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In her words

A Teacher Held a Famous Racism Exercise in 1968. She’s Still at It.

The day after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Jane Elliott carried out the “Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” exercise in her classroom. Now, people are returning to her work.

By Alisha Haridasani Gupta

“It makes me really angry that I’ve been saying these things for 52 years.”

— Jane Elliott, a schoolteacher turned anti-racism educator

[In Her Words is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox .]

As protests against racism started sweeping across America and rest of the world, clips of Jane Elliott , a schoolteacher turned anti-racism educator, began circulating on social media.

Perhaps you’ve seen them.

In one grainy clip from 2001 , Ms. Elliott, with her signature round glasses and clipped white hair, gets into such a heated argument with a white female college student during an educational exercise about racism that the uncomfortable and distraught woman starts crying and storms out of the classroom.

“You just exercised a freedom that none of these people of color have,” Ms. Elliott tells the student, sternly. “When these people of color get tired of racism, they can’t just walk out.”

Or maybe you’ve seen the 2018 video of Ms. Elliott in a round-table discussion on racism with the actress and producer Jada Pinkett Smith, Ms. Pinkett Smith’s daughter, Willow, and Ms. Pinkett Smith’s mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris .

“I’m not a white woman. I’m a faded Black person,” Ms. Elliott says, stunning the hosts. “My people moved far from the Equator, and that’s the only reason my skin is lighter.”

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Blue Eyes Brown Eyes – Jane Elliott

“Keep me from judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.” This is a Sioux saying. You’ve probably heard different versions of it. This is the phrase that inspired one of the most well-known “experiments” in education. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise is now known as the inspiration for diversity training in the workplace, making Jane Elliott one of the most influential educators in recent American history.

What Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment?

In 1968, schoolteacher Jane Elliott decided to divide her classroom into students with blue eyes and students with brown eyes. The experiment, known as Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, is regarded as an eye-opening way for children to learn about racism and discrimination.

What Was the Purpose of the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment?

The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, Elliott had a talk with her students about diversity and racism. She asked her students, who were all white, whether or not they knew what it felt like to be judged by the color of their skin. Even though some of the children said yes, Elliott pushed back. She asked them if they would like to experience what it felt like to be in a person of color’s shoes. The children said yes, and the exercise began.

Why Did Jane Elliott Choose Eye Color To Divide Her Students?

The first thing that Jane Elliott did was divide the children into groups: those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. This was intentional. “One of the ways Hitler decided who went into the gas chamber was eye color,” Elliott said in a later speech. “If you had a good German name, but you had brown eyes, they threw you into the gas chamber because they thought you might be a Jewish person who was trying to pass. They killed hundreds of thousands of people based on eye color alone, that’s the reason I used eye color for my determining factor that day.”

How Did The Experiment Work?

Elliott divided the class into children with blue eyes and children with brown eyes. On the first day, she told the children with blue eyes they were “superior": smarter and more well-behaved than the children with brown eyes. Children with brown eyes were forced to wear armbands that made it easy for people to see that they had brown eyes. (In later versions of the exercise, children in the “inferior” group were given collars to wear.)

Throughout the day, Elliott continued to give the children with blue eyes special treatment. Blue-eyed children got five extra minutes of recess. If brown-eyed children made a mistake, Elliott would call out the mistake and attribute it to the student’s brown eyes.

The next day, Elliott reversed the roles. The brown-eyed children could take off their armbands and give them to the blue-eyed children, who were now taught that they were “inferior” to the brown-eyed children. And the exercise continued in a similar fashion to how it was executed the day before.

Results of the Experiment

It didn’t take long for the children to turn on each other. Kids “on top” would tease the children who were deemed as the inferior group. The kids in the “bottom” group became timider and kept to themselves. Things even got violent at recess. Within a few hours of starting the exercise, Elliott noticed big differences in the children’s behavior and how they treated each other. She noticed that student relationships had changed; even if students were friendly outside of the exercise, they treated each other with arrogance or bossiness once the “roles” were assigned.

When Elliott conducted the exercise the next year, she added something extra to collect data. She gave all of the students simple spelling and math tests two weeks before the exercise, on the days of the exercise, and after the exercise.

Elliot said that when the children were given the test on the same day that they were in the “superior” group, they tended to get the highest scores. Students in the “inferior” groups were more likely to get a worse score. If you have ever heard of the self-fulfilling prophecy , these results may not come as a surprise.

Initial Reaction to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise

Why are we still talking about this experiment over 50 years later?

The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise received national attention shortly after it ended. Elliott asked her students to write about their experiences for the local newspaper. The story was then picked up by the Associated Press. Elliott was even brought on The Tonight Show to talk about her experiences.

Not everyone appreciated Elliott’s exercise. In fact, most of the initial response was negative. Elliott’s coworkers avoided her after her appearance on The Tonight Show. They gossiped about her in the hallway. One even wrote a lipstick message with racial slurs.

Was The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment Ethical?

Many critics that the children were too young to understand the exercise. One caller complained that white children would not be able to handle the exercise and would be seriously damaged by the exercise.

Researchers later concluded that there was evidence that the students became less prejudiced after the study and that it was inconclusive as to whether or not the potential harm outweighed the benefits of the exercise.

These initial criticisms didn’t stop Elliott. She continued to conduct the exercise with her third graders. In 1970, a documentary about the exercise was released. Watch it online right now ! The documentary has become a popular teaching tool among teachers, business owners, and even employees at correctional facilities.

That same year, Elliott was invited to the White House Conference on Children and Youth to conduct an exercise on adult educators.

Lasting Impact of Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment

Fourteen years later, the students featured in The Eye of the Storm reunited and discussed their experiences with Elliott. Many of them noted that when they hear prejudice and discrimination from others, they “wish they could whip out those collars” and give them the experience they had as third graders. This meeting, along with other clips of the exercise’s impact on education, is featured in a PBS documentary called A Class Divided. 

Even though the response to the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise was initially negative, it made Jane Elliott a leading figure in diversity training. She left teaching in the mid-80s to speak publicly about the experience and the impact of prejudice and racism.

Anti-Racism Training in the 21st Century

In 2001, Jane Elliott recorded  The Angry Eye,  in which she revised and updated her experiment. This time, the participants weren't a bunch of elementary school children - they were young adults. From the moment the experiment begins, Jane Elliott uses a mean tone to speak to the participants. She says it's because racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and ethnocentrism are mean and nasty.

The blue-eyed participants faced discrimination for two and a half hours. In explaining the experiment rules to the brown-eyed contestants, she addresses the people of color in the room. She asks them if they have ever faced treatment like the type that blue-eyed people would experience in the following two and a half hours. One student answers, "since the day I was born." Throughout the entire experiment, Elliott leads frank conversations about race and discrimination. Sadly, these conversations are still relevant today. They were also relevant in the 1950s when Elliott first began this work.

In the documentary, she said that she conducted the original blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment to make a positive change. In 2001, she was still trying to make a change. You can contribute to that positive change by watching the documentary . It is quite powerful to watch. At points, you are likely to feel uncomfortable. In the most uncomfortable moments, Elliott reminds the students of violent acts caused by racism or homophobia.

Jane Elliot Quotes 

Jane Elliot’s work and experiences have made her an authority on education and anti-racism. The following are some of her most insightful quotes on these issues. 

On the Power of Words

“ Words are the most powerful weapon devised by humankind. We use them to divide and destroy people.”

On White Privilege

“ White people’s number one freedom , in the United States of America, is the freedom to be totally ignorant of those who are other than white. We don’t have to learn about those who are other than white. And our number two freedom is the freedom to deny that we’re ignorant.”

On Understanding The Different Ways We Treat Other Races

“ I want every white person in this room who would be happy to be treated as this society in general treats our citizens, our black citizens, if you, as a white person, would be happy to receive the same treatment that our black citizens do in this society, please stand. You didn’t understand the directions. If you white folks want to be treated the way blacks are in this society, stand. Nobody’s standing here. That says very plainly that you know what’s happening, you know you don’t want it for you. I want to know why you’re so willing to accept it or to allow it to happen for others.” 

