51 Jane Elliot Quotes About Activism

Jane Elliott Quotes – Jane Elliott is a diversity educator of America. She taught her students in a school. She is very famous in her school for Blue eyes. In 1968 she conducted her third grade class for the first time where she was responsible for the blue eyes experiment.

In 1970 the classroom exercise was filmed. This film is a documentary with the name The Eye of the Storm. In 1970 the Frontline of PBS series featured the reunion of the class.

Most Famous Jane Elliot Quotes

“Should the color of some other person’s eyes have anything to do with how you treat them?” — Jane Elliot
“We don’t know anything about racism. We’ve never experienced it. If words can make a difference in your life for seven minutes, how would it affect you if you heard this every day of your life?” — Jane Elliot
“What did you people who are wearing blue collars now find out today?” — Jane Elliot
“450,000 Iraqi children have died from starvation and lack of medicine as a result of our embargo. If you believe God loves little children – and hundreds of thousands more Iraqi children will die if there is war – you have to believe that God will judge us very harshly for this.” — Jane Elliot
“You convince those who are analogous to the brown-eyed people that they are superior, that they are perfect, that they have the right to rule. And you convince those who take the place of the blue-eyed students that they are less than. If you do that for a lifetime, what do you suppose that does to them?” — Jane Elliot
“…It’s time to insist that educators recognize the myth, teach about the myth, but teach the truth, that there’s only one race: it’s the human race.” — Jane Elliot
“Nobody’s born a bigot, you have to learn bigotry. Bigotry is a learned response.” — Jane Elliot
“I don’t wanna go to my grave knowing that we didn’t make a difference.” — Jane Elliot
“To sit back and do nothing is to cooperate with the oppressor.” — Jane Elliot
“I am absolutely opposed to political correctness. You cannot confront hate speech until you’ve experienced it. You need to hear every side of the issue instead of just one.” — Jane Elliot
“I loved raising my kids. I loved the process, the dirt of it, the tears of it, the frustration of it, Christmas, Easter, birthdays, growth charts, pediatrician appointments. I loved all of it.” — Jane Elliot
“I’m a practicing Christian – and I’m going to keep practicing till I get it right – but I don’t feel everyone has to practice the same religion that I do. You have a right to worship who you choose and how you choose to.” — Jane Elliot
“About 10,000 years ago, males and females were acting equitably and were treating one another as equals, and then males took over the power because they have physical power and physical strength.” — Jane Elliot
“We don’t need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in different things. You want the vegetables — the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers — to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.” — Jane Elliot
“We are still conditioning people in this country and, indeed, all over the globe to the myth of white superiority. We are constantly being told that we don’t have racism in this country anymore, but most of the people who are saying that are white. White people think it isn’t happening because it isn’t happening to them.” — Jane Elliot
“White people’s number one freedom, in the United States of America, is the freedom to be totally ignorant of those who are other than white. We don’t have to learn about those who are other than white. And our number two freedom is the freedom to deny that we’re ignorant.” — Jane Elliot
“White people in this country are tweaked. We are raised to believe a myth of White superiority. Malcolm X, in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, said that White people’s “belief that they are ‘superior’ in some way is so deeply rooted that these things are in the national White subconscious.” — Jane Elliot
“This country isn’t a melting pot. Think of this country as a stir fry. That’s what this country should be. A place where people are appreciated for who they are.” — Jane Elliot
“And people who say, ‘We aren’t all racists.’ If you graduated from high school in the United States of America and you didn’t learn how to be a racist you need to take the whole program over again, because that’s what the program is: how to be a good American.” — Jane Elliot
“They need to realize that one of the things, one of the driving forces in this election was the knowledge people have that within 30 years white people will have lost their numerical majority in the United States of America.” — Jane Elliot
“When is this racism — when is this situation going to end for people of color in this country,” she asked, frustration heavy in her voice. “And when is anti-Semitism going to end for people who are of the Jewish faith in this country? And when is hatred of Muslims going to end for people who are Muslim in this country?” — Jane Elliot
