Bigotry Can Be Unlearned – Jane Elliott
(CC: “We hate because we’re taught to hate. We hate because we’re ignorant. We are the product of ignorant people who have been taught an ignorant thing which is that there are 4 or 5 different races. There are not 4 or 5 races, there’s only one race on the face of the Earth and we’re all members of that race – the human race.
But we have separated people into races so that some of us can see ourselves as superior to the others. We thought it would work, I guess. It hasn’t worked. It has been bad for everyone. Its time to get over this business.
There is no gene for racism, there’s no gene for bigotry. You’re not born a bigot, you have to learn to be a bigot. Anything you learn you can unlearn.
It’s time to unlearn our bigotry. Its time to get over this thing and we best get over it pretty soon. I’m an educator and its my business as an educator to lead people out of ignorance.
The ignorance of thinking that you’re better or worse than someone else because of the amount of a pigment in your skin. Pigmentation in your skin has nothing to do with intelligence or with your worth as a human being.”)
Jane Elliot has been an anti-racism educator and activist since the late 1960s, and is most well known for her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise she conducted with her 3rd grade students in 1968. In this clip she responds to the question, “Why do people hate?”
More of Elliott’s educational content is on her website.
-Your Friends at Undoing Racism