Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise

The Eyes of Jane Elliott

"In 1968, Jane Elliott was an elementary-school teacher in her all-White hometown of Riceville, Iowa. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been a 'hero of the month' in Elliott's fourth-grade class, because Elliott believed that 'what he was doing was right for all of us, not just for Blacks.' When King was shot, her students wanted to know why their 'hero' had been killed. Elliott took the opportunity to discuss race with her students.

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Elliott decided to administer a racial reality check. She divided the class into two groups: the brown eyes and the blue eyes. Anyone not fitting these categories, such as those with green or hazel eyes, was an outsider, not actively participating in the exercise. Elliott told her children that brown-eyed people were superior to blue-eyed, due to the amount of the color-causing-chemical, melanin, in their blood.

She said that blue-eyed people were stupid and lazy and not to be trusted. To ensure that the eye color differentiation could be made quickly, Elliott passed out strips of cloth that fastened at the neck as collars. The brown eyes gleefully affixed the cloth-made shackles on their blue-eyed counterparts.

Elliott withdrew her blue-eyed students' basic classroom rights, such as drinking directly from the water fountain or taking a second helping at lunch. Brown-eyed kids, on the other hand, received preferential treatment. In addition to being permitted to boss around the blues, the browns were given an extended recess".

What happened - read the article ...

Horrifying in 1968 - and still a great exercise to use today.