“No white group has founded a major religion on this planet. The major religions were started in the Orient and the Middle East, not in Greece and Rome. I always knew you racists didn’t have a prayer.” — Jane Elliot
“We learn to be racist, therefore we can learn not to be racist. Racism is not genetical. It has everything to do with power.” — Jane Elliot
“When you say to a person of color, ‘When I see you, I don’t see you Black; I just see everybody the same’ think about that. You don’t have the right to say to a person, ‘I do not see you as you are; I want to see you as I would be more comfortable seeing you.” — Jane Elliot
“You are not born racist. You are born into a racist society. And like anything else, if you can learn it, you can unlearn it. But some people choose not to unlearn it, because they’re afraid they’ll lose power if they share with other people. We are afraid of sharing power. That’s what it’s all about.” — Jane Elliot
“Education in this country is about how to maintain the status quo and to perpetuate racism.” — Jane Elliot
“Racism is a learned affliction, and anything that is learned can be unlearned.” — Jane Elliot
“People who are racist aren’t stupid, they’re ignorant. And the answer to ignorance is education.” — Jane Elliot
“Racism is only, as we practice it, about 500 years old. We could destroy it, if we chose to. But that would take education.” — Jane Elliot
“I watched my students become what I told them they were; I watched little wonderful brown-eyed white people become vicious, ugly, nasty, discriminating, domineering people in the space of 15 minutes.” — Jane Elliot
“I watched brilliant little blue-eyed white Christian children become timid and frightened, and angry and unable to learn.” — Jane Elliot
“And people who say, ‘We aren’t all racists.’ If you graduated from high school in the United States of America and you didn’t learn how to be a racist you need to take the whole program over again, because that’s what the program is: how to be a good American.” — Jane Elliot
“This is the most Hitlerian administration I’ve ever seen. This man is talking about racial cleansing.” — Jane Elliot
“Black Lives Matter movement is the most important thing to have happened on this continent since Martin Luther King Jr.” — Jane Elliot
“We have to start seeing [all] people as our relatives. You are a member of my family; I will not allow you to be abused because of somebody else’s ignorance about the color of your skin.” — Jane Elliot
“Age is how we determine how valuable you are.”— Jane Elliot
“We don’t need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables — the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers — to maintain their identity. You appreciate differences.”— Jane Elliot
“No white group has founded a major religion on this planet. The major religious were started in the Orient and the Middle East, not in Greece and Rome. I always knew you racists didn’t have a prayer.”— Jane Elliot
“I’ve got news for you: There are going to be people other than Christians in the hereafter. What are you going to do about it? Are you not going to go?”— Jane Elliot
“I think I’m the only 65-year-old actress in Los Angeles who hasn’t had plastic surgery, so somebody’s gotta play the old-lady parts!”— Jane Elliot
“I loved raising my kids. I loved the process, the dirt of it, the tears of it, the frustration of it, Christmas, Easter, birthdays, growth charts, pediatrician appointments. I loved all of it.”— Jane Elliot
“I don’t have a Twitter account. I don’t go to fan club gatherings. I’m not one of those actors who spends a lot of time engaging with the audience.”— Jane Elliot
“I’m a practicing Christian – and I’m going to keep practicing till I get it right – but I don’t feel everyone has to practice the same religion that I do. You have a right to worship who you choose and how you choose to.”— Jane Elliot
“About 10,000 years ago, males and females were acting equitably and were treating one another as equals, and then males took over the power, because they have physical power and physical strength.”— Jane Elliot
“The flowers of the forest are a’ wide awae.”— Jane Elliot
“I am absolutely opposed to political correctness. You cannot confront hate speech until you’ve experienced it. You need to hear every side of the issue instead of just one.”— Jane Elliot
“450,000 Iraqi children have died from starvation and lack of medicine as a result of our embargo. If you believe God loves little children – and hundreds of thousands more Iraqi children will die if there is war – you have to believe that God will judge us very harshly for this.”— Jane Elliot

“Racism is a learned affliction and anything that is learned can be unlearned”— Jane Elliot

In just a few days the children who are given superiority become arrogant and rude. This experiment had a strong impact on the students and also on Jane Elliot. After this, she raised her voice for racial intolerance.