{"id":533,"date":"2007-06-13T13:30:48","date_gmt":"2007-06-13T13:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/34.95.25.178\/maggie\/2007\/06\/13\/the_eyes_have_it\/"},"modified":"2007-06-13T13:30:48","modified_gmt":"2007-06-13T13:30:48","slug":"the_eyes_have_it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.golding.ca\/maggie\/2007\/06\/13\/the_eyes_have_it\/","title":{"rendered":"The eyes have it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dynamics & Diversity, Journal #2<\/em>
\nJane Elliot\u2019s<\/a> exercises in prejudice and discrimination were excellent illustrations of some of the concepts we\u2019ve been exploring recently, and how these concepts may be relevant to our classrooms. Elliot\u2019s workshops demonstrate how social groups are affected by apparently arbitrary criteria, and how values assigned to these criteria result in a system of privilege and disadvantage that can have significant effects on the members of the society.
\nFleras and Elliot (not the same Elliot) talk about the \u201cculturally invisible environment\u201d in North American society and make the point that racism not just about disadvantages for those members of society who are labelled as \u2018different\u2019 or \u2018Other.\u2019 Racism, more insidiously, is about the tacitly-accepted idea that those who are not different are privileged. In Jane Elliot\u2019s classroom exercise, this concept of assumed privilege is manifested in explicit terms by Elliot\u2019s awarding of certain unmerited privileges to the dominant group, such as extended recess time and free access to the drinking fountain. The result of this privilege is that the excluded students felt, in the words of one boy, like \u201ca dog on a leash.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nElliot\u2019s experiment also clearly demonstrates the difference between labelling and identity, as well as the tendency to assume homogeneity of background based on specific, socially-assigned criteria over which the individual has no control. This homogeneity of identity is echoed in both Didi Khayatt\u2019s<\/a> and Sabra Desai\u2019s<\/a> articles. Because Elliot presented her \u201cfacts\u201d strictly in terms of general statements \u2013 brown-eyed people are better, blue-eyed people are sloppy and lazy \u2013 she created a set of \u2018truths\u2019 which were then applied to each individual based solely on that person\u2019s eye colour. Interestingly, in Elliot\u2019s classroom, there did not appear to be any instances of the \u201cyou\u2019re different\u201d scenarios described by Desai, who clearly shows that in labelling her as \u2018different,\u2019 her friends are not doing her any favours, especially since the implication seems to be precisely that they are doing her a favour. However, in Elliot\u2019s workshop with the Greenhaven Correctional Department employees, Elliot used her own eye colour in a \u201cbut you\u2019re different\u201d scenario, explaining that although her eyes were blue, she had \u201clearned\u201d to be brown-eyed, and was married to a brown-eyed man and had brown-eyed children.
\nOne of the aspects of Elliot\u2019s exercise that strikes me as particularly relevant to our current discussion is that the exercise demonstrates how social identity so quickly becomes reduced to one physiological characteristic which clearly reveals nothing about the individual. During recess on the first day of her classroom exercise, two boys fought because the blue-eyed boy called the other boy \u201cbrown-eyes,\u201d which one boy astutely equated with calling a black person \u201cnigger.\u201d Again, this kind of name-calling reflects the difference between labelling and identity; I have black students who use the term \u201cnigger\u201d to refer to each other, but this is an act of reclamation \u2013 thus \u201cnigger\u201d becomes a term used as identity, rather than labelling, and therefore is acceptable only within a strictly defined context, namely, among blacks, and not from, or to, whites.
\nIt will be interesting to discuss these concepts in the context of Stella Ting-Toomey\u2019s<\/a> ideas of cultural communication. It seems to me that a large part of her theory rests on the idea that different individuals identify themselves to varying extents with different aspects of identity \u2013 one person\u2019s self-identity may be heavily influenced by ethnic identity, while another\u2019s may have little or no connection with ethnicity, but be very invested in gender, or be completely exclusive of group identities in favour of personal identity. Furthermore, Ting-Toomey\u2019s theory incorporates situational identity, which so far has only been peripherally examined (for example, in Khayatt\u2019s third moment, the church ladies obviously identified her in the context of her \u2018role\u2019 as a new citizen, although Khayatt surmises that the same ladies would not have identified her as different were they to encounter her elsewhere). How would situational identity complicate Elliot\u2019s workshop with the correctional workers, for instance? Presumably, the workshop was intended to improve relationships between the correctional workers and the prisoners; but equally presumably, there is a complication in that relationship in that the prisoners are, well, prisoners.
\nI hope that the outcome of these discussions will be improved cultural communication on our parts, and not paralysis! Ting-Toomey certainly seems to be hopeful; our goal, in her words, is to achieve \u201cunconscious competence\u201d in these interactions. Right now, I can\u2019t help but feel we\u2019re in the rather more uncomfortable conscious zones. Here\u2019s to becoming unconscious!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dynamics & Diversity, Journal #2 Jane Elliot\u2019s exercises in prejudice and discrimination were excellent illustrations of some of the concepts we\u2019ve been exploring recently, and how these concepts may be relevant to our classrooms. Elliot\u2019s workshops demonstrate how social groups are affected by apparently arbitrary criteria, and how values assigned to these criteria result in … <\/p>\n

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