On Conversations With Other Teachers

" The first reaction I get from teachers , who see this film or from hearing, - hear me discuss what I do say to me "How can you do that to these little children? How can put those little children through that exercise for a day?" And they seem unable to relate the sympathy that they're feeling for these little white children for a day to what happens to children of color in this society for a lifetime or to the fact that they are doing this to children based on skin color every day. And I'm only doing this as an exercise that every child knows is an exercise and every child knows is going to end at the end of the day."

On The Origins of Racism

“We learn to be racist, therefore we can learn not to be racist. Racism is not genetical. It has everything to do with power."

Where Is Jane Elliott Now?

To this day, at the age of 86, Jane Elliott continues this work. She has made statements about the increase in hate crimes and racism in recent years. The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be relevant. The idea of white privilege is closely tied to Elliott’s initial question to her students. Did they know what it was like to be discriminated against?

While controversial, the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes exercise continues to be one of the most well-known and praised learning exercises in the world of ​ educational psychology . The students initially involved wished that everyone could participate in an exercise like this. How do you think the world would change if everyone experienced the perils and setbacks that come with prejudice and discrimination?

Related posts:

• Outgroup Bias (Definition + Examples)
• Discrimination Stimulus
• Superior and Inferior Colliculi
• Stanley Milgram (Psychologist Biography)
• Philip Zimbardo (Biography + Experiments)

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• Social Psychology

Blue Eyes and Brown Eyes: The Jane Elliott Experiment

A second look at the blue-eyes , brown-eyes experiment that taught third-graders about racism

Professor of Journalism, University of Iowa

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Stephen G. Bloom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Iowa provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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The killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, was a seismic event , a turning point that compelled many Americans to do something and do it with urgency. Many educators responded by holding mandatory workshops on institutional racism and implicit bias , reforming teaching methods and lesson plans and searching for ways to amplify undersung voices.

As a journalism professor and author of a book on race that spans more than 50 years, I’ve watched these developments with great concern. We’ve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was also an event that spurred educators to action, motivating one teacher to try out a bold experiment touted to reduce racism.

The experiment took the nation by storm.

The day after King’s murder, Jane Elliott , a white third-grade teacher in rural Riceville, Iowa, sought to make her students feel the brutality of racism. Elliott separated her all-white class of students into two groups : blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children.

On the first day, the blue-eyed students were informed that they were genetically inferior to the brown-eyed students. Elliott instructed the blue-eyed kids not to play on the jungle gym or swings. They wouldn’t be allowed second helpings for lunch. They’d have to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain.

The blue-eyed children were told not to do their homework because, even if they answered all the questions, they’d probably forget to bring the assignment back to class. That’s just the way blue-eyed kids were, Elliott told the students.

On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the children’s roles.

After the local newspaper published a story on Elliott and the experiment, she was flown to New York to appear on May 31, 1968, on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, where she extolled the experiment’s effectiveness in cluing in her 8-year-old white students on what it was like to be Black in America.

A darker side

But Elliott’s experiment had a more sinister impact. To most people, it seemed to suggest that racism could be reduced, even eliminated, by a one- or two-day exercise. It seemed to evince that all white people had to do to learn about racism was restrain themselves from an impulse to engage in made-up cruelty. They needed not acknowledge their privilege or reflect on it. They didn’t need to engage with a single Black person.

But in reality, I found in researching for my book “Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” that the experiment was a sadistic exhibition of power and authority – levers controlled by Elliott. Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race.

It was about cruelty and shaming.

Subsequent research designed to gauge the efficacy of Elliott’s attempt at reducing prejudice showed that many participants were shocked by the experiment, but it did nothing to address or explain the root causes of racism .

The roots of racism – and why it continues unabated in America and other nations – are complicated and gnarled. They are steeped in centuries of economic deprivation and cultural appropriation . The nonstop parade of sickening events such as the murder of George Floyd surely is not going to be abated by a quickie experiment led by a white person for the alleged benefit of other whites – as was the case with the blue-eyed, brown eyed experiment.

Sought-after diversity trainer

Nevertheless, Elliott became as famous as a teacher could become in America.

The 1970s and 1980s were ripe for diversity education in the private and public sectors, and Elliott would try out the experiment at workshops on tens of thousands of participants, not just in the U.S. and Canada, but in Europe, the Middle East and Australia. She traveled to corporations, banks, prisons, schools and military bases.

Thousands of educators across the United States folded the experiment into their curriculums. She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities.

She appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” five times.

Unsettling insults

Elliott turned into America’s mother of diversity training .

The anti-racism sessions Elliott led were intense. To get her points across, Elliott hurled insults at workshop participants, particularly those who were white and had blue eyes. For many, the experiment went horribly awry.

In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. At first, she cooperated with me. But when she discovered that I was asking pointed questions of scores of her former students, as well as others subjected to the experiment, she made an about-face and said she no longer would cooperate with me. She has since refused to answer any of my inquiries.

Scores of others did participate. I interviewed Julie Pasicznyk, who had been working for US West, a giant telecommunications company in Minneapolis. She was hesitant to enroll in Elliott’s workshop but was told that if she wanted to succeed as a manager, she’d have to attend. Pasicznyk joined 75 other employees for a training session in the company’s suburban Denver headquarters in the late 1980s.

“Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me ‘Barbie,’” Pasicznyk told me. “That’s how it started, and that’s how it went all day long. She had never met me, and she accused me in front of everyone of using my sexuality to get ahead.”

“Barbie” had to have a Ken, so Elliott picked from the audience a tall, handsome man and accused him of doing the same things with his female subordinates, Pasicznyk said. Elliott went after “Ken” and “Barbie” all day long, drilling, accusing, ridiculing them, to make the point that whites make baseless judgments about Blacks all the time, Pasicznyk said.

Elliott championed the experiment as an “inoculation against racism.”

[ The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. Sign up for Politics Weekly .]

Questioning authority

The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. They embraced the experiment’s reductive message, as well as its promised potential, thereby keeping the implausible rationale of Elliott’s crusade alive and well for decades, however flawed and racist it really was.

Perhaps because the outcome seemed so optimistic and comforting, coverage of Elliott and the experiment’s alleged curative powers cropped up everywhere. Elliott was featured on nearly every national news show in America for decades.

Elliott’s bullying rejoinder to any nonbeliever was to say that however much pain a white person felt after one or two days of made-up discrimination was nothing when compared to what Blacks endure daily.

Back when she introduced the experiment to her Iowa students more than five decades ago, at least one student had the audacity to challenge Elliott’s premise, according to those who were in the classroom at the time.

When she separated the class by eye color and announced that blue-eyed children were superior, Paul Bodensteiner objected at every turn.

“It’s not true!” he challenged.

Undeterred, Elliott tried to appeal to Paul’s self-interest. “You should be happy! You have the right color eyes!”

But Paul, one of eight siblings and the son of a dairy farmer, didn’t buy Elliott’s mollification. “It’s not true and it’s not fair no matter what you say!” he responded.

I often think about Paul Bodensteiner. How can we teach kids to be more like him? Is it even possible today?

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Why Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Racism Exercise Is So Powerful

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For the past 52 years, teacher and diversity trainer Jane Elliott has been constantly cuffing people about the head — figuratively speaking — on the subject of racism. It's not pretty when the straight-talking Midwesterner launches into her from-the-heart harangue on the evils of racial discrimination. It can be uncomfortable, even — squirm-in-your-seat, stare-at-your-shoes uncomfortable — when she subjects someone to the very same exercise she first unleashed on third graders more than a half-century ago, designed to expose racist thinking. Some think her method can get downright mean .

But, again: The subject is racism. Nothing about it is pretty.

"You think that's traumatizing?" Elliott says of her in-your-face educational methods, which have been alternately vilified and celebrated through the years. "Try living that way for a lifetime."

Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes Exercise

Education on racism, challenges to ending racism.

Elliott came to prominence when, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr . in 1968, she took her classroom of all-white third graders in Riceville, Iowa, and decided to teach them what it was like to face discrimination. She separated the kids into two groups — those with brown eyes and those with blue — and proceeded to proclaim the brown eyes the "superior" group. She allowed the group extra privileges (more time at recess, seats in the front of the room). They were told they were cleaner. Smarter. More talented.

How the children reacted to this newfound pecking order was startling. The brown-eyed group immediately began to wield their dominance. The blue-eyeds almost immediately slipped into the role of subordinates. Anger flared. Disputes popped up.

