There should be commitment to combat racism – Jane Elliot, Diversity Pioneer

By Deba Uwadiae

Jane Elliot

Monday, January 15, 2018, Jane Elliot, diversity pioneer, was the Guest Speaker at the City of Columbus’ Celebration and March marking Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Jane Elliott, internationally known teacher, lecturer, diversity trainer, and recipient of the National Mental Health Association Award for Excellence in Education, exposes prejudice and bigotry for what it is, an irrational class system based upon purely arbitrary factors. She spoke with the New Americans magazine on race relations under President Donald Trump, the fears, solutions, 50 years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the fact that everyone on earth is related. 

Race Relations

With Donald Trump as a President, “what I make of race relations is that we have gone backward 40years in two years’. And he said he is not a racist because he doesn’t know what a racist is. He thinks a racist is someone who is lynching someone. He doesn’t realize that when you say ugly things and when you make ugly issues that limit the opportunities for people of color, and women and members of the LGBTQ society and those who are old, you are acting in a bigoted way and the ugliest form of bigotry is racism. I think he doesn’t know, as most white people don’t understand what racist means. They think it is lynching. They don’t realize that every time somebody says to a black person “when I see you I don’t see you black,” they’re acting in a racist way because what they are saying to that person is “I am upset by the color of your skin so I am going to pretend that you don’t have that problem when I am talking to you.”

Has anybody ever said to you “what is it like to be black?” Has anybody ever sad to you “I am color blind, I don’t see color.” When some woman said that to me, I said “I knew that before you told me because if you weren’t color blind, you won’t wear that blouse with those pants and you certainly wouldn’t have your hair that color.”  We have to turn these ugly words back on the people who are making them. We must not tolerate this. We must not tolerate the intolerable. If it is intolerable for my black and yellow and brown cousins, it is intolerable for me. I don’t have the right to tolerate it.

Fear

Whites in America right now are reacting to their fear. They know that within 30 years we would be in the numerical minorities in this country. They are afraid that when the people of color get power they are going to want to treat us the way we have treated them. That is really what is going on.        

In his book, “The Birth Dearth” Ben Wattenberg said in the first paragraph of the first page that “the major problem confronting the United States today is that there are no enough white babies being born in this country. If we don’t do anything about it and we don’t, soon we will be in the minority and this country will no longer be a white man’s land”.  The reason for a war across the southern border of the United States is to keep those people out because they reproduce too rapidly.  I think most people have no idea of how dangerous this man is and the people who are talking to him. And he listens to the last person he hears. 

Solution

The solution to the whole problem is education. It is not indoctrination, it is not schooling and it is not counseling. It is education.  Racism and bigotry are individual problems. There should be commitment to combat racism. Society is composed of individuals and not until we truly educate individuals will we get rid of racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia and ethnocentrism that is growing every day in this country. 

After all, if the President of the United States acts that way why shouldn’t the rest of us; if the President of the United States can grab women by wherever he wants to why shouldn’t little boys and teenage boys and the old men, if it is alright for the President. And we approve it that it is alright for the President. I am angry about this kind of thing. 

Relationship

We are all cousins. Everybody on the face of the earth today is a descendant of the first black people who appeared in sub-Saharan Africa about 500,000 years ago. For example, several weeks ago, my ex-daughter-in-law had her DNA done, she thought she was Norwegian. And now, of all these countries that the DNA said she came from, one of them was 1.2percent Nigeria. I was totally delighted because if    everybody has the DNA done, they are going to find out that at least 1percent of their DNA is black. The only way those first human beings could have survived was to have enough melanin on their skin to protect them from the damaging rays of the sun. That is the reason for black skin. And that is the reason for the people that we call red people, Native Americans. Black people came to this country before Christopher Columbus got here. Read the book “Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization” by Anthony Browder. He is an archeologist, and absolutely brilliant.

There will be no white people if there hadn’t been black people. And black people were brilliant enough that they circumnavigate the globe many, many years before Columbus got here. They built their own ship and they did it without the kind of technology that we use today. They used the sun and the stars and the moon.

Black History Month

In this country, we celebrate the Black History month but according to us, Black History started when we enslaved Blacks.  Black History in the United States starts with slavery. It should start 4,000years before the birth of Jesus Christ. It should start, with facts that black people were doing cataract surgery with metal instruments before there was such a knowledge in the UK or in Europe. 

Rev.  King Jr.

Fifty years after Rev. Dr. King Jr, I’d thought we will have enough teachers educating instead of lying to their students, and that when I die, we would have killed racism. Now I can’t die. I resent losing that freedom. There is no way I am going to stop doing what I am doing as long as there is still racism. What is important to me is that all lives are better. I think the thing white people don’t realize is that we have no freedom. We do not have freedom in this country. We cannot associate closely or love someone who is of a different color. We can’t have them in our neighborhood because we feel the color might rub off.

We can’t appreciate their music ,

We can’t appreciate the fact that we can have two shoes of different shapes if it hadn’t been for a black man. If you are racist and you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, you can’t have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches ever again because peanut butter was developed by a Blackman working at the Ohio State University. So if you can’t use peanut butter then you can’t eat bread because that was invented by people of color too. Give up all the things that people of color have made possible for you, and that is our language, alphabets, numeration system, calendar, astronomy – by the time you list all the things we got from people of color, you’re going to end up with very short list of what we have given and that includes our religions.  Every major religion on the face of the earth came to us from societies of people of color.