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- [00:00]
Host
When I was a little girl one time after we went to Walmart, my dad sat down with me at the KFC that was right across the parking lot. And as we were eating, he explained to me that while he wasn't racist, he didn't think that races should marry each other because it was too hard on the kids. The kids wouldn't be able to adapt, and they'd be bullied because they wouldn't fit in with either group. When I got a little bit older, he would say phrases like cotton picker, and I didn't really register what it was he was talking about. He repeatedly claimed that the Civil War was about states rights. And when I asked him the right to do what, he got pretty upset. And I carried these ideas into my late teens and my early 20s. And I would have never said, I'm not racist. I love everyone. I even used the horrible, condescending phrase, I'm colorblind, which is insane. And as I started to realize that what I had been told was a lie, and I found out about things like the Tulsa massacre, and I realized just how much of my history that I'd been taught as a kid had been whitewashed and how much had been missed. My family never taught me about the civil rights movement. My dad demonized Martin Luther King Jr. I started to realize I'm missing something. And I started to realize that attitudes I had towards people I had never met were wrong. They were not just wrong, morally, they were incorrect. And I started to do a lot of searching online to answer questions. Everything from what happened in the civil rights movement? What did Dr. Martin Luther King really say? What does racism really look like in America? And one of the first videos I stumbled upon was an interview with Jane Elliott as she explained her brown and blue eye exercise. And I started to cry because she explained it in a way that made me understand what prejudice looks like and that we don't have to live that way, and that prejudice based on skin color is just as insane and irrational as prejudice based on eye color. This is maybe the interview I've been the most excited for ever in my life. I'm so excited to have this conversation with Jane Elliott and with you. Thank you for dropping by to join me on flipping table. Hello and welcome back. I am so excited. When I got ready for this interview, I was freaking out. Like, what do you wear to talk to Jane Elliott? I reached out to her from her website. I had no idea she would reach out again to me. She reached out the same day and we spoke about what my mission is, what I'm talking about. And I brought her on, and we both love the paranormal, and it was such an enriching conversation. I am just so excited. Before I jump into that, I wanna make some announcements again. Please sign up for the Patreon account. This is how I am switching my career focus to this work to be able to do it full time. You get bonus content, bonus episodes, you get to vote on episodes, and you get early releases. And thank you again so much to the recent ratings and reviews. It helps me so much to promote this podcast because word of mouth is by far the best asset you could ever, ever give me. And I've been getting so many encouraging messages from all of you. So buckle up, get a drink, get ready to laugh, maybe cry a little bit, get a notebook, because she's gonna give you some book recommendations. This is my conversation with Ms. Jan. All right, Mrs. Elliot, we're alive. We're live. We're live. Welcome to the show. I am very excited to talk to you. Everyone who knows me has known that I've been raving about this since you answered my email. And especially as someone who. I was raised very far alt right, Christian nationalist, fundamentalist, Republican family members. My dad was a Republican state senator. My uncle was a Republican representative. I'm sorry, switch that. My dad was the representative, my uncle was the senator. And I grew up about as far right as you can get and started deconstruction after college. And it's been a long journey for me. And when I realized how racist my ideologies were, even though my family never claimed to be racist or they would never drop slurs, they were very, very racist. Still are. And you were a big part in helping me deconstruct those ideologies. And it was really impactful for me. It took me about a decade to rewire most of that learning. I grew up with family members who we stockpiled arms against the government in case they came to attack us and opposed women's bodily autonomy, opposed everything you stood for. My dad has, or my dad used to demonize Martin Luther King Jr. I mean, it was just. This is the language I grew up with. So when I realized after moving to New York, I went to Liberty University. So after college, I moved to New York. Oh, I know, I know. There's so much here. She's like, oh, my God.
- [04:52]
Jane Elliott
This is like I'm sitting here looking at somebody who is every. Everything that Anthea Butler writes about.
- [05:00]
Host
Yep.
- [05:01]
Jane Elliott
Have you read this book?
- [05:03]
Host
I have.
- [05:04]
Jane Elliott
Isn't it Fantastic. And you're. You are saying exactly what she writes about and what she warns us about. It is absolutely. Should be required reading for every high school student. Even if they can't understand it, they need to read it and get it into their brains.
- [05:20]
Host
I agree. And because of my background is the reason that this is. The show is called Flipping Tables because of Jesus's method of clearing the temple when people were taking advantage of others is what it's named after. But I talk on these issues because I grew up in the movement. I was part of it. My dad groomed me to be a conservative judge because I was really wicked smart, and now I speak against them. Now I'm like, nope, we're not gonna participate in that today.
- [05:47]
Jane Elliott
Your father must consider himself a total loser.
- [05:51]
Host
He passed away in 2016. I never really had a chance to talk to him about this. But I will say, before he passed, he was not willing to support Trump, which I found very relieving, because when Trump entered the scene in the presidential campaign, I found myself very worried about if my dad was gonna be a hypocrite about his faith by supporting Trump and his immorality. And my dad didn't. So I never got the chance to really talk to my dad and say, dad, I'm pro choice. I don't support these ideologies that you promote that black people are somehow inferior to us. I don't support the fact that you don't think that gay people should be able to get married. I never got to have that full conversation because he passed. But he was very opposed to the Trump movement, so.
- [06:34]
Jane Elliott
But good for him. Good for him. He did learn.
- [06:37]
Host
He did learn something.
- [06:38]
Jane Elliott
Yeah, he learned something from that man who had the kinky woolly hair and feet of bronze that most of us see as a white man with long brown hair.
- [06:49]
Host
Yep. Da Vinci's art history, making him a white man, you know.
- [06:53]
Jane Elliott
Yes, yes. And all of us accepting that that's what he must have been, after all.
- [06:58]
Host
Well, there's no question. They don't even. It's not even brought up in Sunday school. Again, as someone. I went to church my whole life. I went to all Christian, private Christian schools. I studied theology in Israel, abroad. Like, it was never even talked about. They just didn't bring it up that he wasn't white. It was just assumed.
- [07:16]
Jane Elliott
Yeah, it was assumed that he looked just like the rest of us. Just like the rest of us. Which means only 15 to 18% of the popular human population of the Earth is classified as white.
- [07:27]
Host
The melanic population and it's a misnomer.
- [07:30]
Jane Elliott
Because we aren't white. There are no white people and there are no black people. We are all shades of brown. And until we get that into our heads, we going to continue to have racism in this country and worldwide. We need to realize that Jesus didn't look like whoever it is doing this work. Who that man? I'm sure Jesus didn't look like that.
- [07:49]
Host
Yeah, he didn't look like my shirt.
- [07:52]
Jane Elliott
No, he didn't color your shirt.
- [07:54]
Host
I don't even look like my shirt.
- [07:56]
Jane Elliott
And nobody is the color of the writing on my shirt either. Yep, black and white do not exist in human skin colors. But okay, Shel, you want to ask me a question before I go on and on?
- [08:05]
Host
Oh, like you go ahead and dive in because I was going to ask you questions directly related to this anyway. So you're already going from my, my template here.
- [08:13]
Jane Elliott
The problem is that what we learned in Sunday school wasn't true. It was based on a lie. And it's a lie that got started during the Spanish Inquisition. A man named Torquemada. Have you read about Torquemada?
- [08:26]
Host
Yes, I have.
- [08:27]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. Yeah.
- [08:28]
Host
And his way to figure out who was Christian so he could kill them.
- [08:31]
Jane Elliott
Right.
- [08:31]
Host
And who was not.
- [08:33]
Jane Elliott
Right. So he, he based his decision and as to who deserved to live or who deserved to die on skin color. Now, everybody was a shade of brown, just as everybody on the face of the earth today is a shade of brown. But he chose to make the lighter brown people white, which is the color of goodness and purity. He decided to make the darker brown people black, which is, which is the color of, of malevolence and evil. And so we are now for the last 400 and some years have been placed at polar opposites. White people are encouraged, encouraged, literally encouraged to kill those who are evil and vicious. So here we are. It's all right to kill anyone who's a little dark because obviously he doesn't look like Jesus. He does look like Jesus. Jesus didn't look like this. Jesus wasn't this. Well, he was closer to this color than he is to white. He was not white. He had kinky woolly hair and feet of bronze. And if you would put that up as a picture behind the minister in the so called Christian churches in this country, it would change people's attitude. Many of them would not come to church anymore if they had to look at that picture behind the minister. However, in black churches there is Jesus. Black. He isn't black, but he's closer to the color that Jesus really was. If we could just make that one change, change the color of Jesus skin and the type of his hair in Christian churches all over the United States, we could do away with a whole lot of racism.
- [10:03]
Host
Yep. Because how can you, you have this entire group of people again, immigrants being a scapegoat recently who are, and it's only brown immigrants in their propaganda. You never see a European immigrant in the pictures or the videos that they're making, but it's always a brown immigrant. I was like, do you realize who you say you worship is a brown refugee? And if they had that imagery in their head instead of this either blonde haired blue eyed Jesus or brown haired, blue eyed white Jesus, it really takes the legs out of this distaste for brown people as other.
- [10:43]
Jane Elliott
If we could not have for the next three years someone as the president of the United States who said during his last time he was the President of the United States who said we've got to put a wall on the southern border of the United States because we got to keep those brown skinned people out because brown skinned people reproduce too rapidly. When he, that he said everything that is bothering pale stale males today in this country that they are going to be outnumbered by people of color, they need to get over that because they have always been outnumbered by people who are browner than they are. We have never, we so called, so called white people have never been the numerical majority on the face of the earth. And now within 20 years we won't be the numerical majority in the United States of America. We are losing our majority status.
- [11:36]
Host
Do you think that losing the majority status is part of what's driving this huge movement now?
- [11:42]
Jane Elliott
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. It's total fear about what's coming.
- [11:46]
Host
I've felt that. It's the fear of losing the majority and also kind of a revenge tour after Obama was elected.
- [11:53]
Jane Elliott
Well, they're quite certain that all people who are other than what we call white want to get even with us. When I did the blue eyed, brown eyed exercise in my classroom the first year, I did the blue eyed brown eyed exercise, the brown people were on top the first day. And I listened to the blue eyed boys in the boys room saying we're going to get even with those boys. When we get on top, we're going to get even with them. So when I went back to back into the classroom on Monday, I was just, I was frightened because I thought this I'm going to have all hell to pay rent to here because these blue eyed kids are going to get even. Those blue eyed kids didn't get even. They were much less vicious to the browns than the browns had been to them. And on the third day on Tuesday, I said to these kids, got in the magic circle. I said to them, you blue eyed boys said you were going to get even with the brownies. Why didn't you get even? And that year and every year that I did that exercise, those kids said, because we found out how it feels to be on the bottom and we didn't want to make anybody feel as bad as we did when we were on the bottom. Now think about that.
- [12:48]
Host
Yep.
- [12:49]
Jane Elliott
People who are considered other than white in this country know how it feels to be on the bottom. They know the kind of chaos you create, and if they didn't know it before the last two weeks, now they know the kind of chaos you create when you have someone in a leadership position who is, who intends to get even with every wrong that was ever visited upon him. And that's exactly what's happening in this country today. He is encouraging people who look like me to get even with those people who don't look like me.
