Talk:Jane Elliott
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[edit] Copyright
This is copied word for word from [[1]]. Its the first site on Google, after searching for 'Jane Elliot.' Unless the materials not copywrited, it should be rewritten. Kaiser matias 00:07 4 March 2005 (UTC)
I think it is. Says so at the bottom: 'The Enterprise Foundation © Copyright 2000. All Rights reserved.' Which fool copypasted a copyrighted article and submitted it to Wikipedia? --195.92.67.75 00:55, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It IS copypasted from that website, but with this bit of blatant opinion added in: "Elliott blames her ostracism on the alleged racists of Riceville but fails to acknowledge the role her own personality played. She is well-known to be highly opinionated on most controversial subjects, a trait that didn't endear her to the conservative population of Riceville. Many students also claim that Elliott was guilty of favoritism with certain students."
What kind of job is this? I think this is below the standards of Wikipedia.
CGally81 01:32, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Blatant opinion
I am the one who inserted the "blatant opinion" paragraph. My intention is to provide a counter for the pro-Elliott aspect of the article. What is the acceptable method to do this?
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The way to do it is to express it as an opinion belonging to someone else, rather than an outright fact.
For example, instead of saying "What Jane fails to realize is that her own personality played a role in....", you should say something like "Jane's personality however, may have played a role (or "is believed to have played a role") in...." or even "Some believe that Jane's personality also played a role in...."
Attributing that belief to a group of people may help as well. If a particular group of people stated that they felt Jane's personality resulted in her persecution, then you can credit that group with saying so.
Understand what I mean?
Wikipedia is about expressing facts (if proven) as facts, opinion as opinion, and things believed to be facts by some but not others, as just that - i.e. state that some believe this, some believe that, etc.
CGally81 02:48, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Wrote new content, removed copyrighted material
I actually know a bit about the subject, so I did the work and wrote the beginnings of a real article. Also removed copyrighted material, of course....it's not supposed to be here.
I didn't see the terribly opinionated paragraph mentioned above, but now the article doesn't even go into the community reaction, so there's nothing for the opinionated paragraph to butt heads with, so to speak. Removed, if it was in there (but I think it had already been nixed.)
(We would need to have some more solid sources for this than just the Brigitta Kral piece, in order to prevent just such back-and-forth controversy: the piece omits half the experimental method, which makes it seem like it's only casually researched.) Alan Canon 03:03, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
[edit] New section
I see that someone added a new paragraph about the negative reaction of the town. The "facts" in this paragraph are only claims by Elliott herself. What is an acceptable way to counter-balance this paragraph?
- I think you handled it very appropriately. --CGally81 02:37, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Dead links
The link for the attributed quoted text is now dead. Should the quote be removed? Also, the Smithsonian link goes to their front page. Mick 12:49, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Exercise or experiment?
This should be clarified. Irrevenant 10:11, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Birth?
When was she born?
== My Oh My... ==their is no reason of being bitter after all that was just an experiment she did a wonderful job
... While I don't deny that whites are also on the recieving end of racism, I think the poster who saw Indecently Exposed didn't quite get the point.
Elliott was purposefully taking on the persona of a "racist fuckwit" as you chose to title it to highlight how certain behaviours from one person or group can bring out negative behaviours in another group, and reinforce false perceptions of laziness, stupidity, etc. (This is also done in the Ble Eye/Brown Eye experiment.) 220.244.212.62 10:25, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
No, in Indecently Exposed, Elliott was purposefully taking on the persona of an eye-colorist, dividing the participants by eye colour and brow-beating some of them, but she also interjected her interpretation of the exercise, brow-beating the whites indiscriminately (ironically...) for their attitude towards others. It is for this interpretation, not for her persona, that I say she was the most racist fuckwit in the room.
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I think that you could come up with a more appropriate term than "racist fuckwit" but will use the term here since you both agree on what it means. I think there should be more information concerning her earlier experiments with blue eyed and brown eyed school children (it was a two day exercise) than with her training of adults. Strange how kids acted differently and performed better academically on the day that they were "superior" - and this should be focused on more in the wikipedia entry than the later adult stuff.
