[CTRL] Thought Reform 101

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-Caveat Lector-

Thought Reform 101
The Orwellian implications of today's college orientation



By Alan Charles Kors


At Wake Forest University last fall, one of the few events designated as  "mandatory" 
for freshman orientation was attendance at Blue Eyed, a filmed  racism awareness 
workshop in which whites are abused, ridiculed, made to  fail, and taught helpless 
passivity so that they can identify with "a  person of color for a day." In Swarthmore 
College's dormitories, in the  fall of 1998, first-year students were asked to line up 
by skin color, from  lightest to darkest, and to step forward and talk about how they 
felt  concerning their place in that line. Indeed, at almost all of our campuses,  
some form of moral and political re-education has been built into freshman  
orientation and residential programming. These exercises have become so  commonplace 
that most students do not even think of the issues of privacy,  rights, and dignity 
involved.

A central goal of these programs is to uproot "internalized oppression," a  crucial 
concept in the diversity education planning documents of most  universities. Like the 
Leninists' notion of "false consciousness," from  which it ultimately is derived, it 
identifies as a major barrier to  progressive change the fact that the victims of 
oppression have  internalized the very values and ways of thinking by which society  
oppresses them. What could workers possibly know, compared to  intellectuals, about 
what workers truly should want? What could students  possibly know, compared to those 
creating programs for offices of student  life and residence, about what students 
truly should feel? Any desire for  assimilation or for individualism reflects the 
imprint of white America's  strategy for racial hegemony.

In 1991 and 1992 both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal  published 
surveys of freshman orientations. The Times observed that  "orientation has evolved 
into an intense ...initiation" that involves  "delicate subjects like...date rape 
[and] race relations, and how freshmen,  some from small towns and tiny high schools, 
are supposed to deal with  them." In recent years, public ridicule of "political 
correctness" has made  academic administrators more circumspect about speaking their 
true minds,  so one should listen carefully to the claims made for these programs 
before  colleges began to spin their politically correct agendas.

Tony Tillman, in charge of a mandatory "Social Issues" orientation at  Dartmouth, 
explained in the Journal that students needed to address "the  various forms of 
`isms': sexism, racism, classism," all of which were  interrelated. Oberlin "educated" 
its freshmen about "differences in race,  ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and culture," 
with separate orientations for  blacks, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, and Americans of 
Asian descent.  Columbia University sought to give its incoming students the chance 
"to  reevaluate [and] learn things," so that they could rid themselves of "their  own 
social and personal beliefs that foster inequality." Katherine Balmer,  assistant dean 
for freshmen at Columbia, explained to the Times that "you  can't bring all these 
people together...without some sort of training."

Greg Ricks, multicultural educator at Stanford (after similar stints at  Dartmouth and 
Harvard), was frank about his agenda: "White students need  help to understand what it 
means to be white in a multicultural  community....For the white heterosexual male who 
feels disconnected and  marginalized by multiculturalism, we've got to do a lot of 
work here."  Planning for New Student Week at Northwestern University, a member of the 
 Cultural Diversity Project Committee explained to the Weekly Northwestern  Review in 
1989 that the committee's goal was "changing the world, or at  least the way 
[undergraduates] perceive it." In 1993, Ana Maria Garcia,  assistant dean of Haverford 
College, proudly told the Philadelphia Inquirer  of official freshman dormitory 
programs there, which divided students into  two groups: happy, unselfish Alphas and 
grim, acquisitive Betas. For  Garcia, the exercise was wonderfully successful: 
"Students in both groups  said the game made them feel excluded, confused, awkward, 
and foolish,"  which, for Garcia, accomplished the purpose of Haverford's program: "to 
 raise student awareness of racial and ethnic diversity."

In the early 1990s, Bryn Mawr College shared its mandatory "Building  Pluralism" 
program with any school that requested it. Bryn Mawr probed the  most private 
experiences of every first-year student: difference and  discomfort; racial, ethnic, 
and class experiences; sexual orientation;  religious beliefs. By the end of this 
"orientation," students were devising  "individual and collective action plans" for 
"breaking free" of "the cycle  of oppression" and for achieving "new meaning" as 
"change agents." Although  the public relations savvy of universities has changed 
since the early  1990s, these programs proliferate apace.