- [13:20]
Host
Yep.
- [13:21]
Jane Elliott
This is, this is totally, utterly, absolutely, number one, unchristian. But he has never claimed to be a Christian. He holds the Bible upside down because he doesn't know anything about it. He doesn't know any of.
- [13:32]
Host
He said in an interview he's never asked God for forgiveness.
- [13:35]
Jane Elliott
Well, he, he doesn't have. He, He. He doesn't see God as being superior to him. He thinks that he and God are on the same. On the same level.
- [13:44]
Host
Yeah.
- [13:44]
Jane Elliott
There's no but. But perhaps he is. Because if you turn the word God backward, it becomes dog.
- [13:53]
Host
It's true.
- [13:55]
Jane Elliott
Maybe the opposite of God is what he is.
- [13:58]
Host
Yeah, maybe. As above, so below.
- [14:01]
Jane Elliott
As. As. Okay, go ahead. Whatever you just said, so.
- [14:06]
Host
I know. I was just saying as above, so below. So he's, if anything, the inverse of what God is and represents. But a narcissist doesn't see himself as beneath anyone or anything. It's hard to introduce them to that.
- [14:19]
Jane Elliott
Let's see. I know some fine people who are narcissistic who do not have the power to use their narcissistic behaviors and beliefs to damage other people. And if they do have the power, they don't use it. The big mistake we've made is giving them this kind of power.
- [14:38]
Host
Yes.
- [14:38]
Jane Elliott
This kind of power and billionaire status. This, this is what's scary right now.
- [14:45]
Host
Well, and, and he is running, trying to run the US Like A business. But he tends to bankrupt businesses. So he's doing exactly what he did to businesses, is just bankrupting them and stealing from them.
- [14:57]
Jane Elliott
He's a good businessman. Unless. But he's been bankrupt. He's declared bankrupt, bankruptcy, what, six times or something. I think he's a good businessman, even a good businessman. He hasn't a good father, he isn't a good husband. What is he good at?
- [15:11]
Host
Marketing.
- [15:12]
Jane Elliott
He isn't great at golf because I read a book about him and he cheats at golf. He moves the ball so he has a better life.
- [15:20]
Host
That's amazing.
- [15:21]
Jane Elliott
This was written by a man who admires him. And I read that and I thought, oh, my God. And this man is President of the United States. This isn't a man. This is a boy grown tall. And we all need to realize that.
- [15:32]
Host
Yeah, I agree. And I wanna touch on. Cause when I was introduced to your work, and again I was working through deconstructing my own, what I realized were racist beliefs. And I came across the brown and blue eye exercise. And my nieces and people that are younger than me aren't necessarily familiar with the exercise. Can you tell me what was the catalyst to make inspire you to do that exercise? What happened that led up to it, and what was that first day like and some of those later exercises with adults?
- [16:05]
Jane Elliott
Well, I'm sorry, but every time I think of that first time, I remember why I did it. It was because of the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. Had been one of our heroes of the month in February. And he was one of our heroes because he was trying to make the world a better place. And he was dead at the hands of an assassin in April. And I was going to have to go back into my classroom. And I didn't know that we were studying the Indian unit at the time. And I was on my way home from school. I was walking home from school and I had the teepee under my arm that we had made the previous year. We were going to put it up in my classroom the next day. We were going to paint it with Indian symbols and we're going to learn Indian. We're going to do the thing you do with the Indian unit. I walked into my back door, the telephone was ringing. I answered it and it was my sister. And she said, is your television on? I said, no. She said, you better turn it on. I said, why? She said, because they shot him. I said, who'd we shoot this time? Because we were in a shooting mood.
- [17:05]
Host
Yep, killing a lot of people.
- [17:07]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. And she said, Martin Luther King Jr. And My World fell apart. For a moment. I can still remember how that felt. I felt like time had stopped. Because here was this man who had lots of faults, but what all he wanted to do was make things better for all of us. And we shot him because of that. I was absolutely infuriated. So I got the kids supper. I put him to bed. I turned on the television, I washed the teepee, I dried the teepee. I had it spread out in the living room floor. I was ironing it. And there sat Walter Cronkite with three members of what we call black community. And he said to those black men, when our leader was killed, his widow held us together. Who's going to keep your people in line? And I thought, my God. And at that point I had always thought that maybe God looked like Walter Cronkite, because Walter Cronkite knew everything. There he sat saying, who's going to keep your people in line? I thought, oh, my God, Martin Luther King. And these people are some of our people. We are all. I was just. I was just absolutely furious. So I changed the channel and there was Dan Rather saying to three members of the so called black community, don't you Negroes think you should feel sympathy for us white? Because we can't feel the anger at this killing that you black people, that you Negroes can.
- [18:30]
Host
Why not?
- [18:32]
Jane Elliott
Number one, Negroes, anger. Only they can feel anger at the killing of another human being. Because that said to me, Dan Rather didn't consider Martin Luther King Jr. A human being. I was absolutely furious. So I rolled up the teepee, I threw it into the closet. I turned off the television. I got supper from my husband, who worked in a factory at that time. At night. I got supper for my husband. He came in and I'm crying. And he walked in, he took me in his arms. He said, they killed him, didn't they? I said, yes, they did. He said, what are you going to do, Jane? I said, I'm going to allow my children to walk in the shoes of another person tomorrow. He said, well, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to do what we have been doing in this country for the last 300 years. I'm going to separate my students according to the color of their eyes because eye color and skin color are caused by the same chemical, melanin. I'm going to treat part of my students well because they have a lot of that chemical. And I'm going to treat their less well, he said, you can't do that. You'll lose your job. I said, darrell, if I lose my job because I teach the truth, I don't want to teach you in Rice Field. He said, jane, we need that money. Don't do something stupid. I said, okay, I won't, but I'm going to do the exercise. And we went to bed. And I know if he. I knew he. I know he prayed at that time, and he prayed that I wouldn't do something so stupid. The next morning I got up, I got ready to go to school, and I walked out the door. He said, you're going to do that thing you talked about last night. I said, yes, I am. He says, you'll regret it. I said, I'm going to do the exercise. And by then I walked out quickly because I didn't want him to see the tears in my eyes, because I wanted him to support me. I needed somebody support me in this. But he wouldn't. And he was the person who supported me in everything I ever did. I went to school, the first student in my classroom came in and said, hey, they shot that king last night. Why'd you shoot that king? I said, we're going to talk about that, Stephen. So we talked about it. Oh, God, the things I learned when we talked about it. The things that those kids said, who had never been in the presence of someone who was other than what we call white, knew every negative stereotype you've ever heard about black people. I couldn't believe.
- [20:34]
Host
And these are third graders, right?
- [20:36]
Jane Elliott
These are third graders in an all white, all Christian, seven Christian churches in that town. So we know about. We know about Christianity. We also know how to be racist. I finally said, do you kids have any idea how it feels to be something other than white in this country? No. Would you like to know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like this. That sounds like fun. Everything we do in here is fun. We'll do that. I said, okay, today we're going to judge you by the color of your eyes. How many of you have brown eyes? Their hands went up. How many of you have blue eyes? Their hands went up. I said, no, brown eyed people are going to be on the top the first day. What do you mean? I said, I mean, brown eyed people are smarter than blue eyed people. They're cleaner than blue eyed people. They're more intelligent than blue eyed people. They work harder than blue eyed people. You can trust brown eyed people. And at that point, oh God, I'll never forget it. Little brown eyed Debbie Sitting in the front row raised her hand and said, how come you're the teacher here if you got them blue eyes? Just like that.
- [21:31]
Host
That was quick.
- [21:32]
Jane Elliott
It was instantaneous. It gave her the opportunity to put me in my place. And I thought, oh my God, what have I done? And I had to go forward with it because I'd suggested it, they'd all agreed to it, it sounded like fun and she was having fun. It was absolutely the worst day I have ever taught. I couldn't believe the kinds of things that my brown students were willing to do to blue eyed students who the previous day had been their very, very best friends.
- [22:08]
Host
And just in a day, in less.
- [22:09]
Jane Elliott
Than a day, no, 20 minutes it was, wasn't even 20 minutes, five minutes. I said that those kids became what I told them. They had my permission to be. They expressed every racist statement I've ever heard, but they applied them to me because of the color of my eyes. You can, you can educate people in 10 minutes if you appeal to their, to their, their need to feel good. And those brown eyed people wanted to feel better than somebody. And if my eye color does it for me, then I'll go along to get along even though I have to abuse people that I love dearly and who are my best friends. It was awful. It was awful. In the afternoon I pulled down the map, there's, you know, with the ring on the map. And I pulled it down and the ring slipped up my finger and the map went around and around, around the ruler the way it does in that old etc. Commercial. I said, done it again. And Brown Eyed Debbie sitting in the front row said, well what do you expect? You've got blue eyes, haven't you? And as God is my judge, she is a menace. Yes, she had power. She had absolute power. When I see dinosaurs T Rump and the things he's doing and saying, he reminds me of little Debbie. Because absolute power I was. I could see myself in my mind's eye. I could see myself backhanding that little blue eyed witch against the one I didn't think, which I thought the B word. And then Ellen Moss in the back row stepped up and said, ah, Debbie, your eyes ain't got nothing to do with it. You know, she never has been able to do that right. And I thought, there's my Uncle Tom. He's going to defend me regardless of how bad I'm behaving, how wrong I'm, what wrong things I'm saying. He's going to defend me because we have the same color eyes. It was such an education and racism. I couldn't have learned the things that I learned that day without going through that exercise. I went home that night. When my brown eyed kids left, they didn't want to leave. They were having fun. The blue eyed kids couldn't wait to get on that bus and they didn't want to come back the next day. I said, don't worry, we'll see you on Monday. Well, they had the weekend to get over it. They didn't get over it. They went home and told their parents about what had happened in the classroom. And my husband and I had made plans to take our four kids out to the lake with some friends of ours. Well, the woman called and said, we can't go to the lake. Rick is sick, so we can't go. I said, well, I'm sorry. Well, take care of Rick and we'll just go without you. So the four kids and Darrell and I picked up, packed up our lunch and headed for the lake. Walk toward the lake and they're sitting at picnic tables were my friends that were whose son was too sick to go.
- [24:54]
Host
Yep.
- [24:55]
Jane Elliott
And as we walked toward the table, one of those men said, well, did anybody bring the watermelon? Somebody said, I brought some sweet corn. We're okay. They'll have something to eat. And my husband said, the son's a. I said, darl, let's go. And my son said, my. My son said, we're gonna. Let's go fishing. We'll. We'll put them. We'll use them for bait. We'll cut them up and use them for bait. And I said, cut it out, kids. Quit. Let's just go fishing. So we went down to the lake. We were never seen as proper friends or people you want for friends in that community after that weekend because I was the. I became the town's only N word lover. And there was no doubt about it that, yes, I'm. To this day, I'm called Rushville's little. A only N word, though. Yeah. You see, this is. This is in a community with a lot of Christian churches.
