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shadowkatSo, this is a rather famous social psychology experiment conducted by an elementary school teacher turned anti-racism activist, Jane Elliot, which is making the rounds on social media.
I first saw it mentioned by James Marsters on Twitter. Then my college pal, Felicia, shared it on Face Book. I took it from Face Book and discussed it with Felicia, who is half black and half Hispanic, and not self-righteous. So you can actually have a discussion with her - without getting ripped to pieces. James Marsters? Not so much. I avoid interacting with celebrities, actors, famous writers, and social media influencers on Twitter - I've learned my lesson. (Actually it is impossible to have a reasonable discussion with anyone on Twitter or Youtube. So I don't bother.)
Anyhow, here it is:
It's rather long, and if you've been bullied in your lifetime - not easy to watch, in fact possibly triggering. Most social psychology experiments are though. I took, as you may recall because I posted on it alot at the time, a social psychology course at the New School in NYC in 2005. I audited the course. During it - we watched and studied various social psychology experiments, this one was referenced and described in the reading materials - I vaguely remember it. And we even did social psychology experiments in class.
Jane Elliot, to my knowledge, is not a trained social psychologist - which may explain my quibbles with her experiment, and why I'm not sure it works in quite the way she intended. I really wish it was done by social psychologists, who would dig a bit deeper than she appears to. And who would do a few different things with it.
The experiment she borrowed from Adolf Hitler, although I know it has been done by social psychologists in controlled settings. Hers isn't that controlled. And she's not doing it from that perspective. Elliot is a former grade school teacher - who came up with the experiement teaching her grade school class about the Martin Luther King's assassination in the 1960s. She asked them how they could go about doing an experiment to determine what it would feel like to be bullied and discriminated against based on skin color. Everyone in her grade school class is white. So they came up with blue eyes vs. brown eyes, with the blue eyed kids being discriminated against. She later took what they came up with and used it to create the social psychology experiment that you'll see in the video referenced above.
In the video, she gets a bunch of college kids to volunteer for an experiment for college credit. They get something in return for participating - credit. They aren't told ahead of time what the experiment will entail. And are asked to sign a form that releases the educators from any responsibility regarding detrimental physical affects. In short, a release form. (By the way? These don't stand up in a court of law - mainly because the kids don't really know what they are getting into - so can't really sign off on it.)
Then each kid or rather adult - they are between the ages of 18 and 22, is separated into two groups based on their eye color. Kids with blue eyes are put into one group. Kids with brown eyes into the other group. The Kids with Blue Eyes are isolated in a room, with one small window, three uncomfortable chairs placed in three sections of the room, no bathroom, no food, no water, and nothing to entertain them. They also have a monitor who forces them to keep the chairs where they are. This is for several hours, while the kids with brown eyes are briefed on the exercise and what is involved. The teacher, Ms. Elliot, explains in detail what she'll do, and how they should participate and why. Along with the background. That the goal is to intimidate and belittle the kids coming in - who will be forced to sit in the center of the room in even rowed chairs, and if not enough chairs on the floor. These kids will be treated as children, demeaned, etc.
The blue-eyed kids come into the room. And the exercise begins.
The point is obviously to show what it is like to be judged purely on a racial attribute. Elliot also points out that stating that you are colorblind or that you don't see someone's color is as offensive and racist as seeing it. (Uhm, I have a few black friends and coworkers who would disagree. Quite a few actually. But that's because they aren't thinking about it literally, so much as figuratively or metaphorically. Not everyone thinks in literal terms like Ms. Elliot does and this becomes clear in the video. For some, colorblind means treating people equally or regardless of how they look, kind of how we treat each other on DW. But, it's worth noting that some people do not wish to be treated in this manner - they want to have their differences, physical and otherwise, appreciated and noted - for in their view, these physical differences are who they are and how they should be defined. Not everyone thinks in this way. And if Jane Elliot were a social psychologist, she'd understand that, but she isn't. Also if she knew a broader range of people. I mean I have co-workers who do not wish to be treated as black people, they don't see themselves that way. And never did until they left NY and went South. And I have co-workers who do wish to be treated as black, that this is who they are, this is their culture.)