The darkest nightmare of the literature on power is George Orwell's 1984,  where there 
is not even an interior space of privacy and self. Winston  Smith faces the ultimate 
and consistent logic of the argument that  everything is political, and he can only 
dream of "a time when there were  still privacy, love, and friendship, and when 
members of a family stood by  one another without needing to know the reason."

Orwell did not know that as he wrote, Mao's China was subjecting university  students 
to "thought reform," known also as "re-education," that was not  complete until 
children had denounced the lives and political morals of  their parents and emerged as 
"progressive" in a manner satisfactory to  their trainers. In the diversity education 
film Skin Deep, a favorite in  academic "sensitivity training," a white student in his 
third day of a  "facilitated" retreat on race, with his name on the screen and his 
college  and hometown identified, confesses his family's inertial Southern racism  
and, catching his breath, says to the group (and to the thousands of  students who 
will see this film on their own campuses), "It's a tough  choice, choosing what's 
right and choosing your family."

Political correctness is not the end of human liberty, because political  correctness 
does not have power commensurate with its aspirations. It is  essential, however, to 
understand those totalizing ambitions for what they  are. O'Brien's re-education of 
Winston in 1984 went to the heart of such  invasiveness. "We are not content with 
negative obedience.... When finally  you surrender to us, it must be of your own free 
will." The Party wanted  not to destroy the heretic but to "capture his inner mind." 
Where others  were content to command "Thou shalt not" or "Thou shalt," O'Brien 
explains,  "Our command is `Thou art.'" To reach that end requires "learning...  
understanding [and] acceptance," and the realization that one has no  control even 
over one's inner soul. In Blue Eyed, the facilitator, Jane  Elliott, says of those 
under her authority for the day, "A new reality is  going to be created for these 
people." She informs everyone of the rules of  the event: "You have no power, 
absolutely no power." By the end, broken and  in tears, they see their own racist 
evil, and they love Big Sister.

The people devoted to remolding the inner lives of undergraduates are  mostly kind and 
often charming individuals. At the Fourth Annual National  Conference on People of 
Color in Predominantly White Institutions, held at  and sponsored by the University of 
Nebraska last October, faculty and  middle-level administrators of student life from 
around the country  complained and joked about their low budgets, inadequate 
influence, and  herculean tasks.

Their papers and interviews reveal an ideologically and humanly diverse  crowd, but 
they share certain assumptions and beliefs, most of which are  reasonable subjects for 
debate, but none of which should provide campuses  with freshman agendas: America is 
an unjust society. Drop-out rates for  students of color reflect a hostile environment 
and a lack of institutional  understanding of identity and culture. What happens in 
the classroom is  inadequate preparation for thinking correctly about justice and 
oppression.

They also share views that place us directly on the path of thought reform:  White 
students desperately need formal "training" in racial and cultural  awareness. The 
moral goal of such training should override white notions of  privacy and 
individualism. The university must become a therapeutic and  political agent of 
progressive change.

Handouts at the Nebraska conclave illustrated this agenda. Irma  Amirall-Padamsee, the 
associate dean of student relations and the director  of multicultural affairs at 
Syracuse University, distributed the Office of  Multicultural Affairs' brochure. Its 
"philosophy" presupposes that students  live "in a world impacted by various 
oppression issues," including  "racism." "OMA's role," it announced, "is to provide 
the...leadership  needed to encourage our students...to grow into individuals willing 
to take  a proactive stance against oppression in all its shapes."

Molly Tovar, who has done this sort of work both at the University of  Oklahoma and at 
Oklahoma State University, passed out a 22-page guide she  co-authored, "How to Build 
and Implement a Comprehensive Diversity Plan."  The guide explains the three "kinds of 
attitudes" that agents of cultural  change will face: "The Believers," who are 
"cooperative; excited;  participative; contributive"; "The Fence Straddlers," who are 
"suspicious;  observers; cautious; potentially open-minded"; and "The Skeptics," who 
are  "critical; passive aggressive; isolated; traditional."

Ronnie Wooten, of Northern Illinois University, distributed a handout,  "Inclusive 
Classroom Matters." It adapts a variety of common academic  sources on 
multiculturalism, including a set of "guidelines" on how to  "facilitate learning 
about those who are different from you." The students  in this "inclusive classroom" 
would have to abandon what might be their  sincere inner beliefs, replacing them with 
such professions of faith as "We  will assume that people (both the groups we study 
and the members of the  class) always do the best that they can." The guidelines make 
it clear that  one may not restrict one's changes to the intellectual: "We will 
address  the emotional as well as the cognitive content of the course material. We  
will work to break down the fears that prohibit communication."

