Jane Elliott - Criticism of Elliott-inspired Diversity Training

Criticism of Elliott-inspired Diversity Training

It should be noted that most of the criticisms below reference seminars and/or presentations which loosely adapted Elliott's techniques and with which Elliott had no connection. Elliott has consistently warned presenters and trainers about the dangers of the misuse of her technique and materials.

According to supporters of Elliott’s approach, the goal is to reach people’s sense of empathy and morality. It seeks to address a sense of apathy that many people have because they do not think the problem affects them or that they do not believe that they act in a racist manner. Elliott says racism is not inherent: “You are not born a racist. You have to carefully be taught to be one.” And while Jane Elliott created the exercise as a response to racial discrimination, her approach is equally touted to point out sexism, ageism and homophobia as well.

However, it is the manner in which these training sessions are conducted and Elliott’s role as a trainer that has drawn criticism. First, she usually puts the “brown-eyed” participants in the superior position. If the group attending the session is of various races, the ones experiencing discrimination are most likely to be white.

The corporate version of “blue-eyed/brown-eyed” is still based on demeaning a chosen group of people and then letting the temporarily favored group taunt them, much the way the brown-eyed children of the original exercise did. As in the original exercise, she does not explicitly tell participants to mock others but uses choice of language and tone, removal of basic rights (such as being allowed to speak without permission), and a constant changing of the rules to discomfort the blue-eyed participants. At the same time she uses positive language, praise and encouragement to the brown-eyed people. One way she does this is with the use of an alternative IQ test called the “Dove Counterbalance Intelligence Test” which asks questions about the black experience of the 1950s and 1960s, in an attempt to mimic the experience that blacks may have with conventional IQ or standardized tests.

At seminars given at U.S. federal agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), white males were verbally abused by black peers and then forced to walk a gauntlet to be touched by female workers. The creators of this training may have been aware of or inspired by the Brown Eyed/Blue Eyed exercise.

Another criticism of such training programs is that they do not permit genuine debate or discussion about the issues to be addressed, even though extensive discussion was encouraged directly following Elliott's original exercise, and is usually encouraged after similar exercises in today's diversity trainings.

She has also been accused of not recognizing the social and political changes that have occurred since the era in which she originally developed the exercise. Alan Charles Kors, a conservative professor of history at University of Pennsylvania noted, in his defense of students accused of shouting racial slurs in the water buffalo incident of 1993, writes that Elliott’s exercise teaches “blood-guilt and self-contempt to whites,” adding that “in her view, nothing has changed in American since the collapse of Reconstruction.”(p. 19)

However, Elliott seems to feel that such an approach is still necessary. She is quoted as saying “I’ve reached a point now where I will no longer tolerate the intolerable. I’m a ball of barbed-wire and I know it.” “After 30 years of dealing with this subject of racism, I am no longer a sweet, gentle person. I want it stopped.” She has also expressed frustration at the idea that she still needs to do this exercise, “It shouldn’t be necessary in 2008,” she says, to “…say things that are difficult for people to hear. I’m not kind about it. But neither are the racists.”