WAUKESHA – Jane Elliott is an exercise specialist. She does not ask that you stretch your muscles, though. She attempts to train her audiences on the injustice of prejudice, just as she did in her Iowa classroom after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.
Elliott will speak on “The Anatomy of Prejudice” on Tuesday, November 7, at 7:00 p.m. in the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, 1500 N. University Dr., Waukesha. Tickets are $5.00 and available by calling (262) 521-5212.
Known for her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise, Elliott developed a way back in 1968 to explain to her third-grade, all white, all Christian class how black people experienced racism. Participants in her experiment are labeled inferior or superior based on the color of their eyes, but her method applies to any unalterable difference in groups of people. “The melting pot theory didn’t work, so you should think of our society as stir fry,” she says.
Invited by corporations to bring her message to their employees, she eventually left the classroom and went on the speaking circuit. Gradually she’s been opening eyes at military installations, corporations, and universities. “I want behavioral changes to come,” she says, “but I want attitudinal changes to result.”
She has been featured on Oprah, Today, Donahue, Nightline, AM America, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, ABC News, and PBS Frontline. Several television documentaries tell her story. ABC’s The Eye of the Storm won a Peabody award. A Class Divided and The Eye of the Beholder both won Emmys.
In her evening presentation, Elliott will give a lecture in her very forthright style, show The Eye of the Storm, and take questions from the audience.
Part of the Visions & Expressions series at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, the evening’s program is sponsored by the University Convocations Committee. |
