Every day this week, I have made a concentrated effort to catch up on all the episodes I have missed from the shows I follow. I have made tremendous progress towards my goal and was working toward that this morning when I was profoundly affected by the episode of CSI: Cyber starring Patricia Arquette, Ted Danson and James Van Der Beek I was watching. To explain the significance of that episode, first I must tell you a story about a remarkable woman who just so happens to share my birthday of May 27, so here goes:
Jane Elliott (born May 27, 1933, in Riceville, Iowa) is an American former third-grade schoolteacher, anti-racism activist and educator, as well as a feminist and LGBT activist. She is known for her "Blue eyes–Brown eyes" exercise. She first conducted her famous exercise for her class the day after Martin Luther King Jr was shot. When her local newspaper published compositions that the children wrote about the experience, the reactions (both positive and negative) formed the basis for her career as a public speaker against discrimination. Elliott's classroom exercise was filmed the third time she held it with her 1970 third-graders to become Eye of the Storm. This in turn inspired a retrospective that reunited the 1970 class members with their teacher fifteen years later in A Class Divided. After leaving her school, Elliott became a diversity trainer full-time and has been on Oprah and Ellen and still holds the exercise and gives lectures about its effects all over the U.S. and in several locations overseas.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, Elliott turned on her television and learned of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. She says she vividly remembers a scene in which a white reporter with the microphone pointed it toward a local black leader and asked, "When our leader [John F. Kennedy] was killed several years ago, his widow held us together. Who's going to control your people?" Shocked that a reporter could feel that Kennedy was a "white people's leader", she then decided to combine a lesson she had planned about Native Americans with a lesson she had planned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for February's Hero of the Month project. At the moment she was watching the news of King's death, she was ironing a teepee for use in a lesson unit about Native Americans. To tie the two together, she used the Sioux prayer "Oh Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins."[3] She wanted to give her small-town, all-white students the experience of "walking in the moccasins" of someone of color.
The following day, she had a class discussion about the lesson and racism in general. She later said: "I could see that they weren't internalizing a thing. They were doing what white people do. When white people sit down to discuss racism what they are experiencing is shared ignorance." Most of Elliott's eight-year-old students were, like her, born and raised in the small town of Riceville, Iowa and were not normally exposed to black people. She felt that simply talking about racism would not allow her all-white class to fully comprehend racism's meaning and effects.
Jane Elliott (born May 27, 1933, in Riceville, Iowa) is an American former third-grade schoolteacher, anti-racism activist and educator, as well as a feminist and LGBT activist. She is known for her "Blue eyes–Brown eyes" exercise. She first conducted her famous exercise for her class the day after Martin Luther King Jr was shot. When her local newspaper published compositions that the children wrote about the experience, the reactions (both positive and negative) formed the basis for her career as a public speaker against discrimination. Elliott's classroom exercise was filmed the third time she held it with her 1970 third-graders to become Eye of the Storm. This in turn inspired a retrospective that reunited the 1970 class members with their teacher fifteen years later in A Class Divided. After leaving her school, Elliott became a diversity trainer full-time and has been on Oprah and Ellen and still holds the exercise and gives lectures about its effects all over the U.S. and in several locations overseas.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, Elliott turned on her television and learned of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. She says she vividly remembers a scene in which a white reporter with the microphone pointed it toward a local black leader and asked, "When our leader [John F. Kennedy] was killed several years ago, his widow held us together. Who's going to control your people?" Shocked that a reporter could feel that Kennedy was a "white people's leader", she then decided to combine a lesson she had planned about Native Americans with a lesson she had planned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for February's Hero of the Month project. At the moment she was watching the news of King's death, she was ironing a teepee for use in a lesson unit about Native Americans. To tie the two together, she used the Sioux prayer "Oh Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins."[3] She wanted to give her small-town, all-white students the experience of "walking in the moccasins" of someone of color.
The following day, she had a class discussion about the lesson and racism in general. She later said: "I could see that they weren't internalizing a thing. They were doing what white people do. When white people sit down to discuss racism what they are experiencing is shared ignorance." Most of Elliott's eight-year-old students were, like her, born and raised in the small town of Riceville, Iowa and were not normally exposed to black people. She felt that simply talking about racism would not allow her all-white class to fully comprehend racism's meaning and effects.
Steven Armstrong was the first child to arrive in Elliott's classroom,
asking why "that King" (referring to Martin Luther King Jr.) was
murdered. After the rest of the class arrived, Elliott asked what they
knew about black people. She then asked the children if they would like
to try an exercise to feel what it would be like to be treated the way a
person of color is treated in America. She decided to base the exercise
on eye color rather than skin color to show the children what segregation would be like. The children agreed to try the exercise.
On that first day of the exercise, she designated the blue-eyed children as the superior group. Elliott provided brown fabric collars and asked the blue-eyed students to wrap them around the necks of their brown-eyed peers as a method to easily identify the minority group. She gave the blue-eyed children extra privileges, such as second helpings at lunch, access to the new jungle gym, and five extra minutes at recess. The blue-eyed children sat in the front of the classroom, and the brown-eyed children were sent to sit in the back rows. The blue-eyed children were encouraged to play only with other blue-eyed children and to ignore those with brown eyes. Elliott would not allow brown-eyed and blue-eyed children to drink from the same water fountain and often chastised the brown-eyed students when they did not follow the exercise's rules or made mistakes. She often exemplified the differences between the two groups by singling out students and would use negative aspects of brown-eyed children to emphasize a point.
