightbulb was invented by a Black
man, Lewis Latimer (see Fouché, 2003). Now you’re probably thinking that you’ll light a candle. No,
you won’t. People of color had fire before White folks got cold (see James et al., 1989). So you’ll wait
until morning to compose your correspondence.
Fine, do it in the morning, but don’t use an alarm clock to help you to get up on time; people of
color had time-measuring devices before White folks realized that time was passing (see Barnett,
1999). Now, when you reach for that piece of paper on which to write your letter . . . Stop! We got
paper from the Chinese and the Egyptians, most of whom we have described as being people of color
(see Thompson, 1978). No more paper products of any kind for racists. That may make some aspects
of your life a little difficult, but you’ll find a way to deal with the problem. Now you’re thinking that
you’ll use cloth for a writing surface. Think again. You can’t use cotton; we got that from the
Egyptians, the Chinese, and the people in India. You can’t use silk; we got that from the Chinese. You
can’t use linen; we got that from the Egyptians. You can’t use any woven fabrics because people of
color were weaving fabrics while White folks were still looking for a “rabbit skin to wrap their baby
bunting in.” I’ll help you out, here. Go out and find a nice, flat rock. People of color didn’t invent
rocks. You can scratch your message on a rock (see Harris, 1986, for the origins of writing).
But don’t use the alphabet to convey your thoughts; we got our alphabet from the Egyptians and
the Phoenicians, still more people of color (see Gardiner, 1916). You must draw pictures to convey
your message. If you intend to include any statistics in your letter, you will, of course, express them in
Roman numerals, since the numeration system of choice in this country is Arabic. You may, however,
use the alphabet and Arabic numerals to address your envelope, since I’m not sure that most US
postal workers will be able to decipher zip codes expressed in your “from-Whites-only” materials.
Once you get this rock wrapped and rolled and ready to go, you may be tempted to run out and
jump into your automobile to go to the post office. Don’t do it. Your car runs on rubber tires and we
first got rubber from natives of South America whom we identified as people of color, so of course
you’ll give up all rubber products (Hosler, Burkett, & Tarkanian, 1999). We may end up having a lot
more little racists running around, eh? No problem. You’ve decided to walk to the post office.
Barefooted, I hope, unless you have hand-sewn shoes, since the machine that we use for sewing shoes
together mechanically was invented by a Black man, Jan Ernst Matzileger (see Van Sertima, 1983).
Now, when you get your shoes on and start your walk to the post office, you may come to a stop
light. Don’t stop. The traffic signal was invented by a Black male, Garrett Morgan (see Asante,
2002). You’re going to go through that signal and, when you do, some other blue-eyed fool is going to
come tearing down the street in his car, run that signal, hit you, and knock you galley-west. They’re
going to rush you to the hospital where you’ll probably need a blood transfusion using stored plasma.
Don’t take it. A Black man, Dr. Charles Richard Drew, was instrumental in developing that process
during the Second World War, so you’ll never take a blood transfusion using stored plasma (see
Asante, 2002).
Now, all of this may be giving you a headache and you may be tempted to take an aspirin. Resist
that temptation, at all costs, for we got aspirin from the Egyptians (Nunn, 2002). You’ll just have to
learn to live with pain. Perhaps you’re one of those people who eat to relieve his or her tension and
you’re ready to race to the cupboard or pantry for relief. Well, be very careful what you choose to
munch on, because the vast majority of grains and other cereal crops came to us from people of color
(Diamond, 1998). Now you may be tempted to buttress your belief in White superiority by quoting
from the Bible. Please be aware that the basic tenets of every major religion on the face of the earth
originated in societies of people of color (Parrinder, 1999). As you can see, a committed racist, and I
think all racists should be committed, who lives his or her belief in White superiority may not live
very comfortably or for very long, but at least he or she will die happy. Now, about those funeral
customs . . .

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 It’s All About Ignorance 667

planted there by a racist society and is being nurtured by those with whom we
communicate. Many people from little all-White communities in the midwes-
tern United States, who have never been in the company of people of color, carry
the stereotypes of those “others” who are different from themselves with them
wherever they go and absolutely refuse to deny their conditioning at the same
time that they are denying their racism. The presence of these stereotypes is
obvious in the language they use and the behaviors they exhibit when they
encounter people of color, or when they read about, think about, hear about, or
talk about those who are other than White.
8. Racism is not a Christian value. The Vatican released a document in 1988
stating that “Harboring racist thoughts and entertaining racist attitudes is a sin”
(Pontifical Commission, 1988, p. 34). Therefore, according to Pope John Paul
II, those of you who choose to maintain your Christianity will have to give up
your racism. And those who choose to maintain their racism will have to give up
their Christianity. I know people in the United States who will give up their
Christianity rather than their racism because they have seen proof in this country
that racism is stronger than Christianity. If it isn’t, why is racism such a strong
and enduring force in our “Christian Nation” of the United States? I’m relieved
that a pope finally spoke out about this problem, even though it seems to me that
his words have been pretty much ignored in the past few years. Now, if we can
just get the present pope to address sexism . . .
9. “Good deeds will not go long unpunished.” If, as a result of reading this chapter,
you become even more determined to actively work at reducing racism, sexism,
ageism, homophobia, and ethnocentrism, be prepared to suffer “the slings and
arrows” of outraged others. You’ll soon need a support group, so I’d suggest that
you share this material with someone you trust and then organize a 12-step
program for Recovering Racists. You think I’m being facetious. Think again.
Habits of a lifetime are hard to break, particularly when the society responds
positively to perpetuation of those undesirable habits and negatively to any
attempted change. Remember this: Some people grow older while others grow
up. It’s a choice you make. It’s time for us to stop raising children and start
raising reasoning, responsible adults.

Concluding Comments
Okay, so how do we start those changes? Start with yourself, by going to
my website, janeelliott.com, and downloading the learning materials you will find
there. Follow the directions on each sheet and then read every book listed in the
bibliography. In my view, education is the answer to the whole problem and the fact
that you’ve read this chapter is an indication either that you found it educational or
that you are lost on a desert island and this book is the only thing you salvaged out
of your luggage. I hope it’s the former, instead of the latter.

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 668 elliott

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