Sharon Ulmar, assistant to the chancellor for diversity and equal  opportunity at the 
University of Nebraska at Omaha, handed out a flyer  titled "Can [A] Diversity Program 
Create Behavior Changes?" Her program's  mode of self-evaluation was to measure "the 
number of participants that  took action based upon the awareness they learned from 
[the] program."  Among the units of "awareness" successfully acquired were the 
following  (some of which surely might strike one as more problematic than others):  
"gays and lesbians no different than [sic] others"; "handicap accessibility  is for 
those who are handicaped [sic]"; "difficult to make a decision about  own beliefs when 
others are watching"; "module allowed participant to  witness subtle behaviors instead 
of hearing about it"; and the ineffably  tautological "understanding commonalities of 
each individual may be similar  to yours."

Denise Bynes, program coordinator for Adelphi University's Center for  
African-American Studies Programs, distributed a "Conflict Resolution  Styles 
Questionnaire" for students, all of whom are to be categorized at  the end as one of 
the following: "competing, avoiding, accommodating,  compromising, and collaborating." 
The handout also presents the "basic  values" of each American ethnic group. For white 
Americans, these are  "Freedom/liberty/privacy; equality/fairness; 
achievement/success;  individualism/self-interest; economical use of time; comfort." 
For  African-Americans, "Ethnic pride, heritage, history; kinship  
bonds/family/motherhood; equality/fairness; achievement; respect;  
religion/spirituality." For Asian-Americans, "Reciprocal social duties;  
self-control/courtesy/dignity; devotion to parents; tradition (family,  culture, the 
past); duty/hard work/diligence." Each group also has its own  particular "overview" 
of nature, logic, time, society, and interpersonal  relationships. Whites wish to 
"control" nature, for example; Hispanics, to  live in "harmony" with it; blacks, to 
"overcome" it; and Asians, to "be  adjusted to" and "accept" it. Whites are "rational, 
logical, analytical";  Hispanics, "rational, ethical"; blacks, "allegorical and 
synthetical"; and  Asians, "intuitive, holistic, tolerate inconsistencies."

According to a formal presentation by Bynes and her colleague at Adelphi,  Hinda Adele 
Barlaz, all of these materials were acquired during "training"  by the U.S. Department 
of Justice Community Relations Service, a program so  effective that "it was very hard 
to get any of the other white members of  the committee [Barlaz was white] to go for 
the training that the Department  of Justice provided free of charge. The white 
members of the [Adelphi  Prejudice Reduction] Committee had been so alienated by the 
training that  they didn't want to go back."

What do these presenters in Nebraska, typical of those now governing  offices of 
student life and residence, believe about the re-education of  our college students? 
The keynote speaker at the conference was Carlos  Muñoz, professor of ethnic studies 
at the University of California at  Berkeley. He explains in an interview that to 
create an appropriate  environment on campus, one has "to do as much outreach as 
possible away  from the classroom, into the dorms, into the places where students 
live."  Such work should begin during freshman orientation, continue throughout a  
college experience, and be mandatory.

Amirall-Padamsee from Syracuse argues that "students of color need to be  nurtured as 
insightful leaders of our community" and that "they must be  formally trained in 
anti-oppression theory and related skill building."  "White students," in turn, "have 
to be trained as allies in change." (Ally  is a code word in sensitivity training 
circles. As the "diversity  facilitator" Hugh Vasquez of the Todos Institute explains 
in a widely used  manual, an "ally" is someone from "the dominant group" who is aware 
of and  articulates his unmerited privilege and who intervenes on behalf of  
mistreated groups.)

The goal of such training, according to Amirall-Padamsee, is "to produce  graduates 
who are individuals committed to educational and social justice,  and not just a 
tolerance of, but a validating of difference." To accomplish  that she says, "we need 
to define and implement ways to translate education  to behavioral change." In 
addition, she boasts, she has access to federal  work-study funds, and she uses that 
position--and her capacity to dismiss  people-- "to try to make a positive change in 
the way that the student is  thinking."