That said, Elliot makes some excellent points - that in a white supremacist world, where one race has power over others - in this case the White Northern European Caucasian Race, then this is a problem. Also, discounting people's differences as immaterial is not what you should do, instead you should celebrate the differences and appreciate them. (I agree with that.)
However, if you watch the video, there are a few things she does that are a bit disturbing or disquieting. I got triggered by one of them and had to force myself to watch all of it. There's a girl in the video who has a speech impediment, a frontal lisp, that I picked up off the bat. (Why? Because I had one in school. I don't now.) And the way Elliot browbeats and bullies her is rather similar to how I was bullied for my lisp by teachers and classmates over the years. Also her reactions to the teacher demonstrate that she was clearly bullied in school by her peers, has social anxiety, and is the weak link in the group. What is unsettling is of the ten kids in that center section, male and female, Elliot chooses to go after this one, the weak link. And like pack animals, all the other kids join her. They pile on.
Instead of choosing the strong link in the group, one of the boys, Elliot chooses the weakest link - a girl with a clear speech impediment and vision disability - she's wearing glasses. Why?
Because it is the easiest and quickest way to make her point. And it is what bullies do. Human beings tend to go after the weak link, and like pack animals they pile on. Bullies rarely attack strong people. Elliot doesn't attack or go after any of the stronger kids. She tries with one girl, who sits quietly and cries, but is able to take it. Then quickly jumps over to a girl that she instinctively knows won't. It's fascinating to watch from a social psychological perspective.
After watching the video, I wondered if the exercise might have been more effective if Ms. Elliot had picked on one of the blue-eyed boys in the group. A kid who was self-assured? She does try and quickly backs off - he's sitting on the ground and shrugs her off, as meaningless to him. She doesn't make a dent, so she moves on to a woman with a nose-ring, who is self-righteous and has been bullied for her sexual orientation and gender identity. Elliot tries to make a point with this woman, who doesn't tend to identify herself as strictly female, with a strong and big black male who identifies himself as black and male. The woman with the nose ring is kind of offended by being forced to pigeon hole herself in such literal terms and feels invalidated. I got the point Elliot was trying to make - which was that this woman can be whatever she wants, she can be male or female, gay or straight, and no one will notice unless she tells them, while a black man is only seen and treated as a black man. I get where she's going with it - but here's the thing, she's not understanding the underlying psychology - which is people think differently. It's not just different perspective, but different ways of thinking. The woman with the nose ring isn't thinking literally. She doesn't necessarily want to be identified by her gender, while Jane Elliot does want to be identified by hers and the black man by his.
That's what is so hard for so many people in this day and age to wrap their head around in regards to identity politics and culture wars - is that we don't think alike. I saw a post recently from someone stating that we all think in paradigms. Not true. Many people don't. I don't.
I remember discussing this with an Aunt, who took an interesting behavior psychology course. In it they were all asked to listen to piece of music and write down what they thought while listening to it. My Aunt was the only person in the room who wrote a story. Most of the other students either put down colors, formulas, notes, or symbols. My Aunt saw a movie, they saw colors.
During Elliot's experiment, I think some of the students felt validated and thought - yay, this is what it is like to be bullied - take that you white privileged assholes. Yet the students stating this did not have speech impediments. They were pretty. Not clumsy. And very bright. Just Black.
And they thought nothing of making fun of this young woman's speech pattern, it was in fact okay, because they were black and she was white.
This is disquieting.
When I was about seven years of age, I had a fight with my best friend. Debbie. And a bunch of kids in the neighborhood, the Arends, who I was friendly with and despised her, talked me into joining an "I hate Debbie Club" and warned me not to tell my mother. This I found alarming. I trusted my mother and parents at that stage, not so much my peers - who I'd had less than positive experiences with and often questioned. So I asked my mother about this - and told her the whole story. Also my mother was very good at reading people and wheedling information out of you. She asked questions.