After switching roles a few days later, which gave both sides of the classroom a taste of being the "lesser" group, the exercise ended. Many parents, after reading about what happened in Elliott's classroom through student essays printed in the local paper, complained. A month or so later, Johnny Carson invited Elliott to appear on his late-night talk show. She became a national story.

Many praised her efforts at opening her students' eyes. But not everybody. From a 2005 story in Smithsonian Magazine :

Elliott taught for years before she decided to take her anti-racism lesson out of the classroom and into corporate America. She's also led the exercise for the U.S. Department of Education and other governmental groups. She's appeared before numerous church and school assemblies. She often faces uncomfortable, sometimes angry, reactions.

She was on Oprah Winfrey's TV show several times. In June 2020, she appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon . Her goal, as it has been for the past 52 years, is education. It's the best weapon against racism, she says.

But good education about racism and race is hard to find.

"Because the educators believe the same thing that they were taught, and they were taught the same thing that I was, which is that there are three or four different races and you can tell what a man's intelligence is by the color of his skin or the shape of his head," says Elliott from her home in Iowa. "You can't lead people out of ignorance if you're still teaching that Columbus discovered America and we came here to civilize these savages.

"We need to teach the three Rs of Rights, Respect and Responsibility," she says, barely taking a breath. "If teachers would respect the rights of those students to learn the truth, and be held responsible for seeing that they present them with the truth, we could kill racism in two generations. There's not a doubt in my mind that that could be done."

For all of her life, Elliott, 87, has seen America grapple with racism. She's marked major mileposts in the struggle over the past 50 or so years: the Civil Rights movement and the assassination of King in the '60s. The race riots in Miami's Liberty City in 1980 and in Los Angeles after the Rodney King beating in 1992.

Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 (the killing of Michael Brown). Baltimore (Freddy Brown) and Charleston, South Carolina, (a church massacre) in 2015. There are many others.

But the problem she has been relentlessly attacking, Elliott says, goes far beyond the occasional race-based flareup. For people of color in the U.S., facing down racism is an everyday fight. Every minute of every day. It's exhausting.

"It's only been going on with me for 52 years," Elliott says. "I know black women who have been doing this for 89 years, and their mothers did and their grandmothers did and their great-grandmothers did. And their daughters and their granddaughters and their great-granddaughters are going to have to do it unless we get off our polyunsaturated fatty acids and do something about this.

"I get paid to talk about it. They aren't even allowed to talk about it."

One of the biggest hurdles in educating people about racism in the United States, Elliott says, is that most everyone knows it exists and knows that it's harmful, but few are motivated to change it. She has stood in front of classes and asked who among the white people in the room would want to switch places with a Black person. No one ever volunteers.

But in 2020, after a lifetime of trying to teach people that humans are one race, that all human life springs from Africa, and that the separation of humans into races has no biological basis and is used only for various (often nefarious) societal reasons, Elliott sees some small signs of promise, maybe a faint sign of movement.

"I think the killing of George Floyd forced people of the pale-faced variety to recognize that the things that Black people have been describing as happening to them every day were finally real for us. Finally," she says. "It was in their face, and they finally had to admit that they have been denying, or ignoring, or justifying what has happened to Black males all these years."

But in the next breath, Elliott cautions that recognizing the problem is only the first step. Correcting it still must be done. And with the current racial tensions in the United States, exacerbated (she believes) by the current president, things could get even worse.

"'Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.' And we are repeating. We are repeating," she says. "I'm seeing this happen, I watch the news, and I go downtown, and oh my god, they're replicating the blue eyes, brown eyes exercise in the national sphere. I can't believe it."

Still, Elliott is nothing if not persistent. She will continue to educate "for the next 50 years," she says. She will push her mantra of " one race ." And she says, she will urge people to get out and vote this November in the hope of electing leaders who will attack racism, as she has, head on.

"There'll be hope after the November election," she says. "That's the only hope we have right now."

The biggest words on Elliott's website are the top headline: One Race . The science behind the simple words is clear. According to the National Human Genome Research Institute, your genome — the body's blueprint that contains all of your DNA — is 99.9 percent the same as every human around you.

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Lesson of a Lifetime

Her bold experiment to teach Iowa third graders about racial prejudice divided townspeople and thrust her onto the national stage

Stephen G. Bloom

On the morning of april 5, 1968, a Friday, Steven Armstrong stepped into Jane Elliott's third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa. "Hey, Mrs. Elliott," Steven yelled as he slung his books on his desk.

"They shot that King yesterday. Why'd they shoot that King?" All 28 children found their desks, and Elliott said she had something special for them to do, to begin to understand the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the day before. "How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?" she asked the children, who were white. "It would be hard to know, wouldn't it, unless we actually experienced discrimination ourselves. Would you like to find out?"

A chorus of "Yeahs" went up, and so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. Now, almost four decades later, Elliott's experiment still matters—to the grown children with whom she experimented, to the people of Riceville, population 840, who all but ran her out of town, and to thousands of people around the world who have also participated in an exercise based on the experiment. (She prefers the term "exercise.") It is sometimes cited as a landmark of social science. The textbook publisher McGraw-Hill has listed her on a timeline of key educators, along with Confucius, Plato, Aristotle, Horace Mann, Booker T. Washington, Maria Montessori and 23 others. Yet what Elliott did continues to stir controversy. One scholar asserts that it is "Orwellian" and teaches whites "self-contempt." A columnist at a Denver newspaper called it "evil."

That spring morning 37 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. Elliott pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear one. "The browneyed people are the better people in this room," Elliott began. "They are cleaner and they are smarter."

She knew that the children weren't going to buy her pitch unless she came up with a reason, and the more scientific to these Space Age children of the 1960s, the better. "Eye color, hair color and skin color are caused by a chemical," Elliott went on, writing MELANIN on the blackboard. Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. The more melanin, the darker the person's eyes—and the smarter the person. "Brown-eyed people have more of that chemical in their eyes, so brown-eyed people are better than those with blue eyes," Elliott said. "Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. You give them something nice and they just wreck it." She could feel a chasm forming between the two groups of students.

"Do blue-eyed people remember what they've been taught?" Elliott asked.

"No!" the brown-eyed kids said.

Elliott rattled off the rules for the day, saying blue-eyed kids had to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. "Why?" one girl asked.

"Because we might catch something," a brown-eyed boy said. Everyone looked at Mrs. Elliott. She nodded. As the morning wore on, brown-eyed kids berated their blue-eyed classmates. "Well, what do you expect from him, Mrs. Elliott," a brown-eyed student said as a blue-eyed student got an arithmetic problem wrong. "He's a bluey!"

Then, the inevitable: "Hey, Mrs. Elliott, how come you're the teacher if you've got blue eyes?" a brown-eyed boy asked. Before she could answer, another boy piped up: "If she didn't have blue eyes, she'd be the principal or the superintendent."

At lunchtime, Elliott hurried to the teachers' lounge. She described to her colleagues what she'd done, remarking how several of her slower kids with brown eyes had transformed themselves into confident leaders of the class. Withdrawn brown-eyed kids were suddenly outgoing, some beaming with the widest smiles she had ever seen on them. She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. The answer, in a word, was nothing.

Back in the classroom, Elliott's experiment had taken on a life of its own. A smart blue-eyed girl who had never had problems with multiplication tables started making mistakes. She slumped. At recess, three brown-eyed girls ganged up on her. "You better apologize to us for getting in our way because we're better than you are," one of the brownies said. The blue-eyed girl apologized.

On Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, and the brown-eyed kids were told how shifty, dumb and lazy they were . Later, it would occur to Elliott that the blueys were much less nasty than the brown-eyed kids had been, perhaps because the blue-eyed kids had felt the sting of being ostracized and didn't want to inflict it on their former tormentors.

When the exercise ended, some of the kids hugged, some cried. Elliott reminded them that the reason for the lesson was the King assassination, and she asked them to write down what they had learned. Typical of their responses was that of Debbie Hughes, who reported that "the people in Mrs. Elliott's room who had brown eyes got to discriminate against the people who had blue eyes. I have brown eyes. I felt like hitting them if I wanted to. I got to have five minutes extra of recess." The next day when the tables were turned, "I felt like quitting school. . . . I felt mad. That's what it feels like when you're discriminated against."