- [25:47]
Host
Yeah. Wow. And a lot of brand.
- [25:49]
Jane Elliott
And you read white evangelical racism and you recognize what went on there.
- [25:54]
Host
Yep.
- [25:54]
Jane Elliott
Tremendous fear of those who are different from themselves. My daughter and my four kids were all exposed to blatant vicious racism as long as we lived in that community. And we finally, I think three years later, moved because it was getting. It was too ugly. My kids were. The reason we moved was the elementary superintendent's wife taught at the junior and senior high school level. And she stopped me before we went into a teacher's meeting one day and said, jane, you've got to get your kids out of this school. I said, why would I do that? Why would I do that? She said, because these teachers are trying to destroy your children and they're having fun with it. Get your kids out of here, I said. She said, I'm absolutely serious. Get your kids out of here. They'll never succeed. As long as they're in this community, these teachers won't let them succeed. So I immediately called my husband and said, we're moving to Osage. He said, well, I'll find a real estate agent. So he found a real estate agent to show me some houses. And I went to Osage and met this real estate agent and we went out to several houses, the worst places you could ever imagine living in. And I finally, after the third one, said, are these the best places you have to sell in Osage, Iowa? He said, they're the best I have for you. That bluntly. And I thought. I was absolutely speechless. I couldn't imagine that he would say that that bluntly and expect me not to get it or expect me not to respond. Well, I didn't respond the way I wanted to because Daryl ran a store in that community. So I went home and I called Darrell and I said, told him what he had said. And I said, what do you think he meant? He said, I don't know what the SOB means. I'll get a different one. But that same one called me the next day and said, I found a house for you. I said, really? Where is it? It's six miles west of Osage, which means it was far enough away that I wouldn't have any near neighbors to be ruined by my presence.
- [27:54]
Host
So how dare you treat people with equality. It's absolutely preposterous.
- [27:58]
Jane Elliott
It looks just. So he took me out. I said, well, he said. I said, what is it? He says, it's an old schoolhouse. And I thought, well, you know what? It'd be an old schoolhouse, you know, you know, the one room school. Well, I said, I'll take a look at it. So I met him at the place, and it was a schoolhouse that was built as part of the National Recovery Act. And so it had a basement and a first floor. And then somebody had purchased it and couldn't afford to continue remodeling it. But he had turned it into a three story house. Okay, a first store and second store. So second story. So I Went through it. I said, this is the house I want. Don't show it to anybody else. We're going to buy this. And the guy said, well, are you sure? Have you checked with Daryl? I said, we're going to buy this. This is just a perfect place for my kids. I called Daryl and I said, I. I just bought a house. He says, jesus, Jane, you didn't. He said that a lot, and I'm sure it was in a prayerful way. I said, come out and see it. If you don't like it, we won't buy it. Well, he came right out and he went through it and he said, I could live here. I said, if you can live with me, you will live here. He said, okay, okay.
- [29:05]
Host
Jane's like, these are the rules. Take it or leave it.
- [29:09]
Jane Elliott
There was a little old Baptist church next door.
- [29:12]
Host
That's adorable.
- [29:13]
Jane Elliott
10. About 10 years after that, I bought the Baptist church. And I called my husband and said, I bought the church. Next day. He said, jesus, Jane, you didn't want to. Yeah.
- [29:23]
Host
What was the incentive to buy the church?
- [29:26]
Jane Elliott
I didn't want the farmer who was. Who plowed him and sewed and disc right up to our right against the garage. He had. He had already bid something like $3,000 for it. And I thought, no, he's not going to have that property. I'm going to have that property if it's the last thing I ever do, because I don't want him plowing up against the garage. So I offered them a whole lot more than it was worth, and they jumped at it. Then I called my husband and told him, my God, he's. Oh, what am I going to do? So he went to the banker, and the banker told him what he could do in order to make it all right for us to spend that amount of money for the church. We bought the church and we turned it into a guest house, and it's absolutely lovely.
- [30:06]
Host
Oh, I love that.
- [30:08]
Jane Elliott
Except that anybody who thinks there isn't such thing as an afterlife needs to come to the church someday and watch the spirits that are in that church. It is just absolutely amazing.
- [30:23]
Host
So you should know I have another podcast that is all true crime and paranormal activity. So I might have to go visit your church.
- [30:31]
Jane Elliott
Oh, you have to give. We had. There's a lady there whose name is Catherine Markham, and I found out her name because now people are going to think I'm totally crazy, but they need to come and see them. Catherine Markham lives in her spirit, lives in the church. And I found out she's there because Sarah, my dog, my oldest daughter, her bedroom, the girl's bedroom, faces the windows, face the church, okay? And right after we moved in there, Sarah came downstairs, said, mom, there are people in that church and they're waving at me. I said, sarah, I'm sure there are. I said, what do you do when they wave at Jesus? I said, she says, I give them the finger. I said, don't give him the fingers there. Don't do that. They could make life miserable for you in that church. Do not show any disrespect for those people. They are there. She said, well, I don't have to put off of that. And then she came in one day angry, so angry she was able to drive. She had her license. She pulled in. She came into the house just furious. I said, what's going on now? She said, a Confederate soldier just came toward me like this. And he walked like this toward me and was yelling at me through the window of my car. I said, well, what did he say? She said, I don't remember what he said, but I don't want him hangry anymore. I said, oh, my God. So about that time, a man who had lived in that area and whose job is finding lost graves, he finds lost graves for a living. He called me one day after that and he said, miss Sally, do you know you have a church, Grave, grave, graveyard behind the church? I said, yes, I know there is one. He said, have you found out the names of the people in the graves? I said, well, no, I can't find because somebody stole all. Took. Took down all the gravestones because. Headstones. Because they wanted to run pigs on that area. He said, well. He said, take your divining rods. I said, okay. He said, don't you have dividing rods? I said, actually, no. He said, we'll make a pair. So he told me how to make a pair of dividing rods. He said, go out between those two trees that are close together. Hold your divining rods in your hands, hold them straight out. And when you cross a grave, they will. When you are over a grave, when you're walking across the grave, the rods will cross. I said, okay, I'll do that. And I'm chuckling like you're chuckling right now. It's like, I'll do that. It's like, sure, okay, sure, okay, whatever. You know, I was. I was still in the. If a man says that, it must be right, right? So I made a pair of divining rods out of a wire coat hanger. Two wire Coat hangers. And I went out and I held him in my hands, walked between those two trees and I walked about ten paces and the darn things crossed. And I thought, oh, come on now. I walked two more paces and they uncrossed. I did it again. They crossed again. I found 14 graves. What?
- [33:21]
Host
It actually worked?
- [33:24]
Jane Elliott
It absolutely worked.
- [33:25]
Host
See, now I'm gonna. I'm gonna have to go get some divining rods, go to a cemetery to.
- [33:28]
Jane Elliott
Just coat hanger bend all the, you know, straighten it out and bend it at right angles. And then put a. Put a straw. You bend it so there's a short and then a long piece. The short handle is going to be short, but you put a drinking straw on that handle so that when you hold them, they'll. They'll move without you moving your hands. They can. You're not holding. See it. It lets them move because the straw lets them move. I'm telling you, it absolutely works. So I made them.
- [33:58]
Host
Okay, I need to go see this church. I'm going to try divining rod.
- [34:01]
Jane Elliott
You make a list, make your own, make your own. It's just marvelous. So, okay, there's somebody in the church. I'm going to find out who it is. So I went into the church with these divine rods. I went across the part, the part that used to be the sanctuary. And I had those things in my hand. When I got into the northwestern corner, they crossed and I said, is there someone here? Yes. Are you a male? No. Are you female? Yes. Can I find out your name? Yes, I said. So I went through the Alphabet. Does your first name begin with A? No. B? No. C? Yes. Is your second name. It's the second letter in your name. Begin with. I went, I went through it until I got the word Catherine. Is your name Catherine Markham? Because I knew there were Markhams in the age. Yes, this is Catherine Markham. And I asked her. I didn't ask her how long she'd been dead because she isn't dead. I don't believe in death. I believe that we pass on into another, into another dimension.
- [35:01]
Host
Because energy is neither created nor destroyed.
- [35:03]
Jane Elliott
Abs energy can neither be created nor destroyed. And the energy that was Martin Luther King Jr. Was in that area. There is no doubt in my mind but what the energy of Martin Luther King Jr. Was working when I did that blue eyed, brown eyed exercise.
- [35:18]
Host
And I have a question about that exercise, something I just thought of. When you took the brown eyed kids and you said, you're smarter and you're just better, how did they Perform school.
- [35:28]
Jane Elliott
Wise, they got smarter, they got better. I'm telling you, kids that could not read when they came to the reading table that day could read words they hadn't been able to read the day before because their eye color made gave them an intelligence they didn't have before. People say that's not possible. Oh yes, it is possible. You tell a child something from kindergarten on that he can't succeed and then he lives down to your expectations of him. And with you. If you do that with a whole bunch of people, they'll live down to your expectations of you until the of them. Until you find they find out that you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Yep, we have done that with women. I was just thinking that 300 years we have done that with women. We have said you can't succeed, you don't have what it takes.
- [36:16]
Host
You're not smart enough to do math.
- [36:18]
Jane Elliott
What?
- [36:18]
Host
You're not smart enough to do math.
- [36:20]
Jane Elliott
Oh no, no, you can't do math. It doesn't matter. You can't be a minister. You can't. You really aren't as great as you think you are. But here's something you can do. You can produce babies that look like me. And if they are boys, they'll be as smart as I am. But if they are girl, girls, we'll realize that all they're good for is reproducing. And that's the message we have sent in this country for the last 300 years. Now, I know that women who hear me say this today are going to say that's not the way it is at my house. Maybe it isn't that way for you now. It was that way for me. When? From 1933 until 1968.
- [36:58]
Host
Well, I mean culturally that's still the undertone. Like there's even within the MAGA movement, the conservative movement, there's this huge thing of women need to get married younger and have babies and you need to be staying at home and trad wives. And I am all for women having that choice. But choice is the key because dependency is a vulnerable position to be in and it's the number one predictor of elder poverty in women. But when I grew up, that's what I was taught. So because again, I told you I grew up Christian nationalist. I was raised your, your body doesn't belong to you, it belongs to your future husband. And sexual sin is all on you whether he attacked you or not because you provoked him. And your mission is to find a good husband. Obey your husband, submit to your husband. Have as many kids as you can so that Christians can dominate the earth.
- [37:45]
Jane Elliott
As, as if, number one, that was what Jesus taught.
- [37:48]
Host
Right. And those are not, that's not like an inference. Those are direct quotes. Yes, but it was very much, it was very clear to me. And I. One of my first memories, I have three older sisters. One of my first memories is walking into the living room and my dad is teaching my sisters how to tie a tie so that they can do it for their husband. They were teenagers and I remember seeing that and I was like a little kid and I was like, that's weird. I guess. Just, that's just weird. Why can't he tie it? And it was just like. And the one thing I realized that the. I was never meant to stay in fundamentalism. When I was young. I remember the first sermon that I was able to sit in, the adult with the adults. I had graduated from child school, I was nine, and I was reading at a high school level. So they were like, we just can't deal with her. So they put me upstairs. The first sermon was, wives, submit to your husband.