Tovar, formerly of Oklahoma State University and now at the University of  Oklahoma, 
declares in an interview at the conference that "at OSU we have  all kinds of 
sensitivity training." She describes an incident involving  fraternity brothers who 
had been disrespectful of Native American culture:  They ended up "incredibly 
emotional....These fraternity kids broke down."  OSU also has mandatory multicultural 
freshman orientation sessions.

Bynes, also the co-chairman of the Prejudice Reduction Committee at Adelphi  
University, says the committee's emphasis is on training individuals how to  interact 
"with a diverse student body," with "separate training for  students...[and] special 
sessions on student leadership training." This  "cultural and racial awareness 
training would benefit all members of the  Adelphi community, both in their university 
and personal lives." The  committee would get people to talk about "`what I like about 
being  so-and-so,' `what I dislike about being so-and-so,' and `the first time I  
encountered prejudice,'" all exercises that the facilitators had been shown  and had 
experienced in their own "training" by the Justice Department.

Bynes is a kind, accomplished, candid, and well-meaning woman. As she  explains, 
"White people must have...sensitivity training...so that they can  become aware of 
white privilege." Mandatory sensitivity training ideally  should include both students 
and faculty, but "there are things that we  can't dictate to the faculty because of 
the fact that they have a union."

There are painful ironies in these attempts at thought reform. Individual  identity 
lies at the heart of both dignity and the flourishing of an  ethnically heterogeneous 
society. Black students on American campuses  rightly decry any tendency of university 
police to stop students based on  race. Their objections are not statistical but 
moral: One is an individual,  not an instance of blood or appearance. The assault on 
individual identity  was essential to the horror and inhumanity of Jim Crow laws, of 
apartheid,  and of the Nuremberg Race Laws. It is no less inhuman when undertaken by  
"diversity educators."

>From the Inquisition to the political use of Soviet psychiatry, history has  taught 
>us to recoil morally from the violation of the ultimate refuges of  
>self-consciousness, conscience, and private beliefs. The song of the "peat  bog 
>soldiers," sent by the Nazis to work until they died, was "Die Gedanken  sind frei," 
>"Thoughts Are Free," for that truly is the final atom of human  liberty. No decent 
>society or person should pursue another human being  there. Our colleges and 
>universities do so routinely.

The desire to "train" individuals on issues of race and diversity has  spawned a new 
industry of moral re-education. Colleges and universities  have been hiring diversity 
"trainers" or "facilitators" for 15 years, and  the most famous of them can command 
$35,000 for "cultural audits," $5,000  for sensitivity workshop training, and a 
sliding scale of honoraria, some  for not less than $3,000 per hour, for lectures.

This growing industry has its mountebanks, its careerists, its well-meaning  zealots, 
and its sadists. The categories often blur. Three of the most  celebrated facilitators 
at the moment are Edwin J. Nichols, of Nichols and  Associates in Washington, D.C.; 
Hugh Vasquez, of the Todos Institute in  Oakland, California; and Jane Elliott, the 
Torquemada of thought reform. To  examine their work is to see into the heart of 
American re-education.

Nichols first came to the attention of critics of intrusive political  correctness in 
1990, when he led an infamous "racial sensitivity" session  at the University College 
of the University of Cincinnati. According to  witnesses, his exercise culminated in 
the humiliation of a blond,  blue-eyed, young female professor, whom he ridiculed as a 
"perfect" member  of "the privileged white elite" who not only would win "a beauty 
contest"  but even "wore her string of pearls." The woman, according to these  
accounts, sat and sobbed. These contemporaneous revelations did not harm  Nichols' 
career.

According to the curriculum vitae sent by his firm, Nichols studied at  
Eberhardt-Karls Universität in Tubingen, Germany, and at Leopold-Franzens  Universität 
in Innsbruck, Austria, "where he received his Doctor of  Philosophy in Psychology and 
Psychiatry, cum laude" (a rare degree). In  some publicity material, he states that he 
founded a school of child  psychology in Africa; at other times, he modestly withholds 
that  accomplishment.

Nichols' schedule of fees is almost as impressive as his schedule of  thought reform. 
He charges $3,500 for a three-hour "Basic Cultural  Awareness Seminar," plus travel 
and per diem. For a plain old "Workshop,"  he gets $4,000-$5,000 plus expenses. This 
makes his staple offering--a  "Full Day Session (Awareness Seminar and Workshop)"--a 
bargain at $5,000  plus expenses. For a "Cultural Audit," he gets $20,000-$35,000 (he 
recently  did one of these for the University of Michigan School of Medicine). The  
Bureau of Labor Statistics at the Department of Labor paid him $15,000 for  diversity 
training; the Environmental Protection Agency got him cheaply at  $12,000.