And taught me to do the same. My mother told me, "we don't join - I hate groups." So I left the group. And if that were the end of the story - I wouldn't probably remember it and I doubt it would have had a profound effect. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view, my best friend, Debbie, found out about it. And she told her baby sitter - Tracy, who decided to teach me a lesson. What they did was rather cruel - they set up an "I hate - "my name" club" and to get into it - you had to be able to do things I couldn't do. I was humiliated by them. But I learned. They effectively threw me on the opposite side of the conversation. While my mother had to a degree gotten the idea across to my seven year old self - Debbie and Tracy drilled it home. Unfortunately, Tracy taught Debbie how to be bully and how to effectively manipulate and bully others - to the point in which my mother wanted me to have nothing to do with Debbie and was glad when we moved away from each other. Debbie was blond-haired, blue-eyed, and a bully in the making. So while the experiment worked for me, it backfired in regards to Debbie. That's the inherent flaw in these experiments, they often bring out the worst in people.
This, my friends, is what Jane Elliot was and is attempting to accomplish with her blue eyes, brown eyes experiment - to throw these college kids on the opposite side of their own argument. To see things from another perspective. Unfortunately, by doing so, she may inadvertently turn some of them into self-righteous bullies. And bullies don't win arguments, bullies get killed.
You can't bully someone into agreeing with you. That's not how it works. Elliot wants to change one mind. But can she do it without losing a few?
I read the comments to the Youtube video and the misogyny was relentless, also the name-calling of the girl with the speech impediment.
It's not that I disagree with Elliot or that I don't applaud what she is doing. I just question it. And wonder what would have happened if a trained psychologist had conducted the experiment and followed up with the students afterwards? In the Zambardo Prison Experiment - far worse than this by the way - they follow up. And that had such detrimental consequences, it was never done again. This is tame by comparison. But is it ultimately effective? I wish we could follow up to find out.
I really want to know what happened to the young woman who left the room. Is she okay? How did she process it? How did the others? Was anyone really changed by it?
I first saw it mentioned by James Marsters on Twitter. Then my college pal, Felicia, shared it on Face Book. I took it from Face Book and discussed it with Felicia, who is half black and half Hispanic, and not self-righteous. So you can actually have a discussion with her - without getting ripped to pieces. James Marsters? Not so much. I avoid interacting with celebrities, actors, famous writers, and social media influencers on Twitter - I've learned my lesson. (Actually it is impossible to have a reasonable discussion with anyone on Twitter or Youtube. So I don't bother.)
Anyhow, here it is:
It's rather long, and if you've been bullied in your lifetime - not easy to watch, in fact possibly triggering. Most social psychology experiments are though. I took, as you may recall because I posted on it alot at the time, a social psychology course at the New School in NYC in 2005. I audited the course. During it - we watched and studied various social psychology experiments, this one was referenced and described in the reading materials - I vaguely remember it. And we even did social psychology experiments in class.
Jane Elliot, to my knowledge, is not a trained social psychologist - which may explain my quibbles with her experiment, and why I'm not sure it works in quite the way she intended. I really wish it was done by social psychologists, who would dig a bit deeper than she appears to. And who would do a few different things with it.
The experiment she borrowed from Adolf Hitler, although I know it has been done by social psychologists in controlled settings. Hers isn't that controlled. And she's not doing it from that perspective. Elliot is a former grade school teacher - who came up with the experiement teaching her grade school class about the Martin Luther King's assassination in the 1960s. She asked them how they could go about doing an experiment to determine what it would feel like to be bullied and discriminated against based on skin color. Everyone in her grade school class is white. So they came up with blue eyes vs. brown eyes, with the blue eyed kids being discriminated against. She later took what they came up with and used it to create the social psychology experiment that you'll see in the video referenced above.
In the video, she gets a bunch of college kids to volunteer for an experiment for college credit. They get something in return for participating - credit. They aren't told ahead of time what the experiment will entail. And are asked to sign a form that releases the educators from any responsibility regarding detrimental physical affects. In short, a release form. (By the way? These don't stand up in a court of law - mainly because the kids don't really know what they are getting into - so can't really sign off on it.)