Elliott shared the essays with her mother, who showed them to the editor of the weekly Riceville Recorder . He printed them under the headline "How Discrimination Feels." The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was "dumbfounded" by the exercise's effectiveness. "I think these children walked in a colored child's moccasins for a day," she was quoted as saying.

That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. "Would you like to come on the show?" he asked.

Elliott flew to the NBC studio in New York City. On the "Tonight Show" Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott's rural roots. "I understand this is the first time you've flown?" Carson asked, grinning.

"On an airplane, it is," Elliott said to appreciative laughter from the studio audience. She chatted about the experiment, and before she knew it was whisked off the stage.

Hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliott's work appalled them. "How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children," one said. "Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage."

Elliott replied, "Why are we so worried about the fragile egos of white children who experience a couple of hours of made-up racism one day when blacks experience real racism every day of their lives?"

The people of riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. Looking back, I think part of the problem was that, like the residents of other small midwestern towns I've covered, many in Riceville felt that calling attention to oneself was poor manners, and that Elliott had shone a bright light not just on herself but on Riceville; people all over the United States would think Riceville was full of bigots. Some residents were furious.

When Elliott walked into the teachers' lounge the next Monday, several teachers got up and walked out. When she went downtown to do errands, she heard whispers. She and her husband, Darald Elliott, then a grocer, have four children, and they, too, felt a backlash. Their 12-year-old daughter, Mary, came home from school one day in tears, sobbing that her sixth-grade classmates had surrounded her in the school hallway and taunted her by saying her mother would soon be sleeping with black men. Brian, the Elliotts' oldest son, got beaten up at school, and Jane called the ringleader's

mother. "Your son got what he deserved," the woman said. When Sarah, the Elliotts' oldest daughter, went to the girls' bathroom in junior high, she came out of a stall to see a message scrawled in red lipstick on the mirror: "Nigger lover."

Elliott is nothing if not stubborn. She would conduct the exercise for the nine more years she taught the third grade, and the next eight years she taught seventh and eighth graders before giving up teaching in Riceville, in 1985, largely to conduct the eye-color exercise for groups outside the school. In 1970, she demonstrated it for educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth. ABC broadcast a documentary about her work. She has led training sessions at General Electric, Exxon, AT&T, IBM and other corporations, and has lectured to the IRS, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of Education and the Postal Service. She has spoken at more than 350 colleges and universities. She has appeared on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" five times.

The fourth of five children, Elliott was born on her family's farm in Riceville in 1933, and was delivered by her Irish-American father himself. She was 10 before the farmhouse had running water and electricity. She attended a oneroom rural schoolhouse.Today, at 72, Elliott, who has short white hair, a penetrating gaze and no-nonsense demeanor, shows no signs of slowing. She and Darald split their time between a converted schoolhouse in Osage, Iowa, a town 18 miles from Riceville, and a home near Riverside, California.

Elliott's friends and family say she's tenacious, and has always had a reformer's zeal. "She was an excellent school teacher, but she has a way about her," says 90-year-old Riceville native Patricia Bodenham, who has known Elliott since Jane was a baby. "She stirs people up."

Vision and tenacity may get results, but they don't always endear a person to her neighbors. "Mention two words—Jane Elliott—and you get a flood of emotions from people," says Jim Cross, the Riceville Recorder 's editor these days. "You can see the look on their faces. It brings up immediate anger and hatred."

When I met Elliott in 2003, she hadn't been back to Riceville in 12 years. We walked into the principal's office at RicevilleElementary School, Elliott's old haunt. The secretary on duty looked up, startled, as if she had just seen a ghost. "We want to see Room No. 10," Elliott said. It was typical of Elliott's blunt style—no "Good morning," no small talk. The secretary said the south side of the building was closed, something about waxing the hallways. "We just want to peek in," I volunteered. "We'll just be a couple of minutes."

Absolutely not. "This here is Jane Elliott," I said. "She taught in this school for 18 years." "I know who she is."

We backed out. I was stunned. Elliott was not. "They can't forget me," she said, "and because of who they are, they can't forgive me."

We stopped on Woodlawn Avenue, and a woman in her mid-40s approached us on the sidewalk. "That you, Ms. Elliott?"

Jane shielded her eyes from the morning sun. "Malinda? Malinda Whisenhunt?"

"Ms. Elliott, how are you?"

The two hugged, and Whisenhunt had tears streaming down her cheeks. Now 45, she had been in Elliott's third grade class in 1969. "Let me look at you," Elliott said. "You know, sweetheart, you haven't changed one bit. You've still got that same sweet smile. And you'll always have it."

"I've never forgotten the exercise," Whisenhunt volunteered. "It changed my life. Not a day goes by without me thinking about it, Ms. Elliott. When my grandchildren are old enough, I'd give anything if you'd try the exercise out on them. Would you? Could you?"

Tears formed in the corners of Elliott's eyes.

The corn grows so fast in northern Iowa—from seedling to seven-foot-high stalk in 12 weeks—that it crackles. In the early morning, dew and fog cover the acres of gently swaying stalks that surround Riceville the way water surrounds an island. The tallest structure in Riceville is the water tower. The nearest traffic light is 20 miles away. The Hangout Bar & Grill, the Riceville Pharmacy and ATouch of Dutch, a restaurant owned by Mennonites, line Main Street. In a grassy front yard down the block is a hand-lettered sign: "Glads for Sale, 3 for $1." Folks leave their cars unlocked, keys in the ignition. Locals say that drivers don't signal when they turn because everyone knows where everyone else is going.

Most Riceville residents seem to have an opinion of Elliott, whether or not they've met her. "It's the same thing over and over again," Cross says. "It's Riceville 30 years ago. Some people feel we can't move on when you have her out there hawking her 30-year-old experiment. It's the Jane Elliott machine."

Walt Gabelmann, 83, was Riceville's mayor for 18 years beginning in 1966. "She could get kids to do anything she wanted them to," he says of Elliott. "She got carried away by this possession she developed over human beings."

A former teacher, Ruth Setka, 79, said she was perhaps the only teacher who would still talk to Elliott. "I think third grade was too young for what she did. Junior high, maybe. Little children don't like uproar in the classroom. And what she did caused an uproar. Everyone's tired of her. I'm tired of hearing about her and her experiment and how everyone here is a racist. That's not true. Let's just move on."

Steve Harnack, 62, served as the elementary school principal beginning in 1977. "I don't think this community was ready for what she did," he said. "Maybe the way to sell the exercise would have been to invite the parents in, to talk about what she'd be doing. You must get the parents first."

Dean Weaver, 70, superintendent of Riceville schools from 1972 to 1979, said, "She'd just go ahead and do things. She was a local girl and the other teachers were intimidated by her success. Jane would get invited to go to Timbuktu to give a speech. That got the other teachers angry."

For years scholars have evaluated Elliott's exercise, seeking to determine if it reduces racial prejudice in participants or poses a psychological risk to them. The results are mixed. Two education professors in England, Ivor F. Goodson and Pat Sikes, suggest that Elliott's experiment was unethical because the participants weren't informed of its real purpose beforehand. Alan Charles Kors, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, says Elliott's diversity training is "Orwellian" and singled her out as "the Torquemada of thought reform." Kors writes that Elliott's exercise taught "blood-guilt and self-contempt to whites," adding that "in her view, nothing has changed in America since the collapse of Reconstruction." In a similar vein, Linda Seebach, a conservative columnist for the Rocky Mountain News , wrote in 2004 that Elliott was a "disgrace" and described her exercise as "sadistic," adding, "You would think that any normal person would realize that she had done an evil thing. But not Elliott. She repeated the abuse with subsequent classes, and finally turned it into a fully commercial enterprise."

Others have praised Elliott's exercise. In Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Things , educational psychologist Michele Borda says it "teaches our children to counter stereotypes before they become full-fledged, lasting prejudices and to recognize that every human being has the right to be treated with respect." Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist at George WashingtonUniversity, says the exercise helps develop character and empathy. And StanfordUniversity psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo writes in his 1979 textbook, Psychology and Life , that Elliott's "remarkable" experiment tried to show "how easily prejudiced attitudes may be formed and how arbitrary and illogical they can be." Zimbardo—creator of the also controversial 1971 Stanford Prisoner Experiment, which was stopped after college student volunteers acting as "guards" humiliated students acting as "prisoners"—says Elliott's exercise is "more compelling than many done by professional psychologists."

Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. "You have to put the exercise in the context of the rest of the year. Yes, that day was tough. Yes, the children felt angry, hurt, betrayed. But they returned to a better place—unlike a child of color, who gets abused every day, and never has the ability to find him or herself in a nurturing classroom environment." As for the criticism that the exercise encourages children to distrust authority figures—the teacher lies, then recants the lies and maintains they were justified because of a greater good—she says she worked hard to rebuild her students' trust. The exercise is "an inoculation against racism," she says. "We give our children shots to inoculate them against polio and smallpox, to protect them against the realities in the future. There are risks to those inoculations, too, but we determine that those risks are worth taking."

Elliott says the role of a teacher is to enhance students' moral development. "That's what I tried to teach, and that's what drove the other teachers crazy. School ought to be about developing character, but most teachers won't touch that with a ten-foot pole."

Elliott and I were sitting at her dining room table. The smell of the crops and loam and topsoil and manure wafted though the open door. Outside, rows of corn stretched to the horizon. "There's a sense of renewal here that I've never seen anywhere else," Elliott says.

It occurs to me that for a teacher, the arrival of new students at the start of each school year has a lot in common with the return of crops each summer.

Elliott continues, "Just when you think that the fertile soil can sprout no more, another season comes round, and you see another year of bountiful crops, tall and straight. It makes you proud."

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A Class Divided

March 26, 1985 / 53m

Season 1985: Episode 9

The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its enduring power 30 years later.

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Dividing by Color: The Impact of the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment by Jane Elliott

By amelia sinclair, this article is divided into the following sections:.

The Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment, conducted by educator Jane Elliott in 1968, profoundly influenced our understanding of prejudice and discrimination. This pioneering exercise aimed to simulate the effects of racism by dividing participants based on an arbitrary characteristic—eye color.

By examining the methodology, findings, and implications of the experiment, we can gain crucial insights into the dynamics of discrimination, the psychology of prejudice, and the power of experiential learning.

Methodology and Design

Jane Elliott designed the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment to demonstrate the arbitrary and irrational nature of racial discrimination. Conducted initially with her third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa, the experiment involved dividing the students into two groups based on their eye color: blue-eyed and brown-eyed.

On the first day, Elliott designated the blue-eyed children as superior, granting them privileges and encouraging them to discriminate against the brown-eyed children. The latter were subjected to various forms of mistreatment, such as sitting at the back of the classroom and wearing collars to signify their lower status.

The next day, Elliott reversed the roles, designating the brown-eyed children as superior and the blue-eyed children as inferior. This role reversal allowed all students to experience both sides of discrimination and privilege within a controlled environment. Elliott observed the interactions and behaviors of the children throughout the experiment, noting changes in their attitudes, performance, and self-esteem.

This experimental design allowed Elliott to simulate the effects of systemic racism and explore the impact of arbitrary discrimination on individuals’ behavior and self-perception.

Key Findings

The results of the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment were both revealing and transformative for educational psychology and social justice. Elliott found that the children quickly adopted the prejudiced behaviors associated with their designated status. Those labeled as superior exhibited increased confidence, performed better academically, and engaged in discriminatory behavior towards their peers. Conversely, those labeled as inferior displayed lower self-esteem, poorer academic performance, and heightened anxiety and distress.

These findings highlighted the powerful influence of social conditioning and authority on individuals’ attitudes and behaviors. The experiment demonstrated that even arbitrary distinctions could create deep-seated prejudice and discrimination, leading to significant psychological and emotional consequences. It underscored the idea that discrimination is learned behavior and that societal structures and authority figures play a crucial role in perpetuating biases.

The Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment provided compelling evidence that prejudice and discrimination are deeply embedded in social dynamics and can be easily manipulated through authority and social conditioning. It emphasized the need for critical awareness and education to combat these destructive behaviors.

Psychological Mechanisms and Implications

The experiment illuminated several psychological mechanisms underlying prejudice and discrimination. One key factor is the role of authority and social conditioning, where individuals adopt behaviors and attitudes endorsed by authority figures and societal norms. In the test, Elliott’s authoritative role as a teacher significantly influenced the children’s acceptance and enactment of discriminatory behavior.

Another important mechanism is the concept of in-group and out-group dynamics, where individuals develop strong affiliations with their perceived group while harboring negative attitudes towards those outside the group. In the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment, the arbitrary division based on eye color created a sense of in-group cohesion and out-group hostility, mirroring the dynamics of racial discrimination in broader society.

These insights have profound implications for understanding the dynamics of prejudice and discrimination. The findings emphasize the importance of addressing societal structures and authority figures that perpetuate bias and promoting inclusive and equitable environments. They also highlight the potential for experiential learning to challenge and change discriminatory attitudes and behaviors.

Ethical Considerations

While the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment provided valuable insights into prejudice and discrimination, it also raised ethical considerations related to the potential psychological impact on participants. The experiment involved subjecting children to simulated discrimination and mistreatment, raising concerns about the potential distress and long-term effects of the exercise.

Modern ethical standards prioritize minimizing harm and ensuring the welfare of research participants. Researchers must obtain informed consent, provide thorough debriefing, and ensure that any induced behaviors do not have adverse long-term effects. The ethical considerations surrounding the Blue Eyes Experiment have contributed to the development of stricter guidelines to protect participants while advancing scientific knowledge.

Broader Societal Impact

The insights gained from the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment have significant implications for various fields, including education, social policy, and diversity training. Understanding the dynamics of prejudice and discrimination can inform strategies to promote inclusivity, equity, and social justice.

In education, recognizing the psychological impact of discrimination underscores the need for curricula and teaching methods that challenge biases and promote empathy and understanding. Educators can use this knowledge to create inclusive learning environments that celebrate diversity and foster positive relationships among students.

In social policy, the findings highlight the importance of addressing systemic discrimination and promoting policies that support equality and inclusion. Policymakers can use this knowledge to create initiatives and programs that combat prejudice, promote diversity, and ensure equal opportunities for all individuals.

In diversity training, the insights from the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment emphasize the potential for experiential learning to challenge and change discriminatory attitudes. Organizations can use this knowledge to develop training programs that raise awareness about bias, encourage self-reflection, and promote inclusive behaviors.

Theoretical Contributions

The Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment has made significant contributions to psychological theories, particularly in understanding the impact of social conditioning and authority on prejudice and discrimination. It provided empirical support for the concept of in-group and out-group dynamics and highlighted the role of societal structures in shaping individuals’ attitudes and behaviors.

The research also contributed to the broader discourse on social psychology, emphasizing the importance of creating supportive and inclusive environments that promote equality and challenge discriminatory practices. By elucidating the mechanisms underlying prejudice and discrimination, the Blue Eyes Experiment has informed theoretical frameworks and research on social identity, authority, and the impact of discrimination.

The Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment conducted by Jane Elliott remains a cornerstone in the study of prejudice and discrimination. Through innovative design and rigorous methodology, the experiment revealed the profound psychological and emotional impact of arbitrary discrimination, challenging societal norms and contributing to pivotal social justice efforts.

As we reflect on the legacy of the Blue Eyes Experiment, its lessons continue to resonate in various fields, from education to social policy to diversity training. The research highlights the importance of addressing and challenging discriminatory practices and social conditioning to promote inclusivity and equality. It underscores the significance of thoughtful and ethical approaches to studying and addressing the complexities of prejudice and discrimination.

The enduring relevance of the Blue Eyes Experiment attests to its significance in the ever- evolving field of psychology . Its contributions to our understanding of prejudice and the impact of discrimination provide valuable guidance for creating conditions that promote positive social change and equal opportunities for all individuals. Ultimately, Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment serves as a powerful reminder of the intricate interplay between social dynamics, authority, and discrimination.

