Jane Elliot house a social experiment in Britain to find out how racist participants really are.Jane Elliot house a social experiment in Britain to find out how racist participants really are.Jane Elliot house a social experiment in Britain to find out how racist participants really are.
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White people who have nothing to learn...or just pretending they don't?
* See endnote for important info re this documentary.
The way the experiment in the documentary is conducted involves having some volunteers unknowingly participate in an experiment which mimics racist society. In every documentary, two groups are created...those with blue eyes, and those with brown eyes. One group (I think it's always those with blue eyes) are subjected to prejudice, bullying and unfairness. Generally the participants gain a greater insight and awareness into the workings of racism in their society. Jane Elliott - school teacher - devised the experiment for her class during the height of the civil rights movement in the US, I believe. She has replicated this experiment numerous times in numerous countries, but with adults as the subjects. Elliott comments how she turned one of her best and brightest students into a shadow of her former self during the (short) course of her experiment. When you imagine the similar/worse treatment non-whites have received for decades/centuries, you can see the damage that can be done to people's self-belief.
People who have followed Elliott's documentaries may get an insight into the British psyche this time around, but for people who have never seen this experiment on TV, I'd suggest looking elsewhere, as the experiment is sabotaged by numerous white participants. I'll comment on this later.
Why divide groups into those with blue eyes and brown eyes? It's a physical attribute which people have no control over (like the colour of their skin) but one which is not exclusive to people with a certain coloured skin...e.g. white people can have brown eyes. Perhaps for the first time or at least specifically acknowledged is the flip-side to the experiment...the focus is on giving white people insight in how they discriminate against black people. But the flip-side is how ANY group can similarly discriminate if they are part of the 'ruling' class. In other words, black people would gain the insight that they can just as easily become the perpetrators of prejudice as white people can. It might be possible to argue that racism isn't the issue here...power is...who has it and how they use it.
Unfortunately, this documentary is interesting for all the wrong reasons. In this controlled environment, which is known to be an experiment in psychology by the participants, many white volunteers here react negatively to the scenario. A few hours of being discriminated against (discrimination of no consequence...I mean, it's not like they could get lynched like the blacks in America in the 1960s could be) and the poor whitey doesn't want to play any more...they leave the experiment or sabotage the messages it is trying to convey. Some of them - from teenage boys to middle-aged female school teachers - imagine themselves to be like Gandhi or Martin Luther King...fighting the good fight...fighting injustice. It's just a farce. And the blonde, middle aged female school teacher (insert your own blonde joke here!) seems to think that the white man has been oppressed too...it's not like, you know, her husband can look and smell like a hobo...he has to conform to the norms...like the expectations blacks have to live up to or be marginalised/criminalised if they don't. Hobos can be cleaned and given new clothes. Blacks can't change the colour of their skin. Her lesson is being black is like being a dirty, smelly hobo? Nice. She is also amusing when recounting how surprised she was when a black student of hers grazed her skin and it was pink underneath. Who'd a thunk it? What colour did she expect her student's blood to be?
It's this kind of absurd parody of white/black relations which marginalises this documentary...you won't see people here who gain an understanding of what it might be like to be black, or how easily it is to act the oppressor when your group is powerful.
An extract from one of Elliott's documentaries is shown in this one...it was set in Australia. You see a bullied, young, white Australian female come to a moment of realisation of how black people must feel when faced with similar/worse treatment from white people.
Sadly, this documentary has no such moments. All you see are deluded Britons who think they are somehow great civil rights activists by not 'playing the game' of prejudice. I'm guessing that the British treatment of non-white people has markedly improved over the centuries. Perhaps Britain is more at home with their multi-cultural side now...there are no lynch mobs. Which makes these deluded 'civil rights activist's' actions so glib. IF blacks were discriminated against in Britain now, would they be so vocal? Or does their human rights concern only kick in when the blue eyed people are 'oppressed'?
Edit in - I had wanted to make the point that Jane's final comments in this docu seemed to be clutching at straws...just a perfunctory observation she might say in all her documentaries.
ENDNOTE -
Jane Elliott's views in private emails:
"It was a total misrepresentation of what the exercise is all about as, against my wishes and without my knowledge, the film company hired professional actors to go through the exercise and so completely distorted the reality of the whole experience I am not happy about this whole thing and hope you will look at any one of the other titles instead of that abortion."
Another email:
"That wasn't an "unauthorised documentary": I agreed to do the thing not knowing how they planned to edit it, or that they had hired actors to participate in the exercise."
