杏吧原创

At 73, Jane Elliott still receives death threats and is bundled out of town after giving seminars, because police fear a riot. It鈥檚 quite a reaction for a small-town teacher who only wanted to give her class an answer to the question: 鈥淲hy did someone kill Martin Luther King?鈥� She recalls that fateful morning of 5 April 1968

鈥淚 was teaching third grade in all-white, all-Christian Riceville, Iowa, a town of about 1000 people where I was born. Martin Luther King Jr had been one of our 鈥渉eroes of the month鈥� in February, and now I was going to have to explain to my class why anyone would want to kill him.

I knew they wouldn鈥檛 understand if we just talked. So I decided to teach them the Sioux prayer: 鈥淥h great spirit let me not judge a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins鈥�, and to let them walk a mile in the shoes of a child of colour, based on eye colour rather than skin colour.

Since I鈥檓 blue-eyed and most of the kids were blue-eyed, I first put blue-eyed people at the bottom of the hierarchy, giving them armbands and setting them apart from the brown-eyed and green-eyed kids. I told them the brown-eyed are the better people, cleaner and smarter. I wrote 鈥渕elanin鈥� on the blackboard and said it was what caused intelligence. The more you had, and the dark-eyed people had more, the smarter you were.

I told them blue-eyed people were stupid, that they sat around doing nothing, and if you gave them nice things, they wrecked them. I could feel gaps opening up in the classroom. I even said blue-eyed people had to drink from paper cups if they used the water fountain 鈥� and asked the kids why. One answered that the brown-eyed children might catch something from the blue-eyed.

Then one kid asked me: 鈥淗ow come you鈥檙e the teacher then if you鈥檝e got blue eyes?鈥� Another piped up: 鈥淚f she had brown eyes, she鈥檇 be principal or superintendent because they鈥檝e both got brown eyes.鈥� I realised that white kids really do know how racism works. The next day I reversed the roles. None of the parents of the children who took part in that exercise complained, though others did after subsequent exercises.

We vaccinate children to protect against diseases they might encounter, so I see my exercise as an inoculation against the racism that they will encounter. I know it works because I asked the kids to write about how they felt during the two parts of the exercise, and about what discrimination was. Those kids wrote brilliant things: 鈥淭he kids with blue eyes got to discriminate against the people with brown eyes. I have brown eyes and I felt like hitting them if I wanted to.鈥� One wrote that they felt like quitting school now that they knew what it was like to be discriminated against. Years later, the now grown-up children tell me they never forgot the exercise.

But there鈥檚 more. The first time I did the exercise there were seven dyslexic boys in the class, and four of them were brown-eyed. On the day the brown-eyed children were on top, they read words I knew they couldn鈥檛 read and spelled words I knew they couldn鈥檛 spell. I also watched the Lutheran minister鈥檚 brilliant daughter fall to pieces because she just could not succeed on the day she had the wrong colour eyes. I watched the kids finding out that teachers lied to them about their abilities 鈥� and saw them decide that they were never going to live down to teachers鈥� lies again. What stereotyping does to learning has already been studied elsewhere, but when it comes to race we don鈥檛 apply it.

I鈥檝e done this exercise many times in many places now. I鈥檝e been hit by a white man, I鈥檝e had a knife pulled on me, I鈥檝e been threatened with death numerous times. I got taken out of Union Town, Pennsylvania, at midnight in 1974 when some teachers I鈥檇 put through the exercise informally called the superintendent and said if you don鈥檛 get that bitch out of town we鈥檙e going to shoot her.

My background is plain, ordinary white American, except that my father was an Irish Baptist and my mother an Irish Catholic whose family disowned her because she had married a non-Catholic. She taught us to hate my father鈥檚 family, which gave us some insight into what it is like to be irrationally discriminated against.

The 鈥渂lue eyes, brown eyes鈥� exercise ought to be part of teacher training, with people other than me doing it. I hate it because I have to become what I鈥檝e sworn I would never become 鈥� a bigot and a bitch 鈥� in order to run the exercise.

鈥淚 have to become a bigot and a bitch in order to run the exercise鈥�

I have a few good friends and a number of close relatives left in Riceville, but some time ago, after my father died, my mother told me not to come around. To this day, 20 per cent of the town still call me a nigger lover.鈥