Business is booming. Nichols has brought awareness to the employees of six  cabinet 
departments, three branches of the armed services, the Federal  Reserve Bank, the 
Federal Aviation Administration, the Internal Revenue  Service, and the FBI; the 
Goddard Space Center, the Naval Air Warfare  Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 
and NASA; the Office of Personnel  Management, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and 
the Social Security  Administration. He has enlightened city and county governments, 
whole  school systems, various state government departments, labor unions, several  
prestigious law firms, and the Archdiocese of Baltimore. His clients  include "Fortune 
500 Corporations, foreign governments, parastatals,  associations, health and mental 
health systems," and he has been a  consultant to offices of "The British Commonwealth 
of Nations" and  "organizations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, Latin  
America...Singapore, Malaysia, and China." He has a very long list of  academic 
clients, and he was a centerpiece of Johns Hopkins' 1999 freshman  orientation.

What does Nichols believe? He believes that culture is genetically  determined, and 
that blacks, Hispanics, and descendants of non-Jewish  Middle-Eastern tribes place 
their "highest value" on "interpersonal  relationships." In Africa, women are the 
equal of men. Whites were altered  permanently by the Ice Age. They value objects 
highly, not people. That is  why white men commit suicide so frequently when they are 
downsized.

Nichols calls his science of value systems "axiology," and he believes that  if 
managers and administrators understand these cultural differences, they  can manage 
more effectively, understanding why, according to him, blacks  attach no importance to 
being on time, while whites are compulsive about  it. Whites are logical; blacks are 
intuitive and empathetic. Whites are  frigid; blacks are warm and spontaneous. Whites 
are relentlessly  acquisitive; nonwhites are in harmony with nature. White engineers, 
for  example, care about their part of something; Asian engineers, managers  should 
know, care about the whole. Whites are linear; nonwhites have a  spiral conception of 
time. Nichols has a handout that he frequently uses.  Whites, it explains, "know 
through counting and measuring"; Native  Americans learn through "oneness"; Hispanics 
and Arabs "know through  symbolic and imagery [sic]"; Asians "know through striving 
toward the  transcendence [sic]." Asking nonwhites to act white in the workplace is  
fatal to organizational harmony. Understanding cultural axiology is  essential to 
management for the 21st century. Now, reread his list of  clients.

Two diversity training films widely used at major universities reveal the  techniques 
and the characters of two other leading thought reformers. Skin  Deep, the 1996 film 
funded by the Ford Foundation, records an encounter at  a retreat between college 
students from around the country. The  facilitators are not active in the film, but 
the published guide tells you  what they do and identifies their leader as Hugh 
Vasquez.

Skin Deep begins with ominous news clips from the major networks about  "racial 
violence," "racism," "slurs," and "racist jokes" on campus. It  announces that "at 
these training grounds for our future leaders,  intolerance has once again become a 
way of life." We meet white, Hispanic,  black, and Asian-American students from the 
University of Massachusetts at  Amherst, the University of California at Berkeley, and 
Texas A&M. The  whites have terrible stories to tell: They have grown up in white  
neighborhoods; their families have prejudices; and they feel rejected by  people of 
color. The people of color have terrible stories to tell: They  suffer frequent abuse 
in white America, and they are sick of it.

Neither group is typical of a college population. The whites, we gradually  learn, 
have been members of organizations working for racial understanding.  The students of 
color all use terms like "allies," suggesting that they've  been through sessions like 
this before. There is a Jewish woman who objects  to being thrown into the nightly 
"white caucus," where she doesn't really  belong. She also anguishes over whether all 
of the things she has been told  at the encounter about the Jewish role in the 
suffering of people of color  are true. (Vasquez responds candidly to an inquiry on 
this, revealing that  some of those allegations were outright anti-Semitic, and that 
the Jewish  girl was looking for "allies" who would not "scapegoat" Jews.) In short,  
the white students talk about the stereotypes they have learned, and the  students of 
color reflect deeply on the cruelty of race in America.