On the surface, this looks a very dodgy and deceitful 'documentary'. Could be a fake...beware. Score up in the air...Edit in 17/12/2016, given that the context of this film is deceitful, I've lowered my score to 1/10.
The way the experiment in the documentary is conducted involves having some volunteers unknowingly participate in an experiment which mimics racist society. In every documentary, two groups are created...those with blue eyes, and those with brown eyes. One group (I think it's always those with blue eyes) are subjected to prejudice, bullying and unfairness. Generally the participants gain a greater insight and awareness into the workings of racism in their society. Jane Elliott - school teacher - devised the experiment for her class during the height of the civil rights movement in the US, I believe. She has replicated this experiment numerous times in numerous countries, but with adults as the subjects. Elliott comments how she turned one of her best and brightest students into a shadow of her former self during the (short) course of her experiment. When you imagine the similar/worse treatment non-whites have received for decades/centuries, you can see the damage that can be done to people's self-belief.
People who have followed Elliott's documentaries may get an insight into the British psyche this time around, but for people who have never seen this experiment on TV, I'd suggest looking elsewhere, as the experiment is sabotaged by numerous white participants. I'll comment on this later.
Why divide groups into those with blue eyes and brown eyes? It's a physical attribute which people have no control over (like the colour of their skin) but one which is not exclusive to people with a certain coloured skin...e.g. white people can have brown eyes. Perhaps for the first time or at least specifically acknowledged is the flip-side to the experiment...the focus is on giving white people insight in how they discriminate against black people. But the flip-side is how ANY group can similarly discriminate if they are part of the 'ruling' class. In other words, black people would gain the insight that they can just as easily become the perpetrators of prejudice as white people can. It might be possible to argue that racism isn't the issue here...power is...who has it and how they use it.
Unfortunately, this documentary is interesting for all the wrong reasons. In this controlled environment, which is known to be an experiment in psychology by the participants, many white volunteers here react negatively to the scenario. A few hours of being discriminated against (discrimination of no consequence...I mean, it's not like they could get lynched like the blacks in America in the 1960s could be) and the poor whitey doesn't want to play any more...they leave the experiment or sabotage the messages it is trying to convey. Some of them - from teenage boys to middle-aged female school teachers - imagine themselves to be like Gandhi or Martin Luther King...fighting the good fight...fighting injustice. It's just a farce. And the blonde, middle aged female school teacher (insert your own blonde joke here!) seems to think that the white man has been oppressed too...it's not like, you know, her husband can look and smell like a hobo...he has to conform to the norms...like the expectations blacks have to live up to or be marginalised/criminalised if they don't. Hobos can be cleaned and given new clothes. Blacks can't change the colour of their skin. Her lesson is being black is like being a dirty, smelly hobo? Nice. She is also amusing when recounting how surprised she was when a black student of hers grazed her skin and it was pink underneath. Who'd a thunk it? What colour did she expect her student's blood to be?
It's this kind of absurd parody of white/black relations which marginalises this documentary...you won't see people here who gain an understanding of what it might be like to be black, or how easily it is to act the oppressor when your group is powerful.
An extract from one of Elliott's documentaries is shown in this one...it was set in Australia. You see a bullied, young, white Australian female come to a moment of realisation of how black people must feel when faced with similar/worse treatment from white people.
Sadly, this documentary has no such moments. All you see are deluded Britons who think they are somehow great civil rights activists by not 'playing the game' of prejudice. I'm guessing that the British treatment of non-white people has markedly improved over the centuries. Perhaps Britain is more at home with their multi-cultural side now...there are no lynch mobs. Which makes these deluded 'civil rights activist's' actions so glib. IF blacks were discriminated against in Britain now, would they be so vocal? Or does their human rights concern only kick in when the blue eyed people are 'oppressed'?
Edit in - I had wanted to make the point that Jane's final comments in this docu seemed to be clutching at straws...just a perfunctory observation she might say in all her documentaries.
ENDNOTE -
Jane Elliott's views in private emails:
"It was a total misrepresentation of what the exercise is all about as, against my wishes and without my knowledge, the film company hired professional actors to go through the exercise and so completely distorted the reality of the whole experience I am not happy about this whole thing and hope you will look at any one of the other titles instead of that abortion."
Another email:
"That wasn't an "unauthorised documentary": I agreed to do the thing not knowing how they planned to edit it, or that they had hired actors to participate in the exercise."
On the surface, this looks a very dodgy and deceitful 'documentary'. Could be a fake...beware. Score up in the air...Edit in 17/12/2016, given that the context of this film is deceitful, I've lowered my score to 1/10.
helpful•72
- dfle3
- Aug 28, 2010
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- Runtime48 minutes
- Color
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