In 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, an American teacher, Jane Elliott, carried out an experiment at a primary school in the town of Riceville, in the US state of Iowa. It became known as “Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes”. To this day, the experiment has left many truths, and much criticism, behind it.
What did teacher Jane do?
Teacher Jane split the children in her class into two groups by the colour of their eyes: a group of blue-eyed children and a group of brown-eyed children. Then she told the class that the blue-eyed children were smarter and better than the brown-eyed children.
Within a few days, teacher Jane clearly saw weakness, hesitation and a lack of self-confidence appear in the group of brown-eyed children. On the other side, the blue-eyed children grew more self-confident and saw themselves as superior.
At first, the purpose of Jane Elliott's experiment was to show the effect of racism on the human psyche. In the years that followed, it became the subject of many psychological and social studies and interpretations. This research showed that society's beliefs and judgements can have a great influence on people's personality, behaviour and self-confidence.
Here, the answer to one question matters for everyone:
Was the weakness and hesitation that appeared in the group of brown-eyed children caused by the colour of their eyes, or by their believing what teacher Jane told them?
Psychology shows clearly that the colour of the children's eyes played no basic role in the outcome of this experiment. What had the effect was the belief that was built up about them. When a person is told again and again that they are lesser, weak and not good, this message can slowly become part of how they see themselves.
Language and the Kurdish “brown-eyed children”
If we take a wider look at the situation of the Middle East, and at the particular case of the Kurdish language over the last hundred years, we can see that after the First World War, nation states were founded in the Middle East, and the lands of Kurdistan were forced apart and divided between them!!!
With this division, all the speakers of the Kurdish language were left without a nation state, at the mercy of the newly founded states. In these years, in the four states among which the lands of Kurdistan were divided, the policy of assimilation and the banning of the Kurdish language, in different ways, had the very worst effect on the lives of Kurds.
In Turkey, until the 1970s, speaking and writing in Kurdish in social and official life met with bans; at some times and under some conditions, using the Kurdish language was harshly punished, obstructed and banned. In Iran too, Kurdish has to this day not become a main language of official state education. In Syria, until the changes of 2011, Kurds faced a policy of denial and deprivation of rights for many years. In Iraq, the situation of the Kurdish language, especially in the Kurdistan Region, was at many times different from the other three parts in its official status and in education.
In the end, all these policies did not only affect the Kurdish language; they also affected people's identity, history, culture and self-confidence.
In other words, for more than a hundred years Kurdish children have been given messages like these, in different ways:
“Kurdish is not a language for life!”
“Kurdish is only for talking!”
“Kurdish is inferior!”
“Kurdish is useless!”
“No one understands Kurdish”
“You won't get anywhere with Kurdish”
…and so on.
So, in these hundred years, as a result of all these savage attacks on the Kurdish language, how many of our children have become “brown-eyed children”, weak and hesitant about their mother tongue?
- Who knows how many people and how many families Kurdish has lost?
- Who knows how many Kurds have lost their mother tongue?
- Who knows how many Kurdish children have lost faith in their own language because of the constant messages they were given?
- Who knows how many strongholds and defences Kurdish has lost?
Yes, all these forms of hostility and hardship against the Kurdish language have appeared over the last hundred years under the influence of the policy of assimilation.
Beyond a hundred years
For the details and features of this picture to show more clearly, we must look at a wider circle. We must not stop at the last hundred years only, but go a little further back, to the fall of the Sasanian state, across the whole history of the Kurdish language and culture.
Throughout history, many Kurdish works and writings have been burned and lost, and manuscripts have been destroyed. The process of cultural and linguistic withering imposed on the Kurds began 1,393 years ago with the annihilation of the Kurdish alphabet, and it has continued in different ways. Also, with the spread of the ruling alphabets and languages, the conditions for writing in Kurdish were annihilated.
Besides these, all the wars, occupations, deportations and policies of assimilation the Middle East has seen have left a deep mark on the Kurdish language.
But despite all these efforts and obstacles, the Kurdish language is still here; it has flourished and carried on.
This language has not only survived; every day its speakers build it anew. Now, more than ever, it is gathering itself and wants to heal its roots and its dignity, which have been wounded throughout history.
A language whose roots lie deep in the Zagros, Taurus and Amanus mountains does not easily lose its roots. Even if weak personalities appear among its speakers, that does not mean the language is weak. It may only be the result of long years of domination, bans and assimilation.
Name, identity and knowing oneself
The late Mîr Celadet Bedirxan says:
“Ignorance is not knowing oneself; whoever does not know himself cannot make himself properly known.”
This saying holds a deep critique of name, identity, language, domination and the colonisation of people's minds.
It is clear that one of the main reasons for the weakening of the Kurdish character may be that Kurds cannot know themselves well and cannot show their identity with confidence.
Because over the years, domination has managed to distance Kurds from their language, their history and their culture, to put the ruling language in their mouths, and to make the values of domination their values.
That is why people sometimes cannot ask themselves with confidence:
- Who am I?
- What is my language?
- What is my culture?
- What is my history?
- What do I protect?
- What do I want? … and so on.
Language is not only a tool for speaking
Language is not only a tool for speaking. Language is the tool for thinking, for feeling and for seeing the world.
Here we must make an important distinction: learning a new language is not a bad thing in itself. A person can learn many languages and benefit from them. Speaking many languages is a great wealth.
The problem is when the ruling language is forced on top of the mother tongue, through school, the official language, written history, law, the press and social values, and a person feels that to get ahead they must leave their own language and identity behind.
When this message carries on through the generations, some beliefs can easily take shape in a child's mind:
- My language is not important!
- My history is not important!
- My culture is backward!
- I must think like the rulers to get ahead!
If this feeling carries on through the generations, domination is no longer just a force outside people; it can become something people carry inside themselves, and the strongest domination is the one that becomes part of the mind and self-belief of the dominated.
Kurds!
Kurds, I hope this is clear to you too, and that you can now better see how the long years of domination can affect people's language and identity.
This time, let us look at a truth close to home.
A hundred years after our mother tongue became official in Başûr, can it be that in one class, out of twenty-six pupils, thirteen are named Mihemed?
This is not just a question about counting.
It is a question that asks us to think about language, identity, our history, the politics of naming, knowing our own values, and the influence of domination on the minds of generations.
Because the message of domination does not settle in us through an open ban, but through everyday choices, through school, through names, through language, and through values we take on without even noticing.