I watched an amazing documentary on CBC last night featuring an anti-racism seminar by Jane Elliot. Her methods are pretty extreme. She divides the group of volunteers into people with brown eyes and people with blue eyes, and then proceeds to treat the Blue Eyes like a repressed minority group. She encourages the Brown Eyes to do the same. Brown Eyes are told that they are superior to Blue Eyes because the melatonin in their system makes them stronger and smarter. Her goal is to show how easily and quickly racism can be created, and prove that if it can be created, it can also be destroyed.

Her methods are controversial for sure. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe that these people had volunteered for the seminar. At first I thought they were people who were convicted of hate crimes, and were being forced to participate. She starts by establishing power over the Blue Eyes group, putting silly green collars on them, and locking them in a room with nothing to do for about an hour. There is a security guard at the door watching them. They sit around on the floor. Some of them slump against the wall and fall asleep. She calls this room “The Reserve.”

She then brings them into the seminar room, where the Brown Eyes are sitting in chairs. Before they come into the room, she tells the Brown Eyes, “Watch this. The first thing Blue Eyes do when they come into a space is try to mold it to suit their needs.” When they are brought in, some of the Blue Eyes are made to sit on the floor because there aren’t enough chairs for them. She abuses one of the older Blue Eyes because he complains about his bad back.

“You expect us to do something to deal with your personal problem? Yes or no?”

“I’d just like a chair.”

“These Blue Eyes are stupid, aren’t they? They can’t answer a yes or no question. You want us to put ourselves out of our way to help you with your personal problem? Yes or no?”

“It would be nice.”

“Blue Eyes really has a problem with understanding. That’s not a yes or no.”

“Yes.”

She used similar techniques to convince the Blue Eyes that she was in total control of the situation, that they had no power, that they could not change anything about their environment, that no matter what they did, they were wrong (she kicked a Blue Eye out of the seminar for trying to bring the guy she was yelling at a garbage pail for his gum). It’s a situation that many minorities face on a daily basis, especially Native Americans. But within fifteen minutes, most of the Blue Eyes were totally beaten. The ones who still resisted got even more punishment.

One of them said, “I’m not racist. I don’t see them as being Indian.” The Brown Eyes were shaking their heads sadly.

“What do you see them as? White?” asked Jane. “That’s insulting. Imagine if one of them said to you, ‘I don’t see you as being white.’ How would that feel? Remember this: No matter how superior you feel, non-white people don’t want to be white.” At that point, you could feel a shift in the Blue Eye group as understanding began to set in.

I think the breaking point came a little later in the show when Jane asked one of the Blue Eye women how she was feeling. “I feel bad, but I still don’t feel intimidated by them,” she said, looking at the group of Brown Eyes who were watching impassively.

“What do you mean?” asked Jane.

“I mean, I could go to a reservation, and I still wouldn’t feel intimidated by them. They’re not intimidating like you are right now.”

“That’s because they’re not doing their job. Why aren’t you doing your job?” Jane asked the Brown Eyes.

One Native Indian woman put up her hand and said, “Because I know how it feels to be treated like an inferior. I don’t want to make anyone else feel like that.” The rest of them nodded. Another native man said, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“So these people have put up with this kind of treatment for their whole lives, and now that they’re in the position to turn it around on your kind, they won’t do it because they don’t want anyone else to feel that way,” said Jane. The Blue Eye woman broke down and cried.

By the end of the seminar, most of the Blue Eyes understood what it was like to be a member of a minority. They seemed somehow cleansed. There were one or two who still clung to their previous beliefs, but they really looked stubborn and stupid at that point.

I think this documentary affected me more than anything I’ve seen in quite a long time. It brought me back to the way I felt when I was a kid, trying to fit into a white man’s world. One of the native men talked about how when he was a kid, it wasn’t his dream to be a famous hockey player or baseball player. His dream was just to be accepted. I remember feeling that way. Racism lowers your aspirations. It showed some of the prejudices built into our way of thinking, some of which I have to admit I’ve felt myself. It reinforced my distaste for the “Us vs. Them” mentality that seems to pervade everything in our world. It reminded me how proud I am that I hold onto my own culture and feel that it is compatible with those around me. It proved that racism can be entirely arbitrary, and that with some effort, it can be reversed.

• Profile of Jane Elliot

• Passionate Eye website

I don’t know what’s up with the weird dreams lately. And usually I don’t remember dreams, but these have been especially vivid. Last night I dreamed that I was in my dad’s backyard, searching for tsunami victims. I found the backpack belonging to one of my sister’s classmates. I had to assume she had been taken away by the tsunami, and this was all that was left of her. My dad came out of the house with a plastic bag containing two baby dragonflies. He explained that he had killed their mother, so we had to take care of them. He put them on my shoulder, and immediately they decided that I was their new parent. It wasn’t a problem at first, but within minutes they had grown to be the length of my leg, and were constantly perched on my shoulder, snapping onto my arm with huge pincher things on their mouths. I had to grab the pinchers and open them, twisting them off of my arm. I was always afraid that I’d wrench off the head of the dragonfly, releasing all kinds of unpleasantness. I had to wake myself up again to escape this uncomfortable situation. I think that’s the bulk of the sleep I had last night, because I couldn’t sleep otherwise.

