Racism is a very difficult issue for people to deal with on one level, and then it only applies to people of different colors, genders or ethnic orientation. What if everyone was subject to the same amount bigotry?

Jane Elliot, a former elementary education teacher, developed a program to teach exactly that to her students, and anyone else who will listen.

Wednesday night she spoke in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union about the anatomy of prejudice, and how to unlearn the damaging stereotypes that have been placed on people without their knowledge.

Tolerance is intolerable, Elliot said. It is not the place of people in society to tolerate others. We should just treat and respect others the way we want to be treated.

3Differences are important. It1s the differences between people that keep our country going,” she said. 3It is not our place to make people try to be some thing they1re not.”

Elliot said it is the young and elderly who have the most potential to affect change in this country. It is our obligation to stop allowing our school system to install false beliefs of superiority among young people of different races.

In an effort to combat this conditioning, Elliot developed the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise, which she demonstrated to students. In this exercise she demeaned students because a physical characteristic over which they had no control < the color of their eyes.

In the first phase, the students with the blue eyes were superior. They responded better to questions, and showed overall improvement because of their false belief that they were superior to those students with brown eyes. However, the second half of the exercise reversed roles, and the brown-eyed students became superior.

The blue-eyed pupils became less attentive and experienced an instant learning disability. They even decreased in potential to complete tasks they had previously accomplished.

On the basis of this exercise, the students learned that it is not race that matters, but the prejudices associated with that race. It is up to the individuals to put an end to the discrimination that creates prejudice, Elliot said.

This is the battle she continues to fight all over the United States in colleges, businesses and cities. Hopefully, it is the efforts of one woman fighting for our free will that will preserve this society from falling victim to its own hatred, she said.