- [38:39]
Jane Elliott
Uh huh.
- [38:39]
Host
And it was this, I mean, tirade about submission. And I remember sitting there as a nine year old, I'm sure my skin was red. I was just seething, just like, why should I submit to someone just because they have a penis? That doesn't make any sense. And I, and I knew that I was smarter than most of the boys I knew. And I was like, that does. I remember I went home and I went into my bedroom and I took my Bible and I chucked it across the room and I said, if that's what marriage is like, I will not get married. Like, made that decision when I was nine. And obviously I've grown up and realized that that's not all marriage is. That was just the church I grew up in. But I always had conflict with this double standard about women's value, women's sexuality, the, you know, slave relationship that they want to implement into Christian marriages. And this idea of complementarianism where they're like, oh, it's separate but equal. And I'm like, no, first of all, that comes from segregation. You should reconsider that. And I was like, second of all, if someone has all the power and all the finances and they make all the decisions and they're physically dominant and the other person isn't, those are by definition not equal.
- [39:41]
Jane Elliott
That's right.
- [39:42]
Host
And it's dangerous.
- [39:44]
Jane Elliott
And you have to realize, and you realize young that if somebody is thinking with something between his legs instead between his ears, you've got a problem.
- [39:52]
Host
Yep.
- [39:53]
Jane Elliott
And I remember the direction because you don't need somebody who thinks only in that area. And. But in Christianity, you are taught to think in that area instead of thinking between your ears. You're taught not to think. You are taught to respond and to regurgitate whatever that person standing up there in front of the picture of that Jesus that looks like nothing like what Jesus looked like. And so here you are, you have to deal with all these absolutely opposite kinds of things. He can't possibly have been an Ethiopian Jew and looked like he. We have decided he should have looked like he couldn't have been. At the Bible, it says he had kinky woolly hair and feet of bronze. Well, that isn't the way he looks in the picture behind the minister. You know that and I know that. And all those wonderful crucifixes with that white man hanging on them. You can forget about that because they. Jesus didn't look like that.
- [40:52]
Host
It's a whole lot of magical thinking, because first, it's very much. They teach you what to believe and what to think, not how to think. Because if you learn how to think, you'll get out of it really quick. That's what happened with me even going to Liberty University, learning how to. How to think.
- [41:07]
Jane Elliott
You had to give up Liberty first.
- [41:09]
Host
You took Exactly. Well, I went to a really conservative Christian boarding school in high school, so Liberty was more relaxed than the boarding school I had come from. I graduated high school when I was 16, so my dad wanted me in kind of a controlled environment. But it's. And also, there's so much magical thinking that happens in the church because they'll have all these things, you know, it's God is love. And they'll say on the surface, oh, everybody's equal. But then they'll go back to Leviticus and say, oh, homosexuality is bad. Can't have that. And I'm like, well, Leviticus also says that you can't sit on a chair where a woman has sat if she has her period. You can't wear cloth with mixed linens. It talks about, you know, keeping slaves. Like, oh, the Bible doesn't mean that. So is it literal or is it not? Are we keeping the Old Testament or are we not? You got to pick one.
- [41:55]
Jane Elliott
And. And Jesus traveled all over his part of the world with 12 men.
- [41:59]
Host
Yep. The most straight thing I can think of that's. They were best friends. They were just really good friends.
- [42:11]
Jane Elliott
Intimate friends. I just. I just. I am a. I am a practicing Christian. I'm going to keep on practicing till I get it right. I don't have it right yet, but I believe. I believe in the afterlife.
- [42:24]
Host
Yes.
- [42:25]
Jane Elliott
And I have. I have proof of it in the church next to my house.
- [42:29]
Host
Yeah.
- [42:30]
Jane Elliott
And you can. You can deny that until. But then we had a. We had a meeting there. And one of my second or third cousins was there, and he was conducting the meeting about something else. And my daughter was taking pictures. And she said, mom, you better look at this. And she showed me the picture she had taken. Behind him is a woman wearing a fluffy blue skirt, a long skirt. And she's walking. She. You can see her face and her skirt behind him as she walks behind him. That's Catherine Markham.
- [42:57]
Host
Yep.
- [42:57]
Jane Elliott
I didn't know. Yeah, there she is. It's just. It's like Mary. This isn't possible. But Mary said, well, there it is, mom, because Mary doesn't believe in this stuff. But she's taking the picture. And there's Catherine. Catherine Markham in that picture. Several years after that, we had a reunion of the people who had gone to that church in their younger years. And there was a woman there who must have been 85. And I said to her, I was sitting at the table visiting with her, and I said, do you remember a woman named Catherine Markham? She said, well, yes. I said, well, where did she live? Well, she lived right down the road. I said, how did you know her? She said, well, on Halloween, when she didn't have any candy left, she gave us dimes. I said, come with me. And I took her over.
- [43:36]
Host
A woman of economy.
- [43:39]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. I took her over to the corner with my dividing rods, and I said, catherine, do you recognize this woman? They cross. I said, do you remember, she says, that you gave her dime, that you gave the kids dimes when you didn't have any candy at Halloween. Is that right? They crossed. I said to this woman, is there anything you'd like to ask Catherine Markham? She said, well, yes. So she commenced to ask Catherine Markham things. And Catherine Markham answered yes or no to her questions. People, don't tell me that there's no afterlife. Don't tell me that death is real. You leave your bodily parts. What. What is made of clay dies. But energy is neither created nor destroyed. It is there, and it will survive. After you, your body is gone. I have seen the most remarkable things with these divining rods. And I know that people hear this, think I'm crazy. Well, I probably Am.
- [44:33]
Host
That's not a bad thing, though. Well, like my opinion, I'm like. I like a little crazy thinking in.
- [44:38]
Jane Elliott
Ways that are different from the way other people think gets me to look at things from a very different point of view. Yes, any person coming to me for any reason at all may in fact contain the mental acuity or the spirit of somebody who has gone on, but it's now come back in another form. And if that's true, then every person that I connect to, I have to treat in an equal way. Whether or not we're equal, I have to treat that person equitably until that person proves to me that they are somebody I would want to have been with in the long ago, in those other years. I believe that every one of us is somebody who's been here before. And I don't know who I am, but I'm stuck with it. But when, when I go, I hope that my husband and my father and my son are all there in one form or another. I love and I think, I think they will be. But Catherine Markham will still be in the corner of the old Baptist church and there are five men there because I've found five men and fascinating to be in that church if you aren't afraid of the hereafter or aren't afraid of another dimension. It's interesting to be in that church.
- [46:02]
Host
I love that. And I've always believed the same thing, especially when I deconstructed from the strict heaven hell paradigm. It did make sense to me that I'm like, I know from physics it is a provable law that energy is not created or destroyed. So I can rely on that. I also know that humans are energy. Obviously our physical body is matter. But there has to be more. And I believe that there's way more proof from a scientific standpoint for the idea of reincarnation, of people coming back, people staying stuck, people leaving energy imprints than there is to just say we just disappear or nothing happens. I absolutely believe in that. And I've always been a big fan of the paranormal. And I had an experience in Savannah, Georgia last year. I was in Savannah for a podcast episode. I was going to all these haunted locations. I went to the Weed Sorrel House, which is one of the most haunted houses in the city. And in the basement is where the kitchen was, but it also used the foundation area used to be the place of a British hospital, field hospital during one of the early wars in the Revolutionary War. And they said in the back of the this basement there's a hallway. There's a British soldier named John who hangs out there sometimes. And I was like, you know, I'm gonna go talk to John. I'm gonna go talk to John. It's this long hallway. There's a chair at the end. I come in and I say, john, I'm just gonna sit in your chair and hang out with you for a second. So I sit in this chair and I'm looking down this long, creepy hallway, and I get my phone out to take a picture and I hold it up and something walks up behind me and takes my hair and pushes it back behind my shoulder as I'm holding my phone. And I'm like, my hands start shaking. I was like, oh, my goodness. I think he was flirting. It was fine. I was in a short skirt, I get it. But I've had so many in person contact. And the second floor of the Weed sorrel house, I was taking a picture of this beautiful gold ornate mirror. And my group was the only group in the house. And you see this person in 1800s clothing leaning into the doorway. And I showed the picture to the tour guide and everyone on the tour. And I'm like, did you see, see anyone who was dressed this way? Did you see anyone who looks like that? And they were like, nobody that looked like that was on the grounds.
- [48:10]
Jane Elliott
Yep. She was just letting us mow the lawn on the church and at our house. And she'd come in just, mom, I don't know. Those little kids keep making faces at me from around those trees. They are there. And there's a young man that runs across our front, our deck. We build a deck, and there's a young man, a little boy that runs across that deck. I don't see him. Sarah sees it. He said, she says, he's back, mom, he's back. I say, sarah, it has just been my. My son, my grandson, 6, over 6ft tall. Joined the Marines, came back from four years in the Marines, needed a place to live. He wanted to go to college, needed a place to live. I said, you could live in the church. Okay, I will. So he moved in. Three days later, he came back over to my house and said, I'm not living in that place anymore. I'm going to find a decent place to live. I said, zach, what happened? He said, doesn't matter. I'm not gonna put up anymore. And he took off. Just. He's like, nope, 25, 20, 24, 25 years old. I thought, what in the devil went on? He told my sister, that when he was sitting on the couch watching television, somebody did this to him repeatedly. And he said he came down. The last thing that happened was he came down from the upstairs and there's a landing and then three steps down to the. To do the main. Main floor. He came down those steps and was. Got to the landing, and somebody pushed him down the last three steps.
- [49:33]
Host
Oh, they did not like him there.
- [49:34]
Jane Elliott
They didn't want him there. I think maybe he was smoking pot in the building. He was smoking pot in the building.
- [49:40]
Host
And the church people were not happy about that.
- [49:42]
Jane Elliott
They were upset. He said, I'm not putting up with that anymore. He told my sister, I could have broke. I could have broken my neck. If I hadn't been able to catch myself, I could have been in big trouble. He said, I'm not living in that room, so he won't stay there anymore. I wouldn't stay there either if I were afraid of the spirit. But if I were living in the church and I wanted to stay in the church, I wouldn't smoke pot. They let him know that this is not something we approve of.
- [50:07]
Host
This is our sacred space. Yeah, but.
- [50:09]
Jane Elliott
Yeah, this is. This is. This is our space, and you are not going to defile it with your behaviors. And so he moved out. So if you're thinking it isn't happening. I talked to the man that's on the. On the work where he got pushed, and I found out that his name is Quincy. He's been there for many years, and he intends to stay there. He's comfortable there. He and Catherine get along well, but they are there. And people who think they aren't there choose not to think that. Choose to think that when you die, you're dead. No, your body is, but your mind, your spirit keeps on. There's nothing you can do. We had some Mennonite friends who came to a thing we were doing in the church. I was talking to her children about the ghost that goes. She called him a ghost. The spirit that lives in the corner. She said, this one young mother said, I don't want my children to hear that. I said, you don't believe in ghosts? Absolutely not. I said, do you believe in the Holy Ghost? Might be some others. Oh, no, no. And her husband's sitting there at the bench going. He's like, yeah, I got a problem here. Now I've made a problem. He's. He believes in that there are spirits there because he's been there several times. She doesn't want to think that. And that's okay, you don't have to think it, but what if God stops believing in you?
