Blue-Eyes Brown-Eyes: An Exercise in Understanding Prejudice
By: Lisa Spray
Tags: Self Improvement, Racism, Covid-19, Discrimination, Education

Blue-Eyes Brown-Eyes: An Exercise in Understanding Prejudice

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

For many Medium readers, the assassination of Martin Luther King remains only an event in history books. But I remember that day in 1968. As an undergraduate at the University of Arizona in Tucson, I had a job in the genetics lab there cleaning the fruit fly breeding jars and filling them with cornmeal mush for the next round of student experiments. As part of my duties, I killed the flies by putting the jars in an autoclave where the high temperatures both killed the insects and sterilized the jars.

When I heard of the assassination I felt both shocked and horrified. I admired King and his movement and wished I had the means to travel to the south to join in their protests. Learning that James Earl Ray gunned King down made me suddenly conscious of all the insect lives I had to destroy in my job. The next day I resigned from the position. Shortly after, I stopped eating meat; I maintained my vegetarian diet for many years.

Many others had similar responses. For example, Jane Elliott taught fourth grade in Riceville, Iowa. Her class had studied Dr. King as a “Hero of the Month”. The kids became very confused by the assassination and to try to answer their questions Jane Elliott devised a demonstration for them of how prejudice works and feels. Later she arranged to have the exercise filmed by an outside camera crew and repeated it.

Many years later, I worked for the largest school district in Tucson as a programmer analyst. The director, Dr. Garcia, had all of us in administrative jobs watch a shortened version of the film of children actually going through Elliott’s exercise in 1968.

Jane Elliott divided the class into two groups based on eye color. On the first day, she made the children with brown eyes the kids “on top”. She gave them extra recess time and told the entire class how good and intelligent the children with brown eyes were. Elliot praised their successes. They got to boss around the blue-eyed children and they took full advantage of that privilege.

To make identifying kids from a distance easier, the kids with blue eyes had to wear a special collar. Elliot told the class the blue-eyed kids had the negative traits of unintelligence, laziness, and they couldn’t be trusted. They could not drink directly from the drinking fountain nor have a second helping at lunch.

Those brown-eyed children really excelled, even where it seemed impossible. Dyslexic kids could suddenly spell words they had never been able to spell and read words they had never been able to read. Conversely normally bright, self-confident blue-eyed children became uncertain, timid under-achievers.

The next day the children changed roles. Eliot made the blue-eyed children those “on top” and they received preferential treatment. They got to take off their collars and put them on the brown-eyed children. Now they had their turn to be the bosses and their behavior toward their former oppressors did not differ from what they had received. Again the change in position reflected in the kid’s academic performance and their sense of self-worth.

This exercise deeply affected the children involved. For many, it changed their attitudes for life.

Just watching the video had an enormous effect on me. It made me realize how very crucial it is to treat people well, to encourage and treat them with courtesy. In short, it made me realize when you treat people in the best possible manner, as the Bible and Quran command, you enable them to become their very best and thus contribute the most to society.

From a purely selfish standpoint, it only makes sense to enable all people — regardless of their race, sex, age, religion, ethnic background, etc. — to do their very best. A productive society becomes a benefit for everyone.

In this time when social values are being examined throughout the United States and probably throughout the world, perhaps we all need to stop and remember that one of the best ways of enabling others is to give them caring and positive feedback. One of the best ways to feel fulfilled while improving our own self-image remains to help others as this Psychology Today article shows.

With all of us facing the dangers of the pandemic, reaching out to others in loving ways can make a big difference to us and those we are interacting with. Also, some positive thinking on our own part can increase our body’s resistance to the COVID-19 virus and other health issues as the Mayo Clinic and John Hopkins Medicine websites will show.