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Jane Elliot’s famous classroom experiment: How eye color helped her students to understand the effects of discrimination

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• In an effort to demonstrate the effects of discrimination, third-grade teacher Jane Elliott separated her students into two groups: blue eyes and brown eyes.
• First, the students with brown eyes were told that they were superior and given privileges like extra time at recess and seconds at lunch.
• Elliott observed that the brown-eyed group started to boss the blue-eyed group around and also showed an improvement in academic performance.
• Then, the students with blue eyes were declared superior; while the effects were less intense, the blue-eyed group followed suit and also bullied their “inferior” classmates.
• When the experiment was over, Elliott’s students were relieved and ultimately concluded that nobody should be discriminated against based on their appearance.
• Elliott went on to replicate this exercise with future classes as well as other groups outside of the classroom.

Jane Elliott, a former third-grade schoolteacher, was inspired to conduct her “blue eyes/brown eyes” exercise when one of her students asked why Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. In an effort to explain discrimination to her class, Elliott divided the kids into two exclusive groups: blue eyes and brown eyes. From there, she successfully showed her students what it felt like to be discriminated against and made history in the process.

The Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed Experiment: Investigation

On the first day of the experiment, she declared the brown-eyed group superior and gave them extra privileges like seconds at lunch, extra recess time, and access to the new school playground. Additionally, the brown-eyed students got to sit in the front of the class, while the blue-eyed kids were forced to sit in the back. Finally, the brown-eyed children were also encouraged to play only with their fellow brown-eyed classmates, and the two groups drank from different water fountains.

Initially, the brown-eyed group resisted the idea that they were better than the blue-eyed group. However, after Elliott told the children that their melanin levels made them smarter, the kids accepted this information and became arrogant—they were no longer friendly to their blue-eyed classmates. And, interestingly enough, their grades improved and they excelled in the classroom. The blue-eyed kids, on the other hand, performed more poorly on their tests and isolated themselves at recess. In sum, the brown-eyed kids’ academic performance soared while the blue-eyed kids sank. The next day, Elliott reversed the roles. And while the blue-eyed children also taunted their “inferior” classmates, their actions were less intense. Finally, the experiment concluded, much to the relief of Elliott’s students, blue-eyed and brown-eyed alike.

What Were the Implications of This Exercise?

The children were so relieved when the experiment ended that some embraced one another and others cried. They ultimately agreed that people should not be judged based on appearances. However, this doesn’t mean the power didn’t get to their heads in the moment.

When the experiment was over, Elliott asked the students to write down what they had learned. One student revealed : “The people in Mrs. Elliott’s room who had brown eyes got to discriminate against the people who had blue eyes. I have brown eyes. I felt like hitting them if I wanted to. I got to have five minutes extra of recess.” When she wasn’t part of the “superior” group, however, she said that she felt angry and wanted to quit school. “That’s what it feels like when you’re discriminated against,” she concluded.

Why Is This Experiment Important?

It’s difficult to understand what it’s like to walk in somebody else’s shoes until you actually put those shoes on your own two feet. Elliott’s exercise did exactly that. Knowing she couldn’t accurately depict what it was like to be discriminated against through your normal lesson plan or discussion, she led the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise. She went on to replicate this exercise in future classes as well as outside of the classroom after she retired from teaching in 1985, helping countless individuals better understand the serious effects of discrimination .

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Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: On Race and Jane Elliott’s Famous Experiment on Prejudice

by Stephen G. Bloom

I t started with a phone call. “Is this Stephen Bloom?” an emphatic voice asked out of the blue one spring morning seventeen years ago. Without waiting for a response, the caller sprinted ahead. “Well, this is Jane Elliott and I want to talk to you!” I had never spoken with or met Elliott before and I had no idea why she’d be calling me. She seemed insistent and determined. The only thing I knew about Elliott was a provocative classroom experiment credited to her.

For a decade, Elliott, a teacher in a small, rural Iowa town, had separated her third-grade students, for two days, into two groups—those with blue eyes and those with brown eyes. On the first day, she told the blue-eyed children that they were genetically inferior to the brown-eyed children. She instructed the blue-eyed kids that they wouldn’t be permitted to play on the jungle gym or swings. They’d have to use paper cups if they wanted to drink from the water fountain. They wouldn’t be allowed second lunch helpings. The next day, Elliott switched the students’ roles. The brown-eyed kids would now be considered inferior. The experiment was Elliott’s way of showing eight- and nine-year-old White children what it was like to be Black in America. Starting in the mid-1980s and for the next thirty-five years, Elliott would increase the experiment’s voltage by trying it out on adults in thousands of workshops worldwide.

I asked Elliott why she had called me, and without hesitation, she responded, “Because I want you to write a book about me.” Elliott’s moxie piqued my curiosity, and as soon as I got off the phone, I set out to learn more.

Years before the Black Lives Matter movement or the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in the summer of 2020, Elliott, a White woman from out-of-the-way Iowa, had transformed herself into an international authority on all issues of racism and bias. An award-winning network TV documentary had aired about her, followed by a starring role at a headline- sparking White House conference on education. By 1984, Elliott had left her public school teacher’s job in Riceville, Iowa (population: 806), sixteen miles from the Wisconsin state line, and had taken the blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment on the road. She tried it on tens of thousands of adults, in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. She traveled to conferences and corporate workshops.

She took the experiment to prisons, schools, and military bases. She appeared on Oprah five times. Elliott became a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities. In the process, she had turned herself into America’s mother of diversity training.

Elliott was so successful at what she did that she was granted membership in the historic pantheon of the West’s most revered educators: Plato, Aristotle, Horace Mann, Booker T. Washington, John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Jean Piaget, and Paulo Freire. In 2004, the American publishing giant, McGraw Hill, created a multipanel poster suitable for classroom display that included Elliott along with the other venerated thinkers and teachers. To me, Elliott’s separation of students based on their eye color seemed like a risky experiment that raised all kinds of ethical issues. In fact, as I was to learn, the experiment had been inspired by Nazis, as Elliott would be the first to admit. She had lied to impressionable children who trusted her. She had told them that half of the class was less intelligent because of their eye color, because of their genetics. The experiment became so real that fistfights erupted on the Riceville Elementary School playground. That seemed bad enough. But Elliott did nothing to stop the fights. She encouraged them, based on the children’s newly granted superiority or inferiority. That was part of duping the children into thinking that the experiment was real.

Elliott had constructed a gut-wrenching, true-life nightmare in order to make an indelible point that would stay with her students for the rest of their lives. In essence, she tried to induce a dose of racism into the minds of the third graders.

It all began the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, when Jane Elliott asked her all-White third-grade students “How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl? It would be hard to know, wouldn’t it, unless we actually experienced discrimination ourselves. Would you like to find out?”

A spontaneous cheer arose from the children. YAAAAAAAAY! And so began one of the most astonishing exercises ever conducted in an American classroom. That spring morning 50 years ago, the blue-eyed children were set apart from the children with brown or green eyes. “It might be interesting to judge people by the color of their eyes,” Elliott teased. “Would you like to try?” Elliott then pulled out green construction paper armbands and asked each of the blue-eyed kids to wear one. “The browneyed people are the better people in this room,” Elliott began. “They are cleaner and they are smarter.”

“They are not,” one blue-eyed boy said under his breath from the group in the back. “Oh, yes, they are!” Elliott said, her eyes open wide. She wagged her index finger at the blue-eyed boy with the audacity to question her. “Brown-eyed people are more intelligent than blue-eyed people. It’s about time you knew the truth. You’re old enough to know this.”

Elliott issued more directives. “All you brown-eyed children, push your desks to the front of the room.” The children looked puzzled. “You heard me. Push them to the front. You’re the smarter kids. That’s where you belong!” The comment didn’t seem to register with the children, so Elliott repeated it. “Go ahead,” she told the brown-eyed group. “You ought to be sitting up front. Blue-eyed children, push your desks to the back. As far away as you can!”

She knew that the children weren’t going to buy her pitch unless she came up with a reason, and the more scientific to these Space Age children of the 1960s, the better. “Eye color, hair color and skin color are caused by a chemical,” Elliott went on, writing MELANIN on the blackboard. Melanin, she said, is what causes intelligence. The more melanin, the darker the person’s eyes—and the smarter the person. “Brown-eyed people have more of that chemical in their eyes, so brown-eyed people are better than those with blue eyes,” Elliott said. “Blue-eyed people sit around and do nothing. You give them something nice and they just wreck it.” She could feel a chasm forming between the two groups of students.