- [51:32]
Host
Like you don't cease to exist because someone doesn't want to accept that you're there.
- [51:36]
Jane Elliott
Right. If you no longer exist because somebody doesn't believe that you exist, we can put you out of existence by simply ignoring your existence. And I know how that feels because that's what people have tried to do where I'm concerned. If we pretend she's wrong, we pretend she doesn't matter, then we can make it not matter. But you cannot make, somebody has said, and I can't remember who. No power on earth can stop a man with a dream or an idea whose time has come. Yes, I think the idea of one race is an idea whose time has come.
- [52:10]
Host
I think so too.
- [52:12]
Jane Elliott
And it isn't because of my dream that I'm not the man with the dream that came up with this. That man lived over 2,000 years ago. And that man's spirit is in millions of people waiting for somebody to say, wait a minute, here's a basic human truth. There is only one race and we are all members of it. And we all have, we should be and must be seen as deserving equitable treatment under the law. Now, we will never all be equal. I am not equal to anybody else on the face of the earth. I'm shorter than everybody. I'm plumper than everybody. I'm older than most people. So I will never be equal to anybody else on the face of the earth. But however, even though I am not their equal, I have the right to demand equitable treatment under the law. And I want the laws written in such a way that that equitable treatment applies to me and to every person, not just to people who look like me. Because if you, if you're not just.
- [53:12]
Host
People that agree with me, you're only.
- [53:14]
Jane Elliott
Going to apply it to people who are over 91 years old. Yeah, and you don't want to do that. But, but you see, it would be so simple if we would just practice what we preach. Yeah, but we don't.
- [53:27]
Host
We sure do not. I have, I've learned the hard way that especially with, with Americans version of Christianity, that Christ hasn't been a part of it in a long time. They took their evil and their hate and their lust for power and they put a cross necklace on it. But it has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ.
- [53:46]
Jane Elliott
We would have a hard time tolerating Jesus.
- [53:50]
Host
Yeah, he was radical, extremely radical. So was the early church to the point that they had to kind of shift how the church operated within the first hundred years after Christ's death in order to avoid more Roman persecution.
- [54:05]
Jane Elliott
And we're still shifting. We're going to keep on shifting it until we get it so that we will be comfortable. That is not going to happen. Oh, there's two pages. Is that where. Yeah, pages 145. What happens if evangelicals get everything they want? Getting everything you want, for most angelicals, means overturning Roe vs Wade, building a conservative Supreme Court, creating a Christian nation, whatever that means. Rescinding same sex marriage, and somehow turning LGBTQ people into straights. A tall order. None of these wishes, however, address racism. That's the biggest problem. It means that even when you get what you want, you can still be racist. They have to read the next page of this book, page 146. And this book has to be read by every person who thinks they know all about racism, because you don't know. You read this book and all of a sudden you realize that this melanaceous woman has lived with racism all her life. She knows exactly what she's talking about. And she has lived around evangelicals all her life. So she recognizes an evangelical who is a bitter rape, who is a confirmed racist for what they are. And you can call yourself evangelical till hell freezes over and you skate over and try to find Jesus, you ain't going to be there.
- [55:26]
Host
Yep. I completely agree. Someone told me, and I wish I could remember who it was that said it to me, but they said that the word of God will always comfort the broken and challenge the comfortable. And I always go back to that. That it will challenge your complacency and your comfort. And it always, always, always, always helps the broken and the disenfranchised and the rejected and. And the poor every time. Anything that doesn't do those two things is not the word of God. It's. It's men who have decided that they're gonna decide what God said to them.
- [56:04]
Jane Elliott
It's an interpretation based on, number one, gender.
- [56:07]
Host
Yep.
- [56:08]
Jane Elliott
And number two, your belief system, which may have nothing to do with real Christianity. And I can't judge somebody else's Christianity, but I can judge how moral they are.
- [56:21]
Host
Yes. Your actions tell me everything I need to know about what you believe.
- [56:25]
Jane Elliott
That's right. I know morality, and I know ethics. And I can tell within 15 minutes, within 5 minutes of visiting with them whether they have morals that I want to abide with or whether they have the kind of ethics that I want in my presence. And sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. But it's not up to me to judge what they are, accept that if they are totally immoral, if they make racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic remarks. I think, Wait a minute. Why would I spend time with somebody.
- [56:55]
Host
I don't want to associate with you?
- [56:56]
Jane Elliott
Yeah, why would I want that? Why would I want your admiration or your affection? This is not something I want. And that's the reason I chose my husband very carefully, because, number one, he looked like Marlon Brando.
- [57:12]
Host
Getting right ahead now she's like, excuse me for a second. I'm going to get a glass of cold water.
- [57:19]
Jane Elliott
That's good idea.
- [57:20]
Host
You know what? You know, it's important. You got to want to look at him for a real long time.
- [57:26]
Jane Elliott
Oh, I would. I wish I had been able to look at him for forever. But getting right along, we better talk about something else, because I'll become a soup sandwich again.
- [57:37]
Host
You said in an interview that Trump's first term set us back 35 years. Where do you think that we are now? And what do we face with him being in term number two?
- [57:48]
Jane Elliott
I think we are more than 35 years back.
- [57:50]
Host
I agree.
- [57:52]
Jane Elliott
From 1933 until 1945. I was born in 1933. From 1933 until 1945, I listened to my father ranting and raving about what Adolf Hitler was doing in Europe and all over Europe and wanted to do in the United States. Here I am now at 91, and I am ranting and raving about a man who is a Hitlerite and admits that he's a Hitlerite, saying the same kinds of things that Hitler did from 1933 until we conquered him in 1945. And that's what it's going to take in order to put a stop to this. It's going to take people who are willing in the armed services who are willing to say, we've got to put a stop to this, and people in Congress have to put a stop to this. Because if we continue to let him do what he plans to do, which is to follow Project 2025 always has been. Oh, yeah. Well, before it was written, this is what he wanted because he had in his bedside table, in a locked drawer, a copy of a book that contained the writings of Adolf Hitler. He has practically memorized it. He recites it on a daily basis. People need to realize that when he says he wants his soldiers, his people in the military, to act like Adolf Hitler, soldiers did, he isn't kidding.
- [59:09]
Host
He means that he Means having an SS and a Gestapo.
- [59:13]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. He wants to be a Hitler, and he thinks that's the way to go. And the man who wrote Project 25 can tell him how to do that. We need to realize that these two boys, and they are boys, make no mistake about this. And so is just dumb Vance, whatever his name is. I don't know.
- [59:29]
Host
Hillbilly Vanilli.
- [59:30]
Jane Elliott
Oh, yeah. I read the Hillbilly Elegy several years ago, and I thought, what the hell is this? What in the world is this, man? What is his problem?
- [59:38]
Host
When I got to the couch, I was like, I'm out. Nope, I'm not doing this.
- [59:41]
Jane Elliott
I don't need this. Problem is it's low IQ and. And a need to be great to live in somebody else's shadow. He's willing to do that, and he's willing to go along with something that he totally disagreed with for three years.
- [59:56]
Host
The Never Trump guy.
- [59:58]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. Until he got the opportunity to be vice president. And then he's going along, and now he is supporting him 100%. And so you see, it tells you what people will do to gain power. And that's what this is all about.
- [60:15]
Host
So, I mean, we have, like, the military and Congress, you know, standing up against both enemies, both foreign and domestic. But what do you think that we have to do as a country to turn the ship? Because obviously we're going.
- [60:29]
Jane Elliott
Get Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren what's her name?
- [60:34]
Host
Boebert.
- [60:35]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. Get them out of those positions of power because they don't know how to handle it. Get. Get people to vote in every single election there is. If it's only for the. For the kids in the school who are going to vote for the most popular person in the world that day, every election, you get a chance to vote and vote in that election and vote for the person who makes good sense.
- [60:59]
Host
Yes.
- [61:00]
Jane Elliott
Stop voting for people who are appealing to your lowest. The lowest common denominator. We have now for a president, a man who has a face that looks like a rump, a mouth that looks like an anal aperture, and when he opens it, I swear you're my new.
- [61:20]
Host
Favorite person on the planet.
- [61:22]
Jane Elliott
When he opens it, he expresses excrement. Now, it's not his fault that he looks like that. It is his.
- [61:28]
Host
Well, the McDonald's isn't helping.
- [61:31]
Jane Elliott
I have nothing against McDonald's. When my kids were little, we had enough.
- [61:35]
Host
He eats it every day.
- [61:37]
Jane Elliott
Five hamburgers for us because they were so cheap. I think they're 25 cents a piece at that time.
- [61:41]
Host
Oh, that's.
- [61:43]
Jane Elliott
So that was a treat for us because we had no money. We had four kids and no money. We had four kids in five years. And we found out what was causing that. We didn't stop what was causing that, but we did stop having children. So we had no money, but we had lots of children. So McDonald's was our savior for a while. I mean, that was. Those kids thought that was a treat. They really did.
- [62:02]
Host
But you weren't giving it to them every day as their main food source.
- [62:05]
Jane Elliott
No, no, no. That was a treat.
- [62:07]
Host
He eats a lot of McDonald's.
- [62:09]
Jane Elliott
Oh, yeah. We. If you had. If we had extra money, we can take them all to McDonald's and get him something to eat. Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't go to. I'm not going to say that. But. But at that time, that was a treat.
- [62:22]
Host
Yeah.
- [62:22]
Jane Elliott
Other. Every other meal I cooked. I. I cooked a lot when those kids were little, and until I did. Anyway. Anyway, we've got to. We got to realize that there's more to life than McDonald's.
- [62:35]
Host
Yeah.
- [62:35]
Jane Elliott
And there's more to life than having a person sitting in the White House. And that's another thing. We've got to change the name of the President's residence to the President's residence. It's time to stop calling that building the White House. I've been to Washington, D.C. there are lots of White Houses in Washington, D.C. but when you call it the White House, you give people who are just naturally racist because of the way they've been raised in this country, the idea that the only kind of people who are qualified to be in that house have to be white. I remember when Richard Nixon said to a group of reporters, I'm trying to save the White House for you white people. That was in the 50s. I said, oh, my God. Did he really say that? He really said that? Anybody who's watching this, who knows how to look up things, look it up, and you'll find out that he said that. I'm trying to save the White House for you white people. We need to change the name of that building to the President's Residence. It has a nice rhyme to. It has a nice. Nice rhythm. Nice rhyme, and it is accurate. That building is white only because it's covered with white paint. It does not mean that only white people belong in the White House because most of the people who do the work in the White House to keep the White House clean and neat and keep the inhabitants fed are white.
