Blue Eye Brown Eye Exercise

On the first day of the experiment, the blue-eyed children, or the in-group, were told they were superior to the brown eyed children, the out-group. On top of being told they were better and smarter than the brown-eyed children, the out-group was not allowed to drink from the same fountain, play together at recess, or go back for seconds at lunch-time. The brown eyed children received less recess time, had to wait to go to lunch, and wore collars for easy recognition.

Everyone is likely to experience some form of discrimination or prejudice; as is anyone capable of acting prejudiced towards others. On April 5th, 1968, a teacher in Riceville, Iowa named Jane Elliot conducted an experiment with her third grade class that dealt with the concept of discrimination; and was documented in Peters’ 1985 ‘A Class Divided’. The exercise originally took place the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. The documentary is an eye opener to the world of racism and discrimination. Bucher (2010) describes racism as “discrimination based on the belief that one race is superior to another” (97). According to Bucher (2010) “discrimination is defined as the

In a powerful experiment we were able to see through the eyes of a kindergarten children prejudice dynamics. In a famous experience by Jane Elliot she separated her class between blue-eyed and brown-eyed students. Professor Elliot had separated her students by making one eye group inferior to the other making them have certain benefits and better treatment than the other group of students. Eventually, the students were switched the following day. This experiment have showed this group of kindergarten students how colors and discrimination affected the minority population. After this successful experiment with the kindergarten student’s professor Jane Elliot had done many other experiments using adults using the a similar technique blue-eyed

“A Class Divided”: When asked the question, “do you think you know how it feels to be judged by the color of your skin”, a few felt that they did. Initially the children were excited to participate in the blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment, until they realized they would be the people being judged. Once the teacher announced that the blue-eyed people are the “better people” than the brown-eyed children, immediately voiced their disagreement. One blue-eyed boy stated, “My dad has brown eyes and he’s not stupid.”

It was the day after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, April 5th, 1968, when third grade teacher, Jane Elliott conducted her first “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise in her classroom. Just two years later, her class project went viral, and she drew national attention when ABC broadcasted her story in a documentary, Eye of the Storm. After researching Elliott further, I discovered that her simple role playing exercise surely changed her life, and this publication kick charged her equality campaign in which she continues to advocate for today by crusading throughout North America and delivering lectures about the realities of discrimination.

In watching the video Jane Elliot specifically separated the class by eye color Blue eyed meaning that you were better smarter and appreciated more in society and brown eyed meaning you were less than, not a good person, and not as smart as a blue-eyed person. And one of students was subjective to that because one his parents was brown eyed and he didn't quite understand why was his dad being labeled as less because of his eye color. The kids quickly recognized that brown eyed people were labeled as bad people and people who are flat out bad. One of the students who was labeled as brown eye immediately felt the treatment of not be treated equally and being put down based upon his eye color.

Racism is being explored in the short video. Racial inequality has been introduced by Ms Jane Elliott through prejudice and discrimination that held against people who have different skin colour beside white in this society. Racial categorization is the process of categorizing people into different groups according to phenotypic physical features of the face and body such as skin colour, eyes colour or lip fullness (Keith, 2006). One frequently hears words ending in “ism” – such as racism, sexism, ageism and so forth are used to describe specific targets of prejudice and discrimination (Bernard & Mary, 2010). In the video, racial stereotype, prejudice and discrimination is being exercised. Students were divided into two groups which are represented by their eye colour where blue-eyed representing white people and brown-eyed representing non-white people. Brown-eyed students were designated the “superior” group and the blue-eyed students were designated the “inferior” group. The brown-eyed students were encouraged to discriminate against the blue-eyed students by convincing that they were smarter, cleaner, better, and more civilized.

