Jane Elliott - Brown Eyes vs. Blue Eyes

Introduces prejudice through the Eliott brown vs. blue eyes footage. In it, children are divided by eye color and told that one color represents a superior person. Allows them to experience discrimination first hand. Also has footage of the kids grown up.

I'd like you to imagine you're a third grade school teacher in a small town in Iowa, Riceville Iowa.

And you're trying to teach children what discrimination is; what racism is shortly after the murder of Reverend Martin Luther King Junior.

The problem is that your kids are all white, all protestant and all come from farming and lower middle class families.

And they've grown up together, they know each other. How do you get them to feel, and experience at a personal level what discrimination is all about?

Jane Elliot was that teacher, a school teacher in Riceville Iowa back in the early seventies and she did what I think is one of the most powerful demonstrations of all time.

Not by a psychologist but by a third grade teacher.

Let's look at the power of negative expectations and the power of teachers to shape the reality of students.

"It's remarkable how small a difference among people can trigger prejudice. And how hard it is to stop prejudice once it takes hold.

In no time at all we can create a new construction of reality to define those we dislike and fear because they are different.

A provokative demonstration of the nature of prejudice took place not in a psychologists laboratory but at a school in Riceville Iowa.

Mrs Elliot: Would you like to try this?

Students: Yeh!

Mrs Elliot: Sounds like fun doesn't it. Is there anything......

Voiceover: After the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Junior in 1968 Jane Elliot a third grade teacher

decided to teach her class just what it means to experience arbitrary discrimination.

Elliot divided her class into two groups, the inferior brown eyed people and the superior blue eyed people.

Mrs Elliot: I mean the blue eyed people are the better people in this room.

Students: No

Jane Elliot: Oh yes they are! The blue eyed people are smarter than brown eyed people.

Students: No they aren't. My Dad isn't that stupid!

Mrs Elliot: Is your dad brown eyed? Student: Yeh

Mrs Elliot: You told us that he kicked you.

Student: He did.

Jane Elliot: Do you think a blue eyed father would kick his son?

Student: My dad would.

Jane Elliot: My dad's blue eyed and he's never kicked me.

Greg's dad is blue eyed and he's never kicked him. Graham's dad is blue eyed and he's never kicked him.

What colour eyes did George Washingtom have?

Students: Blue, blue.

Jane Elliot: Blue, blue. This is a fact. Blue eyed people are better than brown eyed people.

You brown eyed people are not to play with the blue eyed people on the playground because you are not as good as the blue eyed people.

Well the brown eyed people in this room today are going to wear collars so that we can tell from a distance what colour your eyes are.

So blue eyed people each come up and get a collar. You can choose someone to put this collar on.

Girl: Seemed like when we were down at the bottom everything bad was happening to us.

Boy: The way they treated you you felt like you didn't even want to try to do anything.

Girl: I feel like Mrs Elliot's was taking our best friends away from us .

(Whistle sound)

Jane Elliot: What happened at recess? Were two of you boys fighting?

Students: Yeh, Yes, Russell and John!

Mrs Elliot: What happened John?

John: Russell called me names and I hit him, hit him in the gut.

Mrs Elliot: What did he call you?

John: Brown eyes.

Mrs Elliot: Did you call him brown eyes?

(Lots of students calling out): They always call us that...Yeh they say brown eyes..Come here brown eyes....

Well they called us blue eyes.... I wasn't....Cynthia and Donna were. .. Yeh!

Mrs Elliot: What's wrong with being called brown eyes?

Student: It means that we're stupid or, well not that but....

Student: Oh that's just the same way that other people call black people niggers.

Mrs Elliot: Is that the reason you hit him John? Did it help?

Did it stop him?

Did it make you feel better inside?

Voice of Mrs Elliot: I watched what had been marvelous, cooperative, wonderful, thoughtful children turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating little third graders in a space of 15 minutes.

I think I learned more from the superior children than I did from the children who were considered inferior.

because their personaltiies changed even more than the others did.

Voiceover: 15 years later a reunion brought together the former members of Mrs Elliot's class.

Hi, How are you?

Mrs Elliot: Alright now..... Raymond why, I want to know why you were so eager to discriminate against the rest of these kids.

At the end of the day I thought the miserable little Nazi!

(Laughter) Really I just couldn't stand you.

Raymond: It felt tremendously evil! All your inhibitions were gone. And no matter if they were my friends or not any pent up hostilities or agression

that these kids had ever caused you, you had a chance to get it all out.

Student: I felt like I was king. Like I ruled them brown eyes. Like I was better than them....happy.

Woman: Boy, that day, after I went home. Talk about hating somebody. It was there.

Mrs Elliot: You hated me?

Student: Yeh, of what you were putting us through. Nobody likes to be looked down upon, nobody likes to be hated, teased or discriminated against.

And it just boggles up inside of you. You just get so mad.

Presenter: There are four things I'd like to add to this very powerful demonstration. The first is the lesson of the demonstration is the most minimal cues of difference between people-

like eye colour, or lip size, or virtually anything can be the basis of discrimination when authority adds values to one or another;

brown eyes is good, blue eyes is bad, thick lips are bad, thin lips are good. It doesn't matter.

As long as there's a discriminable difference between people, other people can impose value to make one worhtwhile and the other worthless.

The second thing is, what happened when the tables were turned, when the brown eyed kids were put in the position of superiority?

They should have practised compassion because they knew what suffering was all about, based on their eye colour.

Instead the sad message of Jane Elliot's study is kids learned about power. When they were powerful they used it against their previous tormentors.

So this is a big question. How do we teach people compassion after they have suffered and not want revenge?

Teach them reconciliation and not retaliation?

The third thing is that Mrs Elliot gave kids spelling and Math tests everyday.

Can you imagine what happened when kids were in the superior versus the inferior position?

The interesting thing is when they were in the inferior position their grades on Maths and Spelling went down immediately.

And the interesting thing was when they were top dog, when they were in the superior position their scores on Maths and Spelling went up.

So here's an interesting thing about how your intellectual ability your academic performance is influenced by your attitude towards yourself.

When you think you are superior you actually perform better.

And when you think you're inferior you actually perform worse.

The last thing is Jane Elliot is no longer a school teacher. She goes around the world having people experience the power game in corporations and colleges.

And again she uses the most minimal difference.

She says put out your tongue. Some people's tongue can curl some peoples can't curl.

Then she simply says well if your tongue can't curl you're inferior. If it can curl you're superior.

As so she teachers people how the most minimal discriminable cue can be the basis of discrimination

and the basis of using power to make other people feel worthless and to make you and your group feel superior.