Filmmaker Judd Ehrlich says Jane Elliott – the protagonist of his Sundance documentary Jane Elliott Against the World – is not one to self-censor.
“She always speaks her mind. She always says exactly how she feels at all times,” Ehrlich told us as he stopped by Deadline’s Sundance Studio to discuss his film. “She doesn’t care if you don’t like her. What she cares about is if you have courage to act on your beliefs.”
Elliott has been acting on her beliefs for well over 50 years, trying to get white people in America to recognize they have absorbed racist beliefs, whether intentionally or not, and that by failing to root them out, they perpetuate white supremacy. As a schoolteacher in small-town Riceville, Iowa, she came up with a way for white kids to understand what it felt like to be the object of prejudice and discrimination. It became known as the Blue Eyed Brown Eyed Exercise, where she divided her third graders according to eye color. She would assign privileges to one group, conferring superiority on them, while subjecting the other group to discrimination. Then she would reverse the roles, demonstrating the nature of power and privilege.
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“It is a confrontational exercise and that’s the point,” Ehrlich explained. “The point is that she wants to wake people up that we don’t realize the society we’re born into. We don’t realize these beliefs that we have and we don’t realize that, as Jane says, we often go along to get along, and she wants to shake people from that.”
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The Blue Eyed Brown Eyed Exercise rocked her school and her community. Then it gained national attention, opening the eyes (of whatever color) of many white people, but triggering vociferously defensive reactions among others. Elliott took on all haters in uncompromising fashion.
“Jane is a tough, tough woman,” the director said. “She is a force to be reckoned with.”
Jane Elliott Against the World shows how the Iowa educator, now 92, continues to speak out at a time when the Trump administration is trying to scrub schools, museums and government repositories of history of any reference to the country’s disgraceful record on race relations. A subplot to the film transpires in Temecula, CA, where conservatives took over the local school board and ordered teachers not to talk about matters of race on the presumption that it might make white kids feel bad about their racial identity. To those who would accuse Elliott of trying to engender guilty feelings among white people, she’s got a response.
“Jane would say it’s not about guilt, it’s about responsibility,” Ehrlich said. “And if you are worried that by teaching the true history of this country you’re going to make somebody feel bad, that is not a worry you should have.”
Jane Elliott Against the World premiered at Sundance on Tuesday. It screens again on Saturday in Park City, and on Sunday in Salt Lake City, the last day of the festival. The documentary is an acquisition title. Submarine is handling sales.
Watch the full conversation with director Judd Ehrlich in the video above.
Deadline Studio at Sundance presented by Casamigos.