It probably had something to do with the amount of caffeine I consumed last night. I had had a couple of cans of Coke and some very strong Serbian coffee. I was at my friend Nick’s Slava, which was his family’s celebration of their patron saint, John the Baptist. I go to this every year, and we eat until we can’t move, drink, and laugh at his father. His dad is a hilarious, happy drunk. Last night he was telling us about the Niagara casino’s Nikola Tesla exhibit. He goes to the casino to watch the 30 minute movie about Tesla because Tesla was a famous Serbian physicist. We also learned that Einstein’s wife was Serbian, and that he stole all of his best ideas from her. And finally he told us about the dog he had back in Serbia named Taxi. Apparently Taxi got killed in traffic. Although all of us realized the sadness of this story, the irony was too much for us, and we couldn’t resist laughing. I told him that he should just stand by the side of the road and put up his hand to get another Taxi. :nod:

I’m feeling a bit overrun in the last couple of days. There has been plenty of work to do with my trip upcoming, and I’m constantly paranoid that I’m forgetting something. In fact, I have been forgetting stuff. I had to make several trips home today between service calls because I didn’t have the stuff that I needed for the next job, even though these jobs were only a couple blocks apart. Dumbness.

I’ve even been dreaming about forgetting stuff. I dreamed that I was rushing to get to the airport and I made it just in time not to miss my flight to Thailand. Then I realized that I had forgotten to bring my suitcase. That was not a good feeling.

Anyway, I finally had time to go buy a few things for my trip. I went to Winners and bought some cool hiking shoes made by Roots. I’m not sure how suitable they are for my trip, because they’re kind of warm. They’re built very solidly with great treads and the rubber part comes up pretty high on the sides and front so they stay waterproof. They lace up like skates, with the hooks for the laces, so they have a kind of 1950’s look. The leather is quite thick on top. But even if they’re no good in Thailand, I can use them as winter boots here.

I also picked up a cool bag. I was looking for a theft-proof wallet, but I bought this thing instead. It looks like the bag in the picture, except it’s all black. It actually looks pretty serious. I figure it will keep people from stealing from me because it looks as though it might contain a gun.

Oh yeah… I also bought an ironing board. I’m sick of ironing stuff on my kitchen counter. :nod:

I had a disturbingly vivid dream last night. I dreamed that I was flying home from Chicago, and the plane was coming in for a landing in Toronto, flying over Lake Ontario. Yes, I realize this is not geographically accurate. Looking out the window, I noticed the plane was flying dangerously low. I could hear the engines labouring and the pilot had the nose of the plane up, trying to make it climb. However it was still descending, and it stalled. The tail end of the plane hit the water first, and the rear part of the fuselage snapped off, right behind where I was sitting. I decided that I’d rather be in the water than in the plane when the rest of it hit, so I let myself fall backwards into the water. After being dunked into the lake, I swam to the surface. I was treading water and looking at the wreckage of the plane all around. I noticed there was a baby floating on top of the water and I went to rescue it. Holding the baby above the water, I started to swim towards the shore. Then I felt some hands grab my ankles underwater. It was another passenger who had been thrown into the water and was trying to get to the surface. However, he was pulling me under in his panic to get to the top. I was being dragged deeper and deeper. I tried to keep holding the baby above the water, but soon I was too deep to do so. I knew I was going to drown. At this point, I realized I was dreaming, and I struggled to wake up. Eventually I did wake up, but not before gasping for a deep breath that would have been fatal if it was real.

Usually I don’t remember my dreams. Even if I write them down, they don’t make sense when I go back and look at the notes. But this one really stuck with me. I hope it doesn’t mean anything bad for me.

Jen made me do one of those silly personality tests to discover my medieval personality type. Apparently I’m a “Benevolent Ruler.”

Your distinct personality, The Benevolent Ruler might be found in most of the thriving kingdoms of the time. You are the idealistic social dreamer. Your overriding goal is to solve the people problems of your world. You are a social reformer who wants everyone to be happy in a world that you can visualize. You are exceptionally perceptive about the woes and needs of humankind. You often have the understanding and skill to readily conceive and implement the solutions to your perceptions. On the positive side, you are creatively persuasive, charismatic and ideologically concerned. On the negative side, you may be unrealistically sentimental, scattered and impulsive, as well as deviously manipulative. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today’s corporate kingdoms.

Do you think this is accurate? What are you? Take the test.