- [63:50]
Host
Yeah, that's. That's what's, you know, incredible to me. I mean, besides the fact that when a lot of conservatives hear dei, they think black, even though white women benefited the most from DEI initiatives.
- [64:03]
Jane Elliott
White women. Yeah, white women. Use another word there. That makes DEI a bad thing.
- [64:09]
Host
Yeah, yeah.
- [64:11]
Jane Elliott
But see, for me, DEI stands for dedication, education, inspiration. If you are dedicated to getting educated, you'll learn the truth, and you will be inspired by the truth that you learn. Yes, but if you're just taught instead of educated. I'm an educator. The word educator comes from the duck deuce, which means lead, the prefix e, which means out, the suffix ate, which means the act of the suffix, or which means one who does. An educator is one who is engaged in the act of leading people out of ignorance. Now, you can't do that if you teach that. Christopher Columbus discovered America a hundred percent. It's ridiculous. You can't discover a place where people are already living. They discovered it before you got there.
- [64:55]
Host
But as far as entire civilizations that had been there for thousands of years, like, it's preposterous.
- [65:03]
Jane Elliott
People from the African continent came to what we call North America 15,000 years ago. What we call Native Americans came from Africa 50, 15,000 years ago, just like my ancestors came from Africa 15,000 years ago. But mine moves farther and farther and farther north because people didn't want them around. Evidently, we were too noisy. Them too.
- [65:28]
Host
They're like, get out of here. Get out of here.
- [65:32]
Jane Elliott
Go farther, go farther. So I was, I'm Irish, so I'm Afro Irish. Us.
- [65:39]
Host
Yep.
- [65:40]
Jane Elliott
I'm not. I'm not afraid Irish. I'm not white. I'm Afro Irish us. That's the way it is. And if you don't like it, you have my permission to stay away from me. And people do. Which becomes really funny the minute I open my mouth. I'm on an airplane. I open my mouth and heads go.
- [66:02]
Host
People are like, wait, who is that? It's like the Jaws. The Jaws theme starts playing in the background. Oh, my God. But it's so true. Like, we have. We have created a false problem because there aren't multiple races. It's one human race. And we've created false problems in order to control people. Because even instilling the idea of the poorest white person being better than the highest person of color wasn't until after the Bacon Revolution when the aristocrats of the colonies were like, if they unite, they're going to take us over. Because the Bacon Revolution rebellion tried to do that. And so they decided, okay, well, we're going to tell the indentured servants that are white and the poor people that are white that they're better than this group over here. We're going to give them a little bit more land, a little bit more rights so they just feel a little bit better. And then we won't have to worry about these two groups uniting against us. Who are the people who are taking advantage of them?
- [67:00]
Jane Elliott
And we're right back to where we were then.
- [67:02]
Host
We are.
- [67:03]
Jane Elliott
That's exactly what Dinosaurs T. Rump says he's going to bring a bunch of South Africans who are white to this country because they are being discriminated against by people of color in South Africa.
- [67:14]
Host
Meanwhile, they're the richest people in the country.
- [67:16]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. But he doesn't realize that they aren't white. That's just a word that we have used to make ourselves have power and to make us because we are pure and good. Because we're white and all those darker.
- [67:29]
Host
Skinned people and we're bringing God to these uncivilized lands. They already have gods, bro.
- [67:38]
Jane Elliott
They were, they were here before you were in the. And you are one of their descendants. They are your ancestors, my friend. You are one of their descendants. You are not. You are not here first.
- [67:48]
Host
Yep. And it's, it's a much different conversation when you start to realize how much you have in common with every person you meet, regardless of what they look like. And the fact that it is a brotherhood. One of the biggest pieces of my sisterhood.
- [68:01]
Jane Elliott
It's a sisterhood.
- [68:03]
Host
The sisterhood.
- [68:04]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. Stop calling this a brotherhood. Because that's fair.
- [68:07]
Host
We do need to flip that.
- [68:09]
Jane Elliott
See, we have been. We have been indoctrinated with the myth of the greatness of gender.
- [68:14]
Host
Yes.
- [68:15]
Jane Elliott
As long as you're male, you know, you know it all and you have to ask God. Get. Go ahead.
- [68:21]
Host
I would love. Because listen, a woman. But one of the things that was really pivotal in my deconstruction was when I went to again college at Liberty. It was my first time interacting with black people on a large scale.
- [68:36]
Jane Elliott
Don't call them black. Call them melanaceous.
- [68:38]
Host
Melanaceous. My melanaceous people. And I love. I was like, I had been told all these things, all these stereotypes and I was working in an ice cream sundae shop because I was 16 and it was the only job I could have because it didn't sell alcohol. And I'm closing with my friend who worked with me and she's much more melanated than me. And I'm doing these scoops and I realize I have way more in common with her than all these trust fund snowballs that I live with in my dorms. Way more in common with her. And it really started to break down these pre programmed prejudices that I had been instilled with as I grew up where I was like, that's not true. And you lean. When you lean in and you're close to people and you're in proximity and you're vulnerable, all of a sudden it becomes so human and so tangible. It's impossible to hate someone from an embrace. You can't hate someone when you're holding them. And when you.
- [69:36]
Jane Elliott
Oh yes you can. Men do it all the time.
- [69:39]
Host
Oh, that's true. For me, it was impossible when I was able to hold people where they are. I could not continue to carry those prejudices. I just couldn't do it. It was too hypocritical and it was.
- [69:52]
Jane Elliott
Too evil and it makes no sense.
- [69:54]
Host
It's completely irrational.
- [69:55]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. Yeah. That's the problem with racism. Racism is a mental health problem.
- [70:00]
Host
Yeah.
- [70:01]
Jane Elliott
If you can in your mind construct something that says that somebody who is of the same ancestry as you are but has a different tint to their skin is less than you are, that is mentally unhealthy. And racism, as far as I'm concerned, is the number one mental health problem in the United States. I think there was a group that. There was a group in 1950 that met with the President. President's something on mental health in children that declared racism the number one mental health in children at that time. And I think it is worse now than it was then because we have all these very educated people supporting the myth of one, one of several races and one particularly good race. Because we all look like Jesus.
- [70:59]
Host
Quotation marks.
- [71:00]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. Well, yeah. But in fact, we all are relatives of Jesus because we all came from the same place that he did.
- [71:08]
Host
Yep.
- [71:09]
Jane Elliott
We may not be his closest relative because we couldn't stand to have him around.
- [71:14]
Host
Right. He wouldn't get invited to Thanksgiving dinner.
- [71:17]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. If, if, you know, if I invited him to my house and my neighbor's neighbor saw it, all hell would break loose because this is not. We don't have those people around us.
- [71:25]
Host
Yeah. And it's, it's been pretty terrifying to watch not just the racism ramp up to the level that it is, but the, the violent sexism that is really on the rise. It's really concerning, especially in young men. It's all about power, Power and domination. Not treating people like humans.
- [71:44]
Jane Elliott
Domination and trying to prevent the future from happening. Because it's perfectly obvious that within 30 years white people will be an American minority in the United States as they are all over the world. Unless we bring a whole lot of people from South Africa who are white to this country, which Donald Trump, Trump intends to do. And unless we insist that every woman who is of my color group have at least 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 babies so that we can keep the so called white race in the numerically, numerically dominant position. We can't do it because we aren't white. We need to get over the ideas of, the idea of the rightness of whiteness. It doesn't work. As the, as the hole in the ozone layer gets larger, more and more sunlight is going to allow, is going to be allowed into our environment. More and more of us who don't have any much melanin in our skin are going to die of melanoma, which is a skin cancer. You get from the lack of melanin in your skin and it doesn't stay in your skin, it travels throughout your body. So a whole lot of people that I enjoy greatly are gone because they were very, very pale skinned and they were pretty people, but they're pretty dead.
- [72:59]
Host
Sorry.
- [73:03]
Jane Elliott
They call it cancer because we don't want to admit that this melanoma can spread throughout our bodies. And when they identify it as melanoma cancer because of melanoma, it, it scares, it scares us into having a whole lot more children so that we may be dead, but our, our children will live on.
- [73:19]
Host
Yeah, I get to live on through my kids. Yes, because that's not selfish at all.
- [73:23]
Jane Elliott
And that's, that's not a really great thing to wish for if you're a racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic person who's anti Semitic. Having you live on through your children is not something to wish for.
- [73:34]
Host
Yeah, we don't want that. Thanks. We'll, we'll take a pass.
- [73:38]
Jane Elliott
Yeah, yeah. But, but as long as we educate, so called educate as we do, we're going to be stuck in this rut. It's time for us to start telling the truth that we're all members of the same race, we all came from the same place originally, and that every, every single human being on the face of the earth is my 30th to 50th cousin. That's the way it is now. You don't may not want to be my cousin. You have no choice. You are one of my 30th to 50th cousins. And you came from the same place originally that I did, and it wasn't Ireland.
- [74:11]
Host
True. My family's Scottish, so I resonate. We're in the same group. We also got pushed very far north.
- [74:16]
Jane Elliott
We aren't in the same group. You can't trust a Scottish. We all know that.
- [74:21]
Host
You know what? I'm Scottish. And I agree. And I agree. So for people like, who are deconstructing and wanting to make positive impact in this movement now, to start to turn the tide, what would be the top three books that you would recommend every single person in this country?
- [74:41]
Jane Elliott
Read the Myth of Race by Robert Wallace Sussman. Okay, get the Myth of Race by Robert Wald Sussman. Then get what you read. Power. The Power Worshipers. Get the Power Worshipers. And read it. So good read. Terrible, but good, Right? Oh, this one. White evangelical Christianity. But people, you've got to read Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny. If you haven't read Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny, you haven't realized what problems there are and how to solve them. After you read that, then you read his book on freedom. It is absolutely fantastic. Now you're thinking, why don't I read the Bible? That's a good idea. Go ahead and read the Bible. But you have to, number one, realize that the people who wrote it were all males. Only one. One woman wrote a book of the Bible. The rest of the Bible was written by males. And if you can't get any of those books, go to the library and sign out this copy of the National Geographic magazine for April of 2018. Everybody get this magazine and then download this map and it shows you where we all came from and when we got here. It is absolutely incredible. Download the map, have it enlarged, and then have it, whatever it is, and hang it on the wall. Frame it and hang it on the wall. People. Everybody needs to realize that people came to this country from Africa from 20,000 to 15,000 years ago.
- [76:14]
Host
Yeah.
- [76:15]
Jane Elliott
We didn't. We didn't come with. You have to look at this map and realize that we have been lied to consistently.
- [76:23]
Host
Yeah. To keep us divided against each other. So absolutely, people can take advantage of us.
- [76:28]
Jane Elliott
Divide and conquer. And it works. It has always worked and it will continue to work until you see things like, for instance, even today, Neanderthals are in most of us. Here's a picture of a Neanderthal. Nobody wants to look like this. You can think, get a picture in your mind of what some people look like today on two pages Three pages of this map of this magazine. There are pictures of all the different colored people on the face of the earth. It's just fantastic. You have to. You have to get this magazine because I can't find the pages right now, but get the National Geographic magazine for April of 2018. It's. The title is Black and White. These twin sisters make us rethink everything we know about race. These are twin sisters.