When white students initially suggest that they personally did not do  terrible 
things, the students of color fire back with both barrels. A first  reply goes 
immediately to the heart of the matter: "One thing that you must  definitely 
understand is that we're discussing how this country was  founded, and because you are 
a white male, people are going to hate you." A  black student explains, more 
patiently: "Things are going on presently: the  IMF, presently; the World Bank, 
presently; NAFTA, presently; Time Warner,  presently; the diamond factories, 
presently; reservations, presently;  ghettos, presently; barrios, presently. Slavery 
still exists." (Diamond  factories?) The Chicana, Judy, lets them know that "I will 
not stop being  angry, and I will not be less angry or frustrated to accommodate 
anybody.  You whites have to understand because we have been oppressed for 2,000  
years. And if you take offense, so?" (Two thousand years?) And from Khanh,  a bitter 
Vietnamese student: "White people need to hear that white people  are very affected by 
internalized racism....As a person of color growing up  in this society, I was taught 
to hate myself and I did hate myself. If  you're a white person, you were taught to 
love yourself....If you don't  know that you have shit in your head, you'll never deal 
with racism."

By the end, the students of color have had the grace to state that if the  white 
students become real "allies," their victims can let go of their  anger a bit. White 
students have come to realize that the pieties their  parents taught them, such as an 
honest day's pay for an honest day's work,  apply only to whites in America.

In short, what moves the film (and American thought reform) is a denial of  individual 
identity and responsibility, an insistence on group  victimization and rights, and the 
belief that America is an almost uniquely  iniquitous place in the world, without 
opportunity, legal equality, or  justice. "I want you to know," an Hispanic male 
explains, "that because of  the system, my cousin was shot...and then another cousin 
was shot." The  tribalism of the exploited Third World expresses a core truth: You are 
your  blood and history. Let the children of the guilty denounce their parents.  Let 
the victims stake their claims. Let the cultural revolution begin.

Vasquez is a frank and warm man by e-mail. He explains that the filmmaker  never 
showed the facilitators because she wanted to focus solely on the  students, but that 
"it took a great deal of planning and structure and  facilitation to make what 
happened happen." In his own mind, he was devoted  to eliminating "blame, ridicule, 
judgements, guilt, and shame" among all of  the students in the group, and he sounds 
sincere when he writes that his  goal is to eliminate "individual and institutional 
mistreatment of any  group or culture." But his effect, whatever his intention, is 
frightening,  atavistic, and irrational, and his means are deeply intrusive.

Americans surely need to study, discuss, and debate, frankly, matters of  race and 
ethnicity. Reasonable people disagree on profound questions. Some  of the issues are 
empirical: Is aversion to difference acquired above all  from culture or evolution? 
Should we be more startled by America's success  in creating a nation of diverse 
backgrounds or by the difficulties it has  in doing so?

Some of the issues are moral and political: Should we favor legal equality  with 
differential outcomes or equality of outcomes even at the price of  legal inequality? 
Are today's whites responsible for the crimes of  19th-century Southern slave owners? 
What are the benefits and costs of a  society based on individual responsibility? 
These are not issues for  indoctrination. Indeed, they do not even reflect everyone's 
chosen  intellectual or moral agenda, and free individuals choose such agendas for  
themselves.

Vasquez's "Study Guide" for Skin Deep explains that the final goal of using  the film 
in "colleges, high schools, corporations, and the workplace" is to  produce "action 
strategies and... networks for working against racism," for  which there is a page of 
strategy. The guide further explains the necessity  of affirmative action, the "myths" 
of reverse discrimination and  balkanization, and the reality of white privilege. It 
teaches the need for  the privileged to become "allies" of the oppressed, and it 
focuses on the  nightmare of "internalized oppression." The internalization of 
oppression  manifests itself in "self-doubt...fear of one's own power; an urgent pull  
to assimilate; isolation from one's own group; self-blame for lack of  success; [and] 
fighting over the smallest slice of the economic pie."

The guide also has a rare explicit endorsement of "political correctness,"  reminding 
facilitators that "language was a prime factor" in the murder of  6 million Jews, that 
language perpetuates racism, and that it is wrong to  believe that "anything people 
say should be left alone simply because we  all have the right to free speech....The 
challenges to political  correctness tend to come from those who want to be able to 
say anything  without repercussions." (He did not have Khanh in mind.)

Skin Deep is a kid's cartoon, however, compared to Jane Elliott's Blue  Eyed. Elliott 
has been lionized by the American media, including Oprah  Winfrey, and she is widely 
employed by a growing number of universities.  Disney plans to make a movie of her 
life.

