Jane Elliot, a teacher and now a diversity educator, is known for her “Blue eyes/Brown eyes” exercise. Deeply moved after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, she developed an approach to teach her third graders in Iowa about discrimination and racial stereotyping.
In an effort for her students to understand discrimination, she divided her class by eye color. Elliot told them that blue-eyed children were better than the brown-eyed children. Those called “superior” soon became arrogant and bossy to the other classmates. Additionally, the “superior” classmates improved on math and reading tests and the “inferior” students suffered when performing previously mastered tasks. The next day Jane Elliot switched the groups, making the brown-eyed children superior. Again, the group labeled “superior” bullied the other group and improved on test scores, demonstrating the complex effects of systemic racism.
Elliot was publicly ridiculed in her hometown of Riceville, Iowa, shunned by many teachers; her children were harassed, and her parents lost their business, but this did not stop Jane Elliot. She took the exercise around the country, teaching it to students and adults alike.
Appearing on the Tonight Show in 2020, Jimmy Fallon asked her, “What can we do to change?” Jane answered, “What can we do? We did not get educated we were indoctrinated. Get yourself educated.”
“Prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance.”
“Racism is a learned affliction and anything learned can be unlearned.”
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