I also think that one should settle this by going into her reasons for acting like a "racist fuckwit" (which was Jane Elliott's intention) and how successful she was in using this persona to get her point across and whether she was equally successful as a school teacher as she was later in her work with adults. Look at it this way, Stephen Colbert acts like a right wing "fuckwit" to show the stupidity of the right wing point of view - but no one considers those strange things he says his own views. The problem I see here is not so much Jane Elliott's intention but whether she was successful in distinguishing between the intentionally racist persona and her true views.
There is one point where she baits a person into saying something racist which sounds more like her putting words in the person's mouth than the person's true views (distorting another's view or potentially doing so is a point that can be made legitimately). It is both racist to see all members of the group the same and to deny a person their group identity in Jane Elliott's opinion. However, the person does get roped slightly unfairly into inferring the latter by trying not to infer the former. Jane Elliott made it sound as if the person had said that soccor players shouldn't wear hijabs, and RCMP officers should not wear braids or turbans - which one could question. I think when the person said that they were the same as us, the person didn't mean what she made it sound like he said. You can look up Baltej Singh Dhillon either on wikipedia or the cbc to get some background on the issue for the discussion.
[edit] Oprah
I didn't see any verification of the story that this experiment was tried on Oprah via the first page of Google results for "Oprah eye color". Does someone have a reference for this?
Here is a link from Oprah.com that discusses that particular episode in detail: http://www.oprah.com/tows/vintage/past/vintage_past_20010720_b.jhtml Duboisist (talk) 13:55, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Controversy section
This section should be removed because it doesn't represent a controversy. There is no evidence offered that the exercise in question violates the ethical standards of any recognized organization that does human research studies. Moreover, this section seem to represent the opinion of just two people who no evidence has been offered that either have any particular expertise in the ethics of human research. Furthermore this makes makes the entire article self-contradictory because the exact same thing can be said about the Stanford experiment mentioned below.--Duboisist (talk) 14:16, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] racism is a "white attitudinal problem"
She said it! What a racist!
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We need to define the term and let the readers decide whether it is racist or not.
Ok, if you want to make the point that not only white people are racist you can point to David Ahenakew's Wikipedia entry. However, I think she was addressing Saskatchewan after the death of Neil Stonechild (who has his own inaccurate wikipedia entry - I'm white and figure that the cops were responsible for his death). Neil Stonechild died because he was taken on a Starlight Tour - a common practice at the time.
On the other hand, Jane Elliott's statement of a "white attitudinal problem" is not limited to a belief that white people can be racist (we can to varying degrees), but, more importantly, it incorporates the tendency we have to underestimate the impact of how being a victim of multiple acts of racism influences a person's self esteem and behaviour over time - or even one's trust in government agencies.
Expecting a person not to be impacted by a lifetime of exposure to racism, is like expecting a child rape victim to "just get over it" - in both cases, one has to heal and learn to trust. And we can all learn to be a bit more trust worthy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.77.37.48 (talk) 21:22, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
[edit] this is not an experiment, she emphasizes
Yet it's repeatedly referred to as an experiment in this article. Personally, I don't care either way. Seems like she didn't intend it to be one, but many have observed the results as if it were (and I'd say there's plenty of value in doing so).
But this is an encyclopedia. And it's either an experiment, or it's not. Let's make a decision, and adjust the article accordingly, ok? Whatcha think? :-/ -- MyrddinEmrys (talk) 12:01, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
- My vote would be to change all cases of "experiment" to "exercise".Trilobitealive (talk) 20:30, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] rewrite
I rewrote the article, putting in a lot more detail. Not sure if the quote I used could be cited better. Only one of the sources I take quotes from has page numbers. What I have read about citations just asks that quotes have a citation immediately after. But I kind of did it two ways... for one or two quotes I cite a source twice so that I could include the page number for the quote (instead of the more general citation I use for information)... in other places, I put the page number in the text... Which is more appropriate? Thelmadatter (talk) 18:11, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