At first, there was resistance among the students in the minority group to the idea that blue-eyed children were better than brown-eyed children. To counter this, Elliott lied to the children by stating that melanin, which is responsible for making children blue-eyed, was also linked to their higher intelligence and learning ability. Shortly thereafter, this initial resistance fell away. Those who were deemed "superior" became arrogant, bossy, and otherwise unpleasant to their "inferior" classmates. Their grades on simple tests were better, and they completed mathematical and reading tasks that had seemed outside their ability before. The "inferior" classmates also transformed – into timid and subservient children who scored poorer on tests, and even during recess isolated themselves, including those who had previously been dominant in the class. These children's academic performance suffered, even with tasks that had been simple before.
The next Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, making the brown-eyed children superior. While the brown-eyed children did taunt the blue-eyed children in ways similar to what had occurred the previous day, Elliott reports it was much less intense. At 2:30 on that Wednesday, Elliott told the blue-eyed children to take off their collars. To reflect on the experience, she asked the children to write down what they had learned. Later she was quoted as saying "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day"
On that first day of the exercise, she designated the blue-eyed children as the superior group. Elliott provided brown fabric collars and asked the blue-eyed students to wrap them around the necks of their brown-eyed peers as a method to easily identify the minority group. She gave the blue-eyed children extra privileges, such as second helpings at lunch, access to the new jungle gym, and five extra minutes at recess. The blue-eyed children sat in the front of the classroom, and the brown-eyed children were sent to sit in the back rows. The blue-eyed children were encouraged to play only with other blue-eyed children and to ignore those with brown eyes. Elliott would not allow brown-eyed and blue-eyed children to drink from the same water fountain and often chastised the brown-eyed students when they did not follow the exercise's rules or made mistakes. She often exemplified the differences between the two groups by singling out students and would use negative aspects of brown-eyed children to emphasize a point.
At first, there was resistance among the students in the minority group to the idea that blue-eyed children were better than brown-eyed children. To counter this, Elliott lied to the children by stating that melanin, which is responsible for making children blue-eyed, was also linked to their higher intelligence and learning ability. Shortly thereafter, this initial resistance fell away. Those who were deemed "superior" became arrogant, bossy, and otherwise unpleasant to their "inferior" classmates. Their grades on simple tests were better, and they completed mathematical and reading tasks that had seemed outside their ability before. The "inferior" classmates also transformed – into timid and subservient children who scored poorer on tests, and even during recess isolated themselves, including those who had previously been dominant in the class. These children's academic performance suffered, even with tasks that had been simple before.
The next Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, making the brown-eyed children superior. While the brown-eyed children did taunt the blue-eyed children in ways similar to what had occurred the previous day, Elliott reports it was much less intense. At 2:30 on that Wednesday, Elliott told the blue-eyed children to take off their collars. To reflect on the experience, she asked the children to write down what they had learned. Later she was quoted as saying "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day"
The premise of the episode of CSI: Cyber I was watching was entitled "Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes". The lead character played by Arquette recalls here experience with the experiment in relation to the case they were investigating involving a cyber generated social experiment designed to end in a race riot. Of course the crime was solved and the end game of the perpetrator was prevented from coming to fruition... barely. The show was very well done and as I said I was profoundly moved by the episode and its message. If you have not watched this show, now in its second season on CBS.com or Hulu. If you like intriguing drama and good acting, you would do well to catch up on this show and add it to your own watch list. It is great to see responsible TV remind us of the lessons of the past to ensure we do not repeat our same mistakes. I also think this is pretty cool that one of the best tools in the arsenal of the fight against bigotry and racisim was conceived and implemented by someone who also happens to be an out LGBT. Visiblity is important but internalizing the true understanding of this knowledge is something that we should all should strive for. We also should have more people like Jane Elliot in our lives to help us along the way.
Now as for Music and Men, I have some great stuff to share today with you also. You all know how much I love the Cello, so I thought I would share some new music for the Cello. I have 3 new works by young composers from The London Symphony Orchestra Soundhub Showcase for Phase I Composers at LSO St Luke’s on Saturday 13 June 2015. First up is Klinge(n) by Benjamin Graves performed by Yoanna Prodanova; then comes Foreign Tongues by Daniel Kidane performed by a quintet of members from the LSO. The final piece in this play list is Tricko by Kit Downes performed by the Composer at the Piano and Lucy Railton on the Cello. Then also from June and just released on You Tube is Luka Sulic performing Kol Nidrei by Max Bruch with the Zagreb Soloists at the Lisinski Concert Hall in Zagreb. I have that posted over on my tumblr.
Now it is time for Friday's Fantasy Fuel to feed that over active imagination of yours which you will find posted down below. Over on my tumblr, you will find that Your Hottie of the Day!, Enrique, is all set to add some 'sabor del fuego' to your fantasies.
Will got the parts for his computer today and is in the process of his build right now. My parts came yesterday and I have already installed the new Asus Monitor (which is really fabulous by the way). I will do my build over the weekend and should come to you for the Sunday Morning Concert from Nichevo 2.0. The new monitor has a 1920 x 1080 resolution so I have to add more photos of that resolution to my portfolios. The photo at the top of the post is my latest wallpaper and I already had this one at the proper resolution so up it went, I should be an exciting weekend for me and you will hear all about it on Sunday or Monday. Thanks for the visit, see you again soon from Nichevo 2.0!! Until next time as always, Enjoy!
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