Voting Station

Jane Elliott

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Educator

The Resume

    (May 27, 1933- )
    Born in Riceville, Iowa
    Birth name was Jane Jennison
    Former elementary schoolteacher
    Specializes in diversity and anti-racism training
    Known for the 'Blue eyes–Brown eyes' exercise
    First conducted the exercise with her third-grade classroom on April 5, 1968
    Was featured in the documentary 'The Eye of the Storm' (1970)
    Subject of the documentary film 'Blue Eyed' (1996)
    Appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Why she might be annoying:

    She rarely smiles during public appearances.
    She is blue-eyed but usually opens her social exercise isolating other blue-eyed people (which usually pissses off the participants).
    Her exercise is similar to the Stanford Prison Experiment.
    Her social experiment has been a known and cited study for over fifty years, but it only gained mainstream attention after it resurfaced in the wake of the George Floyd police brutality protests.

Why she might not be annoying:

    She was married to her husband for over fifty years before being widowed.
    She was inspired to formulate the Blue Eyes experiment the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
    She was ostracized by her community and school after the exercise gained national attention.
    When she appeared as a guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to explain the exercise, the NBC switchboard reportedly lit up with overwhelmingly negative reactions.
    She has spoken at 350 colleges and universities.
    The exercise has been a powerful tool to educate children and adults about systemic racism and white privilege.
    Killer Mike and T.I. count themselves among her fanbase.
    An episode of PBS' Frontline, 'A Class Divided,' featuring a reunion of her and her third grade class, won an Emmy in 1986.
    She frequently does interviews in a sweatshirt reading: 'Prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance.'

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 13 Votes: 84.62% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 17 Votes: 29.41% Annoying