- [77:16]
Host
Wow.
- [77:17]
Jane Elliott
Yes. People think about this. They are equally human beings who have different amounts of melanin in their skin, their hair, and their eyes, but they are equally human and deserve to equitable treatment under the law. It makes sense to me.
- [77:34]
Host
This makes sense to me.
- [77:35]
Jane Elliott
Yeah. This issue of this magazine is just fantastic. I want everybody to read it. I want everybody to look at it. And I just finished reading a book written by a woman named Andy Nunn, and it's called magic in room 216. And the first couple of chapters, first few chapters are about her teaching, the experiences that she had as a teacher. Some of them are. Are just fantastic. And I had. I had a couple pages, Mark, and I vote. Okay, here's one. The idea of banning books and quote, protecting, unquote, students from learning factual truth is unacceptable in an arena where knowledge eradicates ignorance rather than promotes guilt. Teachers who understand differences are better able to find solutions that maximize productivity and achievement and minimize failure. Everybody needs to get this book and. Or just go to the. Go to the bookstore and take it off the book off the shelf and look at that page and write it down. Everybody. Or put it on your. On your hand on your telephone. Get it on your. Your little handheld computer. So the next time you start to think about. Oh, I don't think about that. Well, the idea of banning books and protecting students from learning. We must not ban books. People say, oh, the banning books is something new. No. When I was doing my student teaching in Independence, Iowa, my teacher, Hazel Grant, was an absolutely brilliant teacher. And I. And they. I was one of the first groups that were bused to Independence, Iowa, to do our. To do our. Our student teaching. And here was this wonderful woman who knew everything about teaching and everything about everything. She was absolutely brilliant. And that was during the communist scare. The communists were going to overrun this country. So there was a man in the community whose child was in Hazel Grant's classroom, who was going to do away with the communist books in the schools in Independence, Iowa. So he got permission from the school board to come into the schools and go through the books in every classroom and take out those that would teach communism. So he came to Hazel Grant's classroom, and she was the principal in the building. And he said, well, I'm going to go through your books. He said, fine, go ahead, go through them. So he and his cohorts went through all the books in her third grade classroom and piled up on top of the nice short little bookshelf, all the books that they considered communists. And he said, now, don't let these kids read any of those books. She said, yes, sir, I understand. I understand what you're saying. And she ushered them to the door. She closed the door behind and said, thank you, sir. Closed the door behind him, then turned around and said, now put those books back on the shelf and let's go to work. And that's what we did. They put books back on the shelf and we went back to work. That's what teachers and administrators have to say today. When somebody comes in and says, we're going to take these books out of your school library or out of your classroom library, teachers need to say, do you have a teaching certificate? Do you have several advanced degrees? Because if you don't, you aren't qualified to decide what these children should be reading. If you don't have that, don't come into my classroom. And if you do come into my classroom and try to take books out, I will call the police because these books belong to this school and this community. And these children's parents have paid taxes to buy things like these books and to pay my salary. Now what you're doing is stealing from the taxpayers. I can't allow that to happen. So I'm calling the police because the police are paid by taxpayers, too. Now, what do you want to do? You want to go to jail for your beliefs or you want to go someplace else?
- [81:17]
Host
You want to take that somewhere else?
- [81:19]
Jane Elliott
Yeah, go someplace and some find somebody that will listen to your nonsense. Because when you start deciding which books to take out, pretty soon there will only be three books left.
- [81:28]
Host
Yep.
- [81:29]
Jane Elliott
One of them is the Holy Bible, out of which you obviously has learned nothing but negative things.
- [81:35]
Host
Yeah.
- [81:36]
Jane Elliott
Now if you don't. If you. If you don't. If you aren't qualified to teach in this classroom, don't come in here and tell me how to do a.
- [81:43]
Host
Exactly.
- [81:44]
Jane Elliott
Yep. Teachers have to get spines.
- [81:46]
Host
I think everybody does. I've been pretty embarrassed and enraged by the cowardice and the silence of people. The Democrats, a lot of male politicians, the only politicians I've seen really stand up and rebuff, with the exception Of a few have all been women saying, no, we're not going to do that.
- [82:02]
Jane Elliott
You have to remember what everybody is angry about is the one man who said, no, I'm not going to allow this. This, this. We're not going to have a shutdown of this government. We'll have a shutdown if I go along.
- [82:13]
Host
Yeah.
- [82:13]
Jane Elliott
So we refused to go along. So now everybody's just attacking him. Charles Schuman. Yeah, Schumer. They're attacking him because he did the right thing. And eventually he'll sit down with those boys and girls who are in the House of Representatives and the Senate and explain to them that if you shut this government down, that means that this fool who has been selected to be President of the United States by people who listened to loans come, this man can take over this government completely and entirely. Is that what you want? Because.
- [82:44]
Host
Yeah, because all the doors would be shuttered. There would be nothing to hold him back.
- [82:48]
Jane Elliott
That's right. That's what you get with a shutdown. So he did the right thing. So he takes the abuse because he did the right thing. He may not get re elected, but we will remember that he did the right thing once.
- [82:59]
Host
Yeah. And what do you think? My last question for today. What is your gut instinct of what the future holds for us? What do you think's gonna happen on this trajectory? Where will we be at in 20, 30 years?
- [83:12]
Jane Elliott
Looking back 91 years, I know that eventually smart women and men are going to get together and say, we are not going to listen to those who are too young to know what they're talking about. We are going to listen to those who are a little older, but not those who will, who are too old to remember.
- [83:30]
Host
Yeah.
- [83:31]
Jane Elliott
We're going to listen to people who are from 50 to 80 years old and we're going to turn this thing around. We're going to listen to some of those young people who really seem to know what's going on and who are doing this protest. We're going to bring them into this group and we're going to construct a group that is going to say what the people, what the found, what the founding fathers put together, worked for 250 freaking years.
- [83:53]
Host
Yep.
- [83:54]
Jane Elliott
Do you think that what Donald Trump is trying to put together is going to be together in 250 years?
- [84:00]
Host
Absolutely.
- [84:01]
Jane Elliott
You know, it's not. Hitler was gone after 30 years. They need to realize that Hitler was gone less than 30 years. After less than 30 years. He, he has, he came into power in Germany in 1933. The year that I was born. And so and Franklin Roosevelt came into power in the United States the same year that I was born. Those two men came to power in their respective countries. The United States is still here.
- [84:25]
Host
Yep.
- [84:26]
Jane Elliott
As a United States, Germany has now become something other than what Hitler planned for it to be. It is not a dictatorship. It's a democracy. As far as I know. Trying to be a democracy because the United States was a model for democracy. Some of us decided that we don't want to live in a democracy. I want to live in a democracy.
- [84:48]
Host
Same.
- [84:48]
Jane Elliott
I want my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. I have all of the above to live in a democracy. I don't want them to live in an autocracy. I don't want them to live in a, a place where only the moneyed, where the Business Roundtable run the show.
- [85:04]
Host
Yeah.
- [85:04]
Jane Elliott
If you haven't read the book the System, you better get it and read it. Robert Reich wrote the book the System and it is about the Business Roundtable. It is one of the most wrenching, tearing, display discoveries and discussions of what people who are running this show are, what they want, what they're willing to do and what they're going to get away with doing because Dinosaurs T. Rump is going to help them. But they are going to deny him because he is such a fool, such a fool that they will, they will use him and he will allow them to use them and then they will abuse him because they'll have to, they will, they will appeal to his need to be complimented and loved. Yep, he doesn't compliment or love anybody else, but that's what he needs. And they'll appeal to that and they'll use him. And that's exactly what's happening in this country today. And we, we all, we need to educate people instead of indoctrinating them. We need to truly lead them out of ignorance. And if these young people get let out of ignorance, there are enough of them that they're going to appeal to their parents and grandparents to do something about this because they aren't old enough to do it yet, but they are old enough to appeal to their, to their parents and grandparents and say, can you put a stop to this, dad? Can you put a stop to this, mom, you better go and vote. I'm going to vote every time I can. And, and mom and dad, you better vote too, because this is getting really ugly for all of us.
- [86:26]
Host
Yeah, I do think, my intuition is that the, it's, it's the younger people who are going to Shift the compass.
- [86:34]
Jane Elliott
And they're going to need the help of those from 50 to 80.
- [86:38]
Host
Yes. Because I'm saying that their voices are going to influence that older group and say, hey, we're the next generation. This is. We're going to be the ones. But this is not what we want. These are the values that we hold. This is what's right, this is what's wrong. And to help drive those opinions, I.
- [86:54]
Jane Elliott
Don'T want them to follow Bernie Sanders and aoc.
- [86:57]
Host
Yeah. But the problem is there's not a lot of. Of great leadership on the left right now.
- [87:02]
Jane Elliott
Well, number one, you have to look at Chuck Schumer, and you have to listen to Chuck Schumer. You might not like what he says, you might not agree with what he says, but he is. He is in favor of the House of Representatives and the Senate doing their job.
- [87:15]
Host
Yep.
- [87:16]
Jane Elliott
He is in favor of three. Three levels of government. So that. And that's the reason the founding fathers made it. They put it together this way so that not. Not any one of those three has all the power. That's. That's what this is all about. We have to realize that and we have to be determined to perpetuate it, because it has worked. It has worked well for 250 years.
- [87:36]
Host
It's a great plan, and it needs. We need to, like, update things and modern. Modernize things and address new problems as they present. But the structure of it has been phenomenal.
- [87:46]
Jane Elliott
Because they're the same old problems.
- [87:48]
Host
Yep.
- [87:49]
Jane Elliott
Just recycled our desire for power and desire to exert power in ways that will make you comfortable, may. May make someone else uncomfortable. As long as you're comfortable, that's all that matters. No, what we want is something that will. Will afford a situation in which we will all feel equally welcome.
- [88:06]
Host
Yeah.
- [88:07]
Jane Elliott
Not equally powerful, but equally welcome and equally. Equally human.
- [88:11]
Host
Yes.
- [88:12]
Jane Elliott
But as long as you have a whole group of people who think that those who look like them aren't quite human, that's how long you will be able to use the conceit and the narcissism of those who think that only people who look like us are good. That's how long you'll be able to use them. We are being. People that call themselves white in this country today are being used to keep other people down. Folks, you aren't white. Get over it. You can't keep people down whom you think are black because they aren't black either. You're all shades of brown and you're all members of the same race. Now get the hell over it. And don't tell me you can't. You can't give it up. Yes you can.
- [88:54]
Host
Yes you can.
- [88:55]
Jane Elliott
You don't have a choice anymore. Hail stale people. You're going to have to give it up and realize that you, you weren't here first and you won't be here last because you're gonna. This climate change is going to kill you.
- [89:09]
Host
Yep.