Then each kid or rather adult - they are between the ages of 18 and 22, is separated into two groups based on their eye color. Kids with blue eyes are put into one group. Kids with brown eyes into the other group. The Kids with Blue Eyes are isolated in a room, with one small window, three uncomfortable chairs placed in three sections of the room, no bathroom, no food, no water, and nothing to entertain them. They also have a monitor who forces them to keep the chairs where they are. This is for several hours, while the kids with brown eyes are briefed on the exercise and what is involved. The teacher, Ms. Elliot, explains in detail what she'll do, and how they should participate and why. Along with the background. That the goal is to intimidate and belittle the kids coming in - who will be forced to sit in the center of the room in even rowed chairs, and if not enough chairs on the floor. These kids will be treated as children, demeaned, etc.
The blue-eyed kids come into the room. And the exercise begins.
The point is obviously to show what it is like to be judged purely on a racial attribute. Elliot also points out that stating that you are colorblind or that you don't see someone's color is as offensive and racist as seeing it. (Uhm, I have a few black friends and coworkers who would disagree. Quite a few actually. But that's because they aren't thinking about it literally, so much as figuratively or metaphorically. Not everyone thinks in literal terms like Ms. Elliot does and this becomes clear in the video. For some, colorblind means treating people equally or regardless of how they look, kind of how we treat each other on DW. But, it's worth noting that some people do not wish to be treated in this manner - they want to have their differences, physical and otherwise, appreciated and noted - for in their view, these physical differences are who they are and how they should be defined. Not everyone thinks in this way. And if Jane Elliot were a social psychologist, she'd understand that, but she isn't. Also if she knew a broader range of people. I mean I have co-workers who do not wish to be treated as black people, they don't see themselves that way. And never did until they left NY and went South. And I have co-workers who do wish to be treated as black, that this is who they are, this is their culture.)
That said, Elliot makes some excellent points - that in a white supremacist world, where one race has power over others - in this case the White Northern European Caucasian Race, then this is a problem. Also, discounting people's differences as immaterial is not what you should do, instead you should celebrate the differences and appreciate them. (I agree with that.)
However, if you watch the video, there are a few things she does that are a bit disturbing or disquieting. I got triggered by one of them and had to force myself to watch all of it. There's a girl in the video who has a speech impediment, a frontal lisp, that I picked up off the bat. (Why? Because I had one in school. I don't now.) And the way Elliot browbeats and bullies her is rather similar to how I was bullied for my lisp by teachers and classmates over the years. Also her reactions to the teacher demonstrate that she was clearly bullied in school by her peers, has social anxiety, and is the weak link in the group. What is unsettling is of the ten kids in that center section, male and female, Elliot chooses to go after this one, the weak link. And like pack animals, all the other kids join her. They pile on.
Instead of choosing the strong link in the group, one of the boys, Elliot chooses the weakest link - a girl with a clear speech impediment and vision disability - she's wearing glasses. Why?
Because it is the easiest and quickest way to make her point. And it is what bullies do. Human beings tend to go after the weak link, and like pack animals they pile on. Bullies rarely attack strong people. Elliot doesn't attack or go after any of the stronger kids. She tries with one girl, who sits quietly and cries, but is able to take it. Then quickly jumps over to a girl that she instinctively knows won't. It's fascinating to watch from a social psychological perspective.
After watching the video, I wondered if the exercise might have been more effective if Ms. Elliot had picked on one of the blue-eyed boys in the group. A kid who was self-assured? She does try and quickly backs off - he's sitting on the ground and shrugs her off, as meaningless to him. She doesn't make a dent, so she moves on to a woman with a nose-ring, who is self-righteous and has been bullied for her sexual orientation and gender identity. Elliot tries to make a point with this woman, who doesn't tend to identify herself as strictly female, with a strong and big black male who identifies himself as black and male. The woman with the nose ring is kind of offended by being forced to pigeon hole herself in such literal terms and feels invalidated. I got the point Elliot was trying to make - which was that this woman can be whatever she wants, she can be male or female, gay or straight, and no one will notice unless she tells them, while a black man is only seen and treated as a black man. I get where she's going with it - but here's the thing, she's not understanding the underlying psychology - which is people think differently. It's not just different perspective, but different ways of thinking. The woman with the nose ring isn't thinking literally. She doesn't necessarily want to be identified by her gender, while Jane Elliot does want to be identified by hers and the black man by his.
