Lecturer at USF offers lesson in discrimination

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 12, 2001

Former teacher Jane Elliott has shared her lessons about discrimination on the Oprah Winfrey Show, the Today show, the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Donahue, ABC News and PBS Frontline. For more than 25 years, she has addressed schools, businesses and organizations. And from 7-9 p.m. Thursday, she'll visit USF as part of the University Lecture Series.

In 1968, one day after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Elliott performed an exercise in racism on her white, Christian third-grade class in Riceville, Iowa. In her "Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes" exercise, Elliott separated the class into two groups based on eye color. The experiment was designed to teach the class about feeling the effects of being judged based on something as simple as eye color.

Elliott repeated the same experiment on adults and the results remained constant. The group that was placed in the minority category undergo more stress in trying to achieve. By doing this, Elliott showed that discrimination is something that can be conditioned.

In Elliott's program, she not only fights racial ignorance, but other biases based on sex, age, sexual orientation and disability -- all factors in life that a person is unable to change.

If you go

WHAT: University Lecture Series presents Jane Elliott

WHERE: USF's Special Events Center (SEC)

WHEN: 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday

COST: Free

CONTACT: 974-7795 or visit http://ctr.usf.edu/uls

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