Blue Eyed arose from Elliott's elementary school class in Riceville, Iowa,  where, 
starting in 1968, she inflicted upon her dyslexic students an  experience in which 
they were loathed or praised based upon their eye  color. According to Elliott, she 
was ostracized for this experiment, her  own children were beaten and abused, and her 
parents (who were racists, she  informed a Dutch interviewer) were driven into 
isolation, bankruptcy, and  despair because they had raised "a nigger lover" (one of 
her favorite  terms).

In her modest explanation, once news of her exercise with the children made  it onto 
national television, the people of Riceville feared that blacks  across America would 
assume that everyone there was like Elliott and would  move to their town. To punish 
her for that, they stopped buying from her  father. Elliott also revealed to her Dutch 
interviewer that she abandoned  teaching school in 1984 to devote herself full time to 
diversity education,  for which she receives $6,000 per day from "companies and 
governmental  institutions."

In Blue Eyed, masochistic adults accept Elliott's two-and-a-half-hour  exercise in 
sadism (reduced to 90 minutes of film), designed to make white  people understand what 
it is to be "a person of color" in America. To  achieve this, she divides her group 
into stupid, lazy, shiftless,  incompetent, and psychologically brutalized "blue 
eyes," on the one hand,  and clever and empowered "brown eyes," on the other. Some of 
the sadism is  central to the "game," but much is gratuitous, and it continues after 
the  exercise has ended.

Elliott is unbearably tendentious and ignorant. To teach what an IQ test  truly is, 
she gives the brown eyes half of the answers to an impossible  test before the blue 
eyes enter the room, explaining that, for people of  color, the IQ exam is "a test 
about which you know absolutely nothing." IQ  tests only measure "white culture." They 
are a means of "reinforcing our  position of power," and "we do this all the time in 
public, private, and  parochial schools," using "culturally biased tests, textbooks, 
and pictures  on the wall...for white people." (Fortunately for Elliott, it appears 
there  were no Asian-Americans or psychometricians in her group.)

Elliott often describes the 1990s as if they were the 1920s; indeed, in her  view, 
nothing has changed in America since the collapse of Reconstruction.  Every day in the 
United States, she explains, white power keeps black males  in their place by calling 
them "boy" (two syllables, hissed), "and we do it  to accomplished black males over 
70, and we get away with it." We tell  blacks to assimilate, which means merely to 
"act white," but when they try  that, we put them in their place and change the rules. 
For example (this in  1995), whites now are building up Colin Powell, but as soon as 
they build  "this boy" up, they will kick him down. For Elliott, the Powell boom was a 
 conscious conspiracy to humiliate and disorient blacks.

She teaches her "blueys" with relish that protest accomplishes nothing,  because if 
blacks protest, "we kill them." It is not smart to speak up or  act clever, which is 
why blacks appear passive and stupid. The lesson: "You  have no power, absolutely no 
power. ...Quit trying." Blacks might try to  "win" on the inside, but it is almost 
impossible to validate oneself when  white society puts you down "all day, every day."

Even if a "bluey" understands the implications of the workshop, or even if  a white 
woman understands male prejudice, it bears no real relationship to  the daily 
suffering of every black: "You do not live in the same country as  that [black] woman. 
You live in the USA, but you do not live in the same  country as she does." Blacks 
such as Shelby Steele (singled out by name),  who speak of transcending race, delude 
themselves, because one might  transcend one's skin color but never society's 
behavior: "All you can do is  sit there and take it." People call the exercise cruel, 
Elliott explains,  but "I'm only doing this for one day to little white children. 
Society does  this to children of color every day." She stands over briefly assertive  
"blueys" and humiliates them, explaining that if this makes you sick to  your stomach 
for a few hours, now you understand why blacks die younger.

In short, this is America, and there truly is no hope. Nothing ever  changes. No one 
can succeed by effort. Culture, society, and politics all  are static. "White 
privilege" controls all agencies of power, influence,  and image, and uses all the 
means that arise from these to render "people  of color" psychologically impotent, 
confused, passive, and helpless. So  either vent your hatred or assume your guilt.

There is no redemption except guilt, but there is a political moral. After  "teaching" 
a "bluey" to submit totally to her authority, she asks if that  was a good lesson. The 
workshop thinks it was. No, she says with venom,  submission to tyranny is a terrible 
lesson, but "what I just did to him  today Newt Gingrich is doing to you every 
day...and you are submitting to  that, submitting to oppression."