“Do blue-eyed people remember what they’ve been taught?” Elliott asked. “No!” the brown-eyed kids said. Elliott rattled off the rules for the day, saying blue-eyed kids had to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain. “Why?” one girl asked. “Because we might catch something,” a brown-eyed boy said. Everyone looked at Mrs. Elliott. She nodded. As the morning wore on, brown-eyed kids berated their blue-eyed classmates. “Well, what do you expect from him, Mrs. Elliott,” a brown-eyed student said as a blue-eyed student got an arithmetic problem wrong. “He’s a bluey!”

Then, the inevitable: “Hey, Mrs. Elliott, how come you’re the teacher if you’ve got blue eyes?” a browneyed boy asked. Just before Elliott could answer, brown-eyed Steven Knode jumped in. “If she didn’t have ’em blue eyes, she’d be the principal!” Elliott couldn’t help but grin, at least to herself, not just for Steven’s insight, but because Mr. Brandmill, the principal, did, in fact, have brown eyes.

Next, she informed the children that no one from the blue-eyed group would be allowed on the playground equipment, because, she said, “They’re careless. Everyone knows that. They might break something.” Elliott went further, instructing the brown-eyed children not to allow any of the blue-eyed kids to play with them—even if they were friends. “Brown-eyed children need to play only with brown-eyed children. Blue-eyed children, you play among yourselves. There will be no exceptions. Does everyone understand?” “Yes, Mrs. Elliott.” Elliott issued more rules. The blue-eyed children would have to wait for the brown-eyed students to finish before being allowed to eat lunch. For recess, the brown-eyed children would get five more minutes. “Do you understand, children? Have I made myself clear?” Yes, Mrs. Elliott!

For the rest of the morning, Elliott was unrelenting. While on the playground, brown-eyed Bruce Fox would later recall, “Mrs. Elliott told a boy who was getting bullied that the next time that happens, ‘You smack ’em in the nose.’ She put her fingers together in a fist to show how it ought to be done.” If blueeyed students were playing jump rope or kickball, Fox remembered, Elliott urged the brown-eyed kids, “You take it away from them! That’s your right! Do it! ” A brown-eyed student, Debra Anderson, recalled, “One of my friends had blue eyes, and I couldn’t play with her. I kinda hung out by myself and played on the swings and the monkey bars. I felt sick.”

At lunchtime, Elliott hurried to the teachers’ lounge. She described to her colleagues what she’d done, remarking how several of her slower kids with brown eyes had transformed themselves into confident leaders of the class. Withdrawn browneyed kids were suddenly outgoing, some beaming with the widest smiles she had ever seen on them. She asked the other teachers what they were doing to bring news of the King assassination into their classrooms. The answer, in a word, was nothing.

Back in the classroom, a smart, tall, blue-eyed girl by the name of Carol Anderson, who never had problems with arithmetic, started making all kinds of mistakes when Elliott called on her. When Carol walked across the room, her shoulders slumped and she dragged her feet. Carol had always had a ramrod-straight posture, but since the morning, she had turned into a different person. Anyone could see that all the confidence that had once defined her had disappeared. During recess in the schoolyard, Carol, flushed and red in the face, came running to Elliott, sobbing. Three brown-eyed girls had ganged up on her, and one of them had hit her, warning, “You better apologize to us for getting in our way because we’re better than you are! Mrs. Elliott said so!”

On Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, and the brown-eyed kids were told how shifty, dumb and lazy they were . Later, it would occur to Elliott that the blue-eyed kids were much less nasty than the browneyed kids had been, perhaps because the blue-eyed kids had felt the sting of being ostracized and didn’t want to inflict it on their former tormentors.

When the exercise ended, some of the kids hugged, some cried. Elliott reminded them that the reason for the lesson was the King assassination, and she asked them to write down what they had learned. Typical of their responses was that of Debbie Hughes, who reported that “the people in Mrs. Elliott’s room who had brown eyes got to discriminate against the people who had blue eyes. I have brown eyes. I felt like hitting them if I wanted to. I got to have five minutes extra of recess.” The next day when the tables were turned, “I felt like quitting school…. I felt mad. That’s what it feels like when you’re discriminated against.”

Elliott shared the essays with her mother, who showed them to the editor of the weekly Riceville Recorder . He printed them under the headline “How Discrimination Feels.” The Associated Press followed up, quoting Elliott as saying she was “dumbfounded” by the exercise’s effectiveness. “I think these children walked in a colored child’s moccasins for a day,” she was quoted as saying. That might have been the end of it, but a month later, Elliott says, Johnny Carson called her. Not an assistant, a producer, or a long-distance operator. It was Carson himself. Before Elliott could catch her breath, Carson announced, “We’d like you to come on the show and talk about the experiment you did on the kids in your class, the one separating the blue-eyed kids from the brown-eyed kids.”

Carson’s invitation to Elliott to appear on the show had been an experiment itself. A year earlier, Carson had told author Alex Haley for a Playboy interview that he sympathized with Black protesters. In a restrained, allholds- barred interview, he allowed, “It all comes down to just one basic word: justice —the same justice for everyone — in housing, in education, in employment and, most difficult of all—in human relations. And we’re not going to accomplish that until all of us, Black and White, begin to temper our passion with compassion.”

Elliott flew to the NBC studio in New York City. On the Tonight Show Carson broke the ice by spoofing Elliott’s rural roots. “I understand this is the first time you’ve flown?” Carson asked, grinning. “On an airplane, it is,” Elliott said to appreciative laughter from the studio audience. She chatted about the experiment, and before she knew it was whisked off the stage.

Elliott’s message on Tonight Show No. 1442 came across blunt and unfiltered. Blacks in America were treated as second-class citizens and Whites didn’t have a clue about it. And even if they did, the last thing Whites were about to do was reshuffle the stacked deck Blacks had been dealt. Elliott’s solution was to teach children, kids as young as eight years old, the damage that Whites imparted every day to Blacks. And the best approach was to follow Lloyd Jennison’s “Indian” maxim: to walk a mile in someone else’s moccasins.

Hundreds of viewers wrote letters saying Elliott’s work appalled them. “How dare you try this cruel experiment out on White children,” one said. “Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but White children, there’s no way they could possibly understand it. It’s cruel to White children and will cause them great psychological damage.” Elliott replied, “Why are we so worried about the fragile egos of White children who experience a couple of hours of made-up racism one day when Blacks experience real racism every day of their lives?”

The people of Riceville did not exactly welcome Elliott home from New York with a hayride. Looking back, I think part of the problem was that, like the residents of other small midwestern towns I’ve covered, many in Riceville felt that calling attention to oneself was poor manners and that Elliott had shone a bright light not just on herself but on Riceville; people all over the United States would think Riceville was full of bigots. Some residents were furious.

Through persistence, diligence, and perhaps worst of all, in the eyes of Riceville, sheer ambition, Elliott had catapulted herself to immortality. Regarded, respected, revered. Outside Riceville, she was a visionary, a combination of Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, and maybe even Joan of Arc. Inside, she was a con artist. Elliott hated the values that some Riceville parents had instilled in their children. Elliott seemed to know what these young children would grow up to become—unless she imprinted her wisdom on their squishy, developing brains. Elliott’s mission was to administer a mind-altering social-experiment inoculation, even though neither the kids nor their parents had asked for such a vaccination.

Elliott is nothing if not stubborn. She would conduct the exercise for the nine more years she taught the third grade, and the next eight years she taught seventh and eighth graders before giving up teaching in Riceville, in 1985, largely to conduct the eye-color exercise for groups outside the school.

For a host of reasons, some serendipitous, others calculated, the experiment Elliott popularized in 1968 multiplied at dizzying, geometric speed. It spread to other teachers and school districts across the nation and around the world. Thousands of teachers and trainers would adopt the experiment and try it out on students young and old. During the dawning era of multiculturalism, hundreds of corporations used the experiment on their workers. For some who sat at Elliott’s feet, it changed them for the good. The experiment exposed them to racism and its far-reaching impact. But for others, decades after being tormented by an experiment ostensibly designed to teach about racism, many of her subjects still feel the wallop of Elliott’s smack-them-over-the-head method. For more than a few who experienced it, Elliott’s self-proclaimed exercise turned into a monster experiment.