That's what is so hard for so many people in this day and age to wrap their head around in regards to identity politics and culture wars - is that we don't think alike. I saw a post recently from someone stating that we all think in paradigms. Not true. Many people don't. I don't.
I remember discussing this with an Aunt, who took an interesting behavior psychology course. In it they were all asked to listen to piece of music and write down what they thought while listening to it. My Aunt was the only person in the room who wrote a story. Most of the other students either put down colors, formulas, notes, or symbols. My Aunt saw a movie, they saw colors.
During Elliot's experiment, I think some of the students felt validated and thought - yay, this is what it is like to be bullied - take that you white privileged assholes. Yet the students stating this did not have speech impediments. They were pretty. Not clumsy. And very bright. Just Black.
And they thought nothing of making fun of this young woman's speech pattern, it was in fact okay, because they were black and she was white.
This is disquieting.
When I was about seven years of age, I had a fight with my best friend. Debbie. And a bunch of kids in the neighborhood, the Arends, who I was friendly with and despised her, talked me into joining an "I hate Debbie Club" and warned me not to tell my mother. This I found alarming. I trusted my mother and parents at that stage, not so much my peers - who I'd had less than positive experiences with and often questioned. So I asked my mother about this - and told her the whole story. Also my mother was very good at reading people and wheedling information out of you. She asked questions.
And taught me to do the same. My mother told me, "we don't join - I hate groups." So I left the group. And if that were the end of the story - I wouldn't probably remember it and I doubt it would have had a profound effect. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view, my best friend, Debbie, found out about it. And she told her baby sitter - Tracy, who decided to teach me a lesson. What they did was rather cruel - they set up an "I hate - "my name" club" and to get into it - you had to be able to do things I couldn't do. I was humiliated by them. But I learned. They effectively threw me on the opposite side of the conversation. While my mother had to a degree gotten the idea across to my seven year old self - Debbie and Tracy drilled it home. Unfortunately, Tracy taught Debbie how to be bully and how to effectively manipulate and bully others - to the point in which my mother wanted me to have nothing to do with Debbie and was glad when we moved away from each other. Debbie was blond-haired, blue-eyed, and a bully in the making. So while the experiment worked for me, it backfired in regards to Debbie. That's the inherent flaw in these experiments, they often bring out the worst in people.
This, my friends, is what Jane Elliot was and is attempting to accomplish with her blue eyes, brown eyes experiment - to throw these college kids on the opposite side of their own argument. To see things from another perspective. Unfortunately, by doing so, she may inadvertently turn some of them into self-righteous bullies. And bullies don't win arguments, bullies get killed.
You can't bully someone into agreeing with you. That's not how it works. Elliot wants to change one mind. But can she do it without losing a few?
I read the comments to the Youtube video and the misogyny was relentless, also the name-calling of the girl with the speech impediment.
It's not that I disagree with Elliot or that I don't applaud what she is doing. I just question it. And wonder what would have happened if a trained psychologist had conducted the experiment and followed up with the students afterwards? In the Zambardo Prison Experiment - far worse than this by the way - they follow up. And that had such detrimental consequences, it was never done again. This is tame by comparison. But is it ultimately effective? I wish we could follow up to find out.
I really want to know what happened to the young woman who left the room. Is she okay? How did she process it? How did the others? Was anyone really changed by it?
no subject
Date: 2020-07-07 01:05 pm (UTC)have both hope and fear for how the experience affected the young woman who left the room. /-:
Same.
I'm hoping it didn't drive her into a white supremacist cult. A lot of it depends on what else is happening in her life. The difficulty with some of these experiments - is they don't do the follow-up or the intake at the start.
We really don't know what we would do in any given situation, and we don't know what we'd do if we were that person.
I found Elliot's intentions good, but...the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions. And, a lot of cults and white supremacist organizations use the tactics she did in that exercise to indoctrinate their members. The exact same tactics. It's behavioral conditioning. Most bullies are created by bullies.