After Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Jane Elliott knew she would have to start teaching her grade three class about race. This was Riceville, Iowa in 1968.
Now the pre-eminent anti-racism educator, famous for her Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes exercise, is coming to Powell River.
“It’s exciting for Powell River to have someone of this calibre come here,” said CC Duncan, a behaviour management consultant and owner of 4children.ca, a for-profit organization whose mission, according to its website, is “the belief a child’s measure of success be their perception, not the perception of others.” She explained she wanted to bring Elliott to the community after anti-Asian posters were put up around the city last year. “Education is empowering because it takes away misconceptions.”
Elliott will speak to three groups of schoolchildren at Max Cameron Theatre on Wednesday, May 20, before leading a talk for adults that evening.
“This idea of racism isn’t carved in stone, you aren’t born that way, we’ve learned these racist behaviours,” said Elliott, in a phone interview with the Peak. “We cannot afford this kind of ignorance in the world anymore.”
Speaking of the race-based inequality in the US and the violent protests that have erupted recently in Baltimore, Elliott said it shouldn’t have taken this long for change to happen.
Still, she said she is happy because US Attorney General Loretta Lynch is going to investigate. “This means there can be change,” said Elliott. “No white attorney general has ever dared to do that, has ever wanted to do that.”
Elliott’s Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes exercise, which became a PBS documentary in 1985, separated students by eye-colour and had them take turns being the dominant group.
The exercise appeared on Canadian television in the late 1960s, after the CBC sent a film crew to document her second run of the exercise. It caused quite an uproar in Canada when it aired.
Elliott said she was called to Toronto to answer to about 200 angry Canadian viewers who wanted to know what she was doing to “those poor little white kids.”
She remembers being “gobsmacked” by the insensitivity of one woman in particular who suggested that while the exercise might harm white children psychologically, daily ingrained racism didn’t affect African-American children in the same way because, “they were used to it.”
Elliott said there is still racism in both our countries.
“White people came to this continent in order to take advantage of the people who are here, the land and the natural resources that are here,” said Elliott. “[Christopher] Columbus didn’t discover America, he invaded.”
“If we want to make Powell River more welcoming, we have to change what we are doing,” said Duncan.
Tickets are $20 at the door and $15 advance tickets are also available at Breakwater Books, River City Coffee, Rocky Mountain Pizza, Thick and Tla’Amin Convenience Store. The event begins with a reception at 6 pm followed by Elliott taking to the stage at 7 pm.