If I were a participant if one of Jane Elliott’s exercises, I would have expressed a variety of emotions. I would have felt frustrated by the way she belittled us and with the rules that she enforced. She enforced rules so that the blue eyed people would fail and for the brown eyed people to succeed. I would have also felt humiliated by the way she mocked the blue eyed people. I would have felt angry with her too for treating and talking to me as iI would have benefitted from participating in a similar activity, because of the lessons that were taught in it. The most important lesson is to treat others fairly and to not be ignorant. She makes this very clear when she says that she won’t feel sympathetic towards the blue eyed people, because there are people in this world who face this kind of treatment on a day-to-day basis.

For the children, it was easy for them to believe anything they were taught because they were so young. Everything Mrs. Elliott told them they believed it and tried to live it in that moment. The blue-eyed children thought they were better and acted as if they were better. As the children stated, at the playground the blue-eyed children taunted the brown-eyed children all because of the labels that were taught to them. With the prison guards, it was a little harder for them to accept the things they were being taught. Whenever a blue-eyed person would get irritated with Jane Elliot, the would react in a defensive manner. In return, she used that against them saying that only blue-eyed people would act that way. I believe in the moment, for both groups the labels became true. Essentially, it demonstrates how something negative or positive can change a

Racist ideology is institutionalized when how people’s interactions reflects on an understanding that they share the same beliefs. However, in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the topic of racism is approached in a very unique way. The characters within the novel are subjected to internalizing a set of beliefs that are extremely fragmented. In accepting white standards of beauty, the community compromises their children’s upbringing, their economic means, and social standings. Proving furthermore that the novel has more to do with these factors than actual ethnicity at all.

Elliot wanted her students to feel. Her students learned what if felt like to be an outcast and to be treated different. One student was struggling with the transition and said “the way they treated you, you felt like you didn’t want to try to do anything” (ACD). These students started to understand how you can discriminate someone easily because they look different when actually nothing is different about them.. At the end of the experiment Mrs. Elliot asked the blue eyes group how they felt when they were wearing the collars and some students reported that “they know how they (brown eyed students) felt” (ACD). When these students were reunited fourteen years later, this experiment had a lasting effect on them. A woman tells her life experience and says “I wish I had that collar in my pocket. And say ‘wear this’ and put yourself in their place” (ACD). Because they understood how it was to be mistreated they can recognize that this behavior is wrong and find different ways to help the person that is being mistreated or even yet, prevent

Mrs. Elliot divided her all white elementary class by eye color. There was a “brown eyes” and “blue eyes” group, which made each group superior or inferior to each other. Mrs. Elliot performed the experiment, because she wanted to teach her students about racism and discrimination that was going on in the county, which was a major responded to the shooting of Martin Luther King in April 1968.Since Mrs. Elliot already divided her student by eye color. I think another way she could’ve divided her class is by hair color and

If you think that doesn't apply to you. ... You're in a rude awakening. In response to the assassination of Martin Luther King jr., 30 years ago, Jane Elliott designed the controversial blue eyes/brown eyes campaign. This is now famous, according to the participants' eye color, to refer to participants as inferior or outstanding, and to expose them to the experience of a few. Every person who touches on Jane Elliott's work, whether through lectures, seminars or video, has been dramatically

The first reversal where the brown-eyed students were the bottom group and the blue-eyed students were the top group really accentuated the differences between the groups. The brown-eyed students were violent in the sense that a brown-eyed father kicked his son and another brown-eyed student punched a blue-eyed student in the gut. Jane Elliot focused on singular instances to stereotype brown-eyed people as a whole. It only took a single example of negativity for the blue-eyed students to adopt and apply that example to brown-eyed people as a whole. Brown-eyed students were liable to steal, violent, stupid, selfish, and were deserving of punishment.

On April 5, 1968 Jane Elliott changed the lives of her third grade class. She was attempting to simply teach the children about racial prejudice, however a much greater impact was made. In her exercise called the Brown Eye Blue Eye experiment, the children in her classroom with blue eyes were given armbands to wear to signify their eye color while the brown-eyed children remained normal. Then the children were told that everyone with brown eyes was better, and that “they were cleaner and smarter.” Soon enough, the children with brown eyes were degrading the blue-eyed children for no other reason than they were told since they have brown eyes they were better.