The facilitators' guide and publicity for Blue Eyed states things honestly:  Elliott 
"does not intellectualize highly emotionally charged or challenging  topics...she uses 
participants' own emotions to make them feel discomfort,  guilt, shame, embarrassment, 
and humiliation." Facilitators are urged to  use the raw emotions of Blue Eyed (blueys 
do cry a lot) to tap the  reactions of the viewers. They should not expect black 
participants to  "bleed on the floor for whites," but they should get whites to 
"stretch"  and "take risks." The facilitators should be prepared for very strong and  
painful emotions and memories from the participants. The ultimate goal of  the film: 
"It is not enough for white people to stop abusing people of  color. All U.S. people 
need a personal vision for ending racism and other  oppressive ideologies within 
themselves."

Elliott does mean everyone. In 1996, she told her audience at Kansas State  University 
that all whites are racists, whatever they believe about  themselves: "If you want to 
see another racist, turn to the person on your  right. Now look at the person on your 
left." She also believes that blacks  were in America 600 years before whites. She 
told the students at Kansas  State that if they were angry at her, they should write 
letters, but that  they must do so without paper, alphabet, or numbers, all of which 
were  invented by people of color. Whites, in Elliott's view, did have a certain  
creativity. Betraying a breathtaking ignorance of world history, she told  the 
Australian Internet magazine Webfronds in 1998 that "white people  invented racism." 
Other than that, however, whites were quite parasitic.

"You're all sitting here writing in a language [English] that white people  didn't 
come up with," she told the magazine. "You're all sitting here  writing on paper that 
white people didn't invent. Most of you are wearing  clothes made out of cloth that 
white people didn't come up with. We stole  those ideas from other people. If you're a 
Christian, you're believing in a  philosophy that came to us from people of color."

Jane Elliott has lived through revolutionary cultural changes without  taking note of 
any. She teaches only helplessness and despair to blacks and  only blood-guilt and 
self-contempt to whites. She addresses no issue with  intellectual seriousness or 
purpose. She also is the reigning star in  thought reform these days. On May 7, 1999, 
CBS News ran a feature on her  that declared: "For over 30 years, Jane Elliott has 
waged a one-woman  campaign against racism in America." CBS might want to rethink the 
notion  of "racism."

Even traditionalist campuses now permit the ideologues in their offices of  student 
life to pursue individuals into the last inner refuge of free men  and women and to 
turn students over to trainers who want them to change  "within themselves." This is a 
return of in loco parentis, with a power  unimagined in prior ages by the poor souls 
who only tried to keep men and  women from sleeping with each other overnight. It is 
the university  standing not simply in the place of parents but in the place of 
private  conscience, identity, and belief.

>From the evidence, most students tune it out, just as most students at most  times 
>generally have tuned out abuses of power and diminutions of liberty.  One should not 
>take heart from that. Where students react, it is generally  with an anger that, 
>ironically and sadly, exacerbates the balkanization of  our universities. The more 
>social work we bring to our colleges and  universities, the more segregated they 
>become, and in the classifieds of  The Chronicle of Higher Education during the last 
>few years, colleges and  universities by the hundreds have advertised for individuals 
>to oversee  "diversity education," "diversity training," and "sensitivity training."

Orwell may have been profoundly wrong about the totalitarian effects of  high 
technology, but he understood full well how the authoritarians of this  century had 
moved from the desire for outer control to the desire for inner  control. He 
understood that the new age sought to overcome what, in Julia's  terms, was the 
ultimate source of freedom for human beings: "They can't get  inside you." Our 
colleges and universities hire trainers to "get inside"  American students.

Thought reform is making its way inexorably to an office near you. If we  let it occur 
at our universities and accept it passively in our own  domains, then a people who 
defeated totalitarians abroad will surrender  their dignity, privacy, and conscience 
to the totalitarians within.

 Alan Charles Kors ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is a professor of history at the  University 
of Pennsylvania, co-author of The Shadow University: The  Betrayal of Liberty on 
America's Campuses (HarperCollins), and president of  FIRE, the Foundation for 
Individual Rights in Education. He is indebted to  Thor Halvorssen, executive director 
of FIRE, for the materials and  interviews from the Nebraska conference.

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