For years scholars have evaluated Elliott’s exercise, seeking to determine if it reduces racial prejudice in participants or poses a psychological risk to them. The results are mixed. Two education professors in England, Ivor F. Goodson and Pat Sikes, suggest that Elliott’s experiment was unethical because the participants weren’t informed of its real purpose beforehand. Alan Charles Kors, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, says Elliott’s diversity training is “Orwellian” and singled her out as “the Torquemada of thought reform.” Kors writes that Elliott’s exercise taught “blood-guilt and self-contempt to Whites,” adding that “in her view, nothing has changed in America since the collapse of Reconstruction.” In a similar vein, Linda Seebach, a conservative columnist for the Rocky Mountain News , wrote in 2004 that Elliott was a “disgrace” and described her exercise as “sadistic,” adding, “You would think that any normal person would realize that she had done an evil thing. But not Elliott. She repeated the abuse with subsequent classes, and finally turned it into a fully commercial enterprise.”

Others have praised Elliott’s exercise. In Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essential Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Things , educational psychologist Michele Borda says it “teaches our children to counter stereotypes before they become full-fledged, lasting prejudices and to recognize that every human being has the right to be treated with respect.” Amitai Etzioni, a sociologist at George Washington University, says the exercise helps develop character and empathy. And Stanford University psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo writes in his 1979 textbook, Psychology and Life , that Elliott’s “remarkable” experiment tried to show “how easily prejudiced attitudes may be formed and how arbitrary and illogical they can be.” Zimbardo—creator of the also controversial 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which was stopped after college student volunteers acting as “guards” humiliated students acting as “prisoners”—says Elliott’s exercise is “more compelling than many done by professional psychologists.”

In 2003, Tracie Stewart, a social psychologist at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, was the lead author in a study to gauge the efficacy of the blueeyes, brown-eyes experiment. Stewart used as her test case a workshop that Elliott conducted in 2000 with students at Bard College, a small, private undergraduate institution in Annandale-on-Hudson, in New York State. So as not to skew their findings, Stewart and her coinvestigators looked for Bard students who hadn’t heard of the experiment or of Elliott. Once accepted into the workshop, participants signed informed consent forms: “You should be aware that the learning exercise may be a difficult experience for some. Participants will take part in group discussions during which they may be exposed to harsh comments and uncomfortable conditions…. If you have a medical condition that might be aggravated by stressful situations or feel that you should avoid stressful situations at the present time, do not sign up for this project.”

Elliott conducted the experiment, which started early on a Saturday morning and lasted eight hours. She followed her routine, sorting forty-seven participants into a blue-eyed (and green- and hazel-eyed) group and a brown-eyed cohort. The blues were crowded into a small, stuffy room with half the number of chairs as people, while the browns were served a full breakfast in a comfortable setting. Per her drill, Elliott prompted the brown-eyed participants to act rudely toward the other group when the two sections convened. She also gave the brown-eyed students answers to an IQ test she would administer to both groups later that day.

When the two groups merged, Elliott had the blueeyed students, wearing collars, sit in the middle of the room while the brown-eyed group sat on either side as though they were observing the “inferior” group. She proceeded to criticize the blues. She had them stand one at a time and read derogatory passages denigrating blue-eyed people. She scolded their performances. When the browns outscored the blues on the fake IQ test, Elliott amped up her scorn of the blues. She picked a blue-eyed, blond woman for ridicule, announcing to everyone that she wasn’t a natural blonde and likely dyed her hair. To another woman, Elliott commented about her “cute butt” and “bedroom voice.” All the while, she encouraged the brown-eyed students to join in on the hectoring. The insults got so intense that two blueeyed students started to cry. One got up and left.

The two groups broke for lunch, returned to debrief, watched the 1970 ABC video “Eye of the Storm,” ate hors d’oeuvres together in the late afternoon, and then left, the experiment officially over. During the next four to six weeks, both groups were assessed by Stewart and her colleagues to see if the experiment had made any impact on their self-awareness of prejudice and racism.

The results were decidedly mixed. The responses from the students mirrored what participants in the U.S. West pluralism workshops in the 1980s had said. They noted a multitude of insults and pain shared by the participants, but minimal change in attitude. Among the student reactions:

“As a Blue Eyes, I was uncomfortable and on edge. I found myself easily angered by anything Jane Elliott said. I felt frustrated and helpless to stop her charade (she was good at her job).” “I feel some of it was unethical, however, there were so many positive responses I can only believe that the positive outweighs the negatives…. I’ve had a few nightmares, but this is typical…” “Makes people upset; doesn’t change much; too negative for me.” “I felt emotionally low after the experiment [exercise]. I wanted to try to forget some of the things that were said or done on the day of the experiment, but I guess that’s what made it so effective.”

Stewart’s thoughts today about the experiment are “proceed with caution.” She said that the experiment may have a positive impact on reducing negative racial attitudes “in the short term,” but any long-term benefits are negligible. Stewart no longer shows videos of Elliott in her undergraduate psychology classes because “there tends to be a greater focus on Jane Elliott herself than the issue of institutional racism.”

A larger, systematic review, published in 2009, that assessed the effectiveness of scores of anti-bias workshops and experiments summarily suggested that further study was needed. “We conclude that the casual effects of many widespread prejudice-reduction interventions, such as workplace diversity training and media campaigns, remain unknown. Although some intergroup contact and cooperation interventions appear promising, a much more rigorous and broad-ranging empirical assessment of prejudice reduction strategies is needed to determine what works.” In other words, the social scientists weren’t able to say that any crash course to modify racial prejudice works.

Today, teachers still readily employ the blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment. For many, it is an inspired and clever way to introduce the concept of discrimination and race to youngsters.

In 2009, Elliott took the experiment to Great Britain, where she performed it for a television documentary called The Event in London. There, the thirty participants were adults. Following her script, Elliott threw profanity-laced insults at the collared “inferior” group of blue-eyed participants. As during the experiment’s last iteration on The Oprah Show , the experiment imploded. Many of the UK participants refused to tolerate Elliott’s bullying and walked out.

The show hired two psychologists to stand in the wings during the experiment in case anyone needed intervention, as well as to provide a sports-style playby- play commentary for viewers at home. One was Dominic Abrams, a professor of social psychology at the University of Kent, who today, more than a decade later, doesn’t quite know what to think of Elliott or what she did. “She is a very strong personality and did not appear to treat challenge as anything other than a battle to be won. She certainly had no desire to engage with me as a psychologist (or indeed as a person), so other than her brusque manner toward myself and the production team (which may have been partly an extension of her character part for the day), it was difficult to gain a sense of what she might have been thinking or intending,” Abrams wrote in an email.

Guardian journalist Andrew Anthony was less sanguine. Writing about the British iteration of the experiment, Anthony noted, “Nowadays, grey-haired and mean-eyed, she’s honed her shtick to that of a drill sergeant or prison commandant. She describes herself as the ‘resident bitch for the day,’ and speaks to the blue-eyed contingent as though they were criminally stupid or stupidly criminal. ‘Keep your fucking mouth shut,’ she tells one smiling blue-eyed young man. ‘I don’t play second banana.’ The performance suggests someone who would be a natural in a Maoist re-education camp: self-righteous, vindictive and unswervingly convinced of her case.”

Anthony concluded that Elliott was “more excited by White fear than she is by Black success.”

This article appeared in Skeptic  magazine 27.3 Buy print edition Buy digital edition Subscribe to print edition Subscribe to digital edition Download our app

Elliott defends her work as a mother defends her child. “You have to put the exercise in the context of the rest of the year. Yes, that day was tough. Yes, the children felt angry, hurt, betrayed. But they returned to a better place—unlike a child of color, who gets abused every day, and never has the ability to find him or herself in a nurturing classroom environment.” As for the criticism that the exercise encourages children to distrust authority figures—the teacher lies, then recants the lies and maintains they were justified because of a greater good—she says she worked hard to rebuild her students’ trust. The exercise is “an inoculation against racism,” she says. “We give our children shots to inoculate them against polio and smallpox, to protect them against the realities in the future. There are risks to those inoculations, too, but we determine that those risks are worth taking.”

Elliott remains as sharp-tongued, contrary, resolute, and opinionated as ever. She has updated her lectures to include a range of contemporary issues: the concept of race (“There’