- [89:09]
Jane Elliott
Get used to that and, and realize. You see, I have an Hispanic great grandson. I'm going to have a one who is, who is Melanie Melanatius. I'm going to have a melanaceous great grandson in a couple of months. And I'm Abs and I have a couple who are Saudi Arabian grandchildren. So I have a family that believes that we're all members of the same race and we all have the same rights in the United States of America. The right to be seen as equally human. I'm so delighted with this family and these differences. And I look around when I get, when I, when we have a family reunion, it's like, oh my God, look at this. This is, this is absolutely remarkable and beautiful and wonderful. And those young people whose skin is darker than my own are going to outlive those whose skin is lighter than my own.
- [90:05]
Host
Yep.
- [90:06]
Jane Elliott
And it isn't because of God. It's because of our ignorance about skin color and about the sun and about nature. Ignorance. We are living with self imposed ignorance. If they would read all the books that are on my and go to my website, read all the books that are listed under racism and then read white first read white evangelical racism. Then read this National Geographic magazine.
- [90:31]
Host
I made a list. I'm gonna post it in the show. Notes of the episode like, here's your books guys, here's your homework.
- [90:37]
Jane Elliott
It's a matter of self educating.
- [90:39]
Host
Yes.
- [90:40]
Jane Elliott
You have to educate yourself and you can't get it off television.
- [90:43]
Host
Yes.
- [90:44]
Jane Elliott
Burn off. I Remember when Marshall McLuhan said television will ruin your children. Turn off television, it will ruin your children's minds. And I thought, well, what's the matter with that man? And then I lived long enough to realize he was absolutely right. We have a population under 50 who are screen addicted.
- [91:02]
Host
Yes.
- [91:02]
Jane Elliott
If they didn't see it on the television, it can't be true. And if they didn't see it in their Palm Pilot, it sure can't be true. Yeah, they can change. They can change history in the palm of their hands today by what they decide to look at. That is terrifying.
- [91:18]
Host
Terrifying.
- [91:20]
Jane Elliott
We've got to get these kids. We've got to teach everybody to read. And that means teaching all the dyslexic boys to read. 20% of the. No, let me think now. 20% of those who are. It's bigger than that. Of those who are dyslexic are males. So if you have a whole bunch of males who can't read, well, they aren't going to read any of these books. They aren't going to learn what's in these books, and they're going to be easy marks for somebody like a Donald Trump who will lead them in exactly the wrong direction. And when you watch Don, when you watch people being interviewed at Trump rallies, it's like, oh, my God, what am.
- [91:56]
Host
I seeing right now?
- [91:57]
Jane Elliott
What you're seeing is the result of people who don't know how to teach the dyslexic person, particularly the males. They can't put a sentence together and they couldn't possibly write it down because they can't pronounce the words that they want to say and they can't spell them. So that means they can't read them. If we could just get that every male who is suffering from dyslexia and has never been identified, if we could just get teachers who could teach every child to read, we could do away with a whole lot of this problem. Yeah, we really could. Because if we could get them to read, they could self educate. And it's absolutely essential that we get people to self educate, because what we are learning in the schools today, particularly now that we're banning books, is not education. No, it is indoctrination.
- [92:40]
Host
Yep. Because when you inhibit free thought, you immediately skew towards indoctrination because you're deciding what can and cannot be learned, regardless of whether it's factual or complete, and when.
- [92:51]
Jane Elliott
There's only one way to learn. I was asked to speak to a group of students in a junior high, and I was waiting for them to know a high, a junior, an elementary. And I was waiting for them to get call me. And I was. They said, would you like to look at some of the classrooms? I said, sure, I'll walk around, look at some of the classrooms. Every classroom I looked at had kids sitting on tall stools looking at televisions.
- [93:15]
Host
Oh.
- [93:17]
Jane Elliott
And one of them was doing like this, waiting for his teacher to come and correct his work. And I thought, oh, my God, this is what education is about. Right now, we put you on a screen and everything you need to know is going to come off that screen. It doesn't have anything to do With. With. With history. Real history doesn't have anything to do with emotions. It's just, can you answer these questions? And I. I was. I was. So then they all came down, and these fourth. Fourth graders came and sat in front of me, and I started to speak, and I said, and first I'm going to think you teach you the listening skills, because I have a feeling after having watched what happens in your classrooms, that you know how to listen to a screen, but you don't know how to listen to a human being. Here are the listening skills. I taught them the listening skills. And those kids, those fourth graders kept on looking at me because it was like that third listening skill says, keep your eyes on the person who's looking. I got to do that. They were. It was like I was talking to a bush, but they were listening. And when I got done, they asked intelligent questions about the things that I had said. So I knew that they had heard what I was saying. You can teach without having a screen?
- [94:23]
Host
Yes.
- [94:23]
Jane Elliott
Teachers have to learn the listening skills, practice the listening skills, insist that their students practice the listening skills, and then teach them instead of putting them on that screen and let somebody else take care of it.
- [94:36]
Host
Amen. Amen.
- [94:39]
Jane Elliott
Hey, women. Hey, women.
- [94:40]
Host
Hey, women. You're right. You're right. I messed it. I missed it. Thank you so much for joining me today. This has been incredible. I nearly cried when you answered my email. I was so excited. Do you have anything to say to people like me who are really trying to right the ship? And it feels really dark and really hopeless right now. Is there anything that you would say to them?
- [95:07]
Jane Elliott
Vote more carefully for your captain.
- [95:10]
Host
Yeah.
- [95:11]
Jane Elliott
Because you cannot have as the captain of this ship somebody who knows less than the seals. They're flapping in the water around you.
- [95:25]
Host
Yeah.
- [95:26]
Jane Elliott
Vote more carefully for your captain. And that. That is what we have proven. And do not listen just because somebody looks good, just because something splits up on the shore and it's green, glitters. It looks like gold. Don't believe that it is. Do not believe somebody deserves to be the head of this head of state or captain of the ship who is only interested in money, how to get it, how to keep it, and how to pile it up. And who will only listen to somebody who has more money than he has.
- [95:58]
Host
Yeah.
- [95:58]
Jane Elliott
Be very careful about what you. What you vote for when you vote for the captain of the ship. And that's what's. That's what's going on right now. We are being headed in exactly the wrong direction because we have voted. We didn't. We didn't all vote for this man. This man did not win that election. If it hadn't been for the money that was paid to them by loanscom. And loanscom is going to do that again. And he's doing that right now with primary, with people all over the United States. He is paying them to vote for the people that will support the captain, the present captain of this ship. Yeah, that could be illegal.
- [96:34]
Host
It should be 100%.
- [96:36]
Jane Elliott
And yeah, we've got to go after the people who are taking that money. We've got to go after the person who is offering that money and we've got to send him back to where he came from. We need to send that man back to South Africa. He came to this country from South Africa by way of Canada and he lied evidently on his citizenship papers, on whatever it is he filled in.
- [96:56]
Host
Yep. And he violated his student visa, too.
- [96:58]
Jane Elliott
Violated. Has been violated the visa, people. If you violate the visa, you go. Either go back to where he came from or you can go to jail. But he has done other of those things because he has enough money that he doesn't have to. And he has. He has the so called president of this country right now in his grasp. He is controlling Mr. Trump instead of Mr. Trump controlling this country. You have to realize that. And you have to refuse to go along to get along. We have to refuse to go along to get along. We have to stand up. You have to. It's time for people in the United States. And there's another thing you have to do. Stop calling this country America. America is everything from the northernmost point of Canada to the southernmost point of South America. Every citizen of every one of those countries is an American. But we, in our ignorance, call ourselves Americans when in fact we are citizens of the United States of America. And the most important word in that title is united.
- [97:55]
Host
Yes.
- [97:56]
Jane Elliott
And the man who is the captain of this ship is trying to take away our being united. He wants us to be the divided States of America. You have to realize that. Stop calling this country America. Call it the United States of America if you don't want to do that. Call it the usa. If that's too many, too many syllables. Call it the U.S. because those two letters, us, spell us.
- [98:18]
Host
Yes.
- [98:19]
Jane Elliott
And it means us. All of us in the United States of America. Stop calling this a white country. It isn't. And it isn't a black country. It is a brown country. Every person in this, in the United States of America is a shade of brown. Every child that will be born from now on in the United States of America is a shade of brown. There are no black students. There are no white students. A group of several young women called me several years ago and said, Mrs. Elliot, we have decided that from now on, when we have to fill in a form that asks for our race, we're going to put human. I said, good. What are you going to put? What if it calls for skin color? One of them said, I'm going to put mocha. The other one said, I'm going to put chocolate. I said, good thinking. Those are skin colors.
- [99:03]
Host
They are.
- [99:04]
Jane Elliott
Is a light brown and chocolate is a dark brown. Those are good people. Go to the thesaurus. Look up the word brown. The big, the thick thesaurus. Go to the thesaurus. Look up the word brown. Synonyms for brown. There are something like 180 synonyms for Brown in the big thesaurus. Look them up. Find one that you think matches your skin color. Then go to the dictionary and look up that skin color and see how it is described and see if that describes the color of your skin. If it doesn't, choose another one until you find one that describes the color of your skin. People, instead of putting white or black for your skin color, put a skin color that matches your skin color. And don't use the palm of your hand. Get the Pantone Skin Tone Guide. Have you seen it?
- [99:47]
Host
Yes, I've seen it.
- [99:48]
Jane Elliott
Yes. Put your hand palm down on the Pantone Skin Tone Guide until you come to a color on that guide that matches the color on the back of your hand. Use that color for the color of your skin. In the future, we can change this if we choose to. We must choose to, because we have to get over white and black. We aren't white and we aren't black. Nobody is the color of that paper in front of you and nobody is the color of that pen.
- [100:16]
Host
It's true.
- [100:17]
Jane Elliott
Period. Are we done now?
- [100:20]
Host
This is amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you for being here. I'm in awe and I'm so.
- [100:28]
Jane Elliott
Everybody look up. Who does it? Torquemada. Everybody look up. Torquemada. T O R Q U E M A D A and see what a horrible, horrible, ignorant, unbelievably ugly person that was. And realize that you're basing your. Your description of yourself and other people on something he came up with.
- [100:51]
Host
Yep.
- [100:52]
Jane Elliott
And then stop doing it. You're smarter than that, people.
- [100:55]
Host
Yes, we can be. We can choose to be.
- [100:59]
Jane Elliott
Okay. That's right. We can choose to be smart.
- [101:01]
Host
Yep.
- [101:02]
Jane Elliott
Cool. Good. Good thinking.
- [101:04]
Host
Thank you so much. This has been incredible. And there we are. And I'm gonna constantly be reaching out to her from now on. I am also going to go visit the church she talked about because now I have an idea for a new episode on my other podcast, highway to Hell, which we're hopefully bringing back in the next few months. I hope that this was inspiring. I hope it was challenging for you. I hope that we all have enough courage to do what Jane did in the face of Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination, knowing she could lose her job, knowing she would get backlash, and she did for the rest of her life. I hope that we're all that brave because that's how we're really gonna make a difference and really fulfill that dream that was had all the way back during the civil rights movement. Thank you for being here. I hope that you leave inspired and a little bit more courageous than you showed up. And I'll see you next week on Flipping Table.