The House Of Elliott

After being intrigued by the adverts for it during half term week, I finally got to watch Channel 4's The Event: How Racist Are You? this weekend. The concept of the exercise that the programme purported to demonstrate seemed fascinating: demonstrate to members of the public how it feels to be discriminated against by using eye colour instead of skin colour as the discriminating factor. By choosing this as the factor by which people are segregated, and making those with blue eyes the people who are deemed inferior with brown-eyed people being placed in the position of power, the exercise attempts to place white people in the position that non-white people often inhabit with a mixture of whites and non-whites in the position of the discriminators.

But the focus of the show was not quite what I had expected. What I had prepared myself to watch was simply a playing out of this scenario from beginning to end. What I got was something somewhat different. The exercise itself was certainly one focus of the programme, and it was fascinating to see how different people from different walks of life responded to the situation they were put in. But the primary agenda for the programme was its presentation of the person who came up with the scenario, and who has been putting people through the experience for around forty years, Jane Elliott. Elliott is shown in a number of different lights: innovator, educator, activist and bully to name just four.

In the end, I couldn't decide how the programme wanted me to feel about Elliott. Sporadically footage is shown of her work over the decades, beginning with her as a classroom teacher in the USA in the 1960s where her experiment began, which seems largely to be there simply to inform, rather than to condone or condemn. Krishnan Guru-Murthy sits with two experts (I forget their nams and exactly what made them experts, but they seemed credible enough) watching footage from the current experiment and commenting upon it throughout the show. This generally seemed to me to add credibility to what was being carried out, as explanations of Elliott's techniques and exercises are analysed and backed up with psychological and sociological references.

However, as the programme wore on, things seemed to turn against Elliott in more ways than one. Firstly, the participants in the experiment being carried out for Channel 4 did not behave in the way expected when compared to how the experiment has played out numerous times before. Essentially, several of the blue-eyed and the non-blue-eyed participants conformed to what Elliott wanted them to do, going so far as to sabotage some of the exercises rendering them worthless. A number of reasons were put forward for why this was, with the main being the fact that this experiment was being carried out in Britain, whereas previous experiments had been done in countries such as the USA, South Africa and Australia - essentially Britain did not historically have the same form of overt racism (according to some on the programme) as these countries, and coupled with the collective British psyche, this meant the exercise could never take off in the same way. By the end of the programme, it seemed to me that Jane Elliott was essentially being cross-examined, maybe even attacked, for her methods, her demeanour and what she is trying to demonstrate through the exercise she has created. Murthy's closing interview with her seemed to be primarily trying to undermine and belittle everything she stood for, but Elliott stood firm and maintained her dignity and integrity, and for that she further gained my admiration.

The issues raised by this programme I could write about for pages and pages, but I won't. Essentially, my feelings towards Elliott at the end of the programme were largely positive. Whilst she may seem unconventional and at times harsh in her methodology, I agree with her that it is pretty much essential in producing an effective recreation of the reality of racism. If the participants had the choice of which "side" to be on at the start of the exercise, then the effect would be greatly reduced (as one participant candidly states, she was never given the choice to be a black woman, it was assigned to her at birth, along with all of the prejudiced baggage that potentially comes with that role in society). Some of the participants seemed incredibly blinkered from what racism actually is (comparing the prejudice a skinhead may receive to that which a black man may receive is simply naive; to reject the valid point that a skinhead can choose to grow his hair to change, which the black man cannot do, is fairly mindboggling) and refused to see what the exercise may be able to help them understand. The programme makers seemed to sympathise far more with the viewpoint of some of the participants than of Elliott, whereas I felt precisely the opposite.

However you respond to it, there is no denying however that this was an incredibly worthwhile and thought-provoking programme, and I would urge others to watch it and see how they respond to what they are shown.

This nearly made me cry...

...but it's awesome.

Reginald D. Hunter

A few choice quotations, as best as I can remember, from this evening's entertainment:

"Now I know here in Britain you have things like irony, sarcasm. A British person can insult me and it'll take me three fucking weeks to work it out. I'll be at home hoovering or something and I'll think 'motherfucker don't like me'."

"And you have cultural things that don't mean nothing to people not from that culture. I had a friend over and I made him some tea because I know you guys love that shit and I forgot the milk. And he said 'So I don't get milk in my tea?' and I said 'Whoops my bad, got some milk right here' and he was all 'no it's fine, I'll just find some way to drink this catastrophe.' I don't get it. Either you want milk, which is available to you. Or you're making me feel bad about something you don't care about.
Which makes you a cunt."

"It's got to the stage where a lot of people are coming to see my shows haven't seen me live before. They know me as that black bloke off the TV. And they come to the shows and they're shocked, bemused or disappointed. And that's because there's a difference between TV Reg and Live Reg. Because Live Reg doesn't have editors. Live Reg doesn't give a fuck,"

"People keep saying to me, 'Reg, why don't have your own TV show?' And I say I don't know how to cook, I don't know how to renovate a house and I don't know how to tell fat women they look skinny. But once I figure that shit out... every week man!"

"I was having a drink in a bar, minding my own business and I saw these five gay guys just looking at me. Wiggling their asses, trying to intimidate me with their gayness. But what they don't know about me, is that I'm very competitive."

"I'm learning more about gay people since I moved to London. Because you see, where I'm from in the deep south, a lot of black communities are still very homophobic. Now that's a gross generalisation, but it happens to be true."

"Down in the south we had a definition of racism where it meant whatever white folks did, that you didn't like."

"Now people have said that I'm sexist, that I'm a misogynist and I'm not at all convinced that's true. I don't hate women, I don't hate women any more than other women do. But I pissed off this bunch of women because I said we live in a male-dominated society, and to have a male-dominated society, you have to oppress women. And most guys are too busy to do this on a daily basis, so you get the women to do it themselves. They worry about how they look, how big their titties are, all the time. And this is why women are insane. Not mentally insane, emotionally insane. Ramp up the self-fear. And the people who like to keep us living in fear go for the women first. Because they know women have a lot of influence over men and children. Make the women afraid, and they'll disseminate it."

"Now I hate it when I hear men described as weak. 'You're afraid of commitment, You can't multi-task.' But I have never in my life, seen a man start a project and finish it. Except one. Josef Fritzl. He held his daughter hostage in a basement for 25 years and had 7 kids with her. Could you do that? Do you know a man who could? Because I couldn't. If I tried something like that, I'd probably be caught the very first day! 'Hey Reg where you going with all that wood?' I'd panic. 'Just going to build a treehouse in my basement.' 'What?' "Where I'm going to fuck my daughter oh shit!' Say I managed it for a week, I'd probably get drunk and blab about it."

"The thing about Fritzl is that we live in a time when we're told to follow your dreams, be yourself. That's what Fritzl did. What am I doing every day that is morally reprehensible but I don't question, because, hey I'm just being me? Do I fuck 7 nigerian children in the basement everyday but hey it's ok because I'm keeping it black?"

"The thing is, it's important to recognise the differences between men and women. What's your name? Sam? Ok Sam, you're an attractive young woman. And such that means you probably have the power to emotionally manipulate me. And by emotionally manipulate, I mean you could probably get me to lift something heavy for you or buy you a lot of drinks or something. That's in your skillset. But men, we can't do that. It's not in our skillset. But, I could put a sack over your head, put you in the boot of my car and hold you hostage at my house, because that's in my skillset. (pause) Still haven't figured out how to make that one funny."

"Ladies and gentleman, if you take nothing else away from this evening, remember to look at your own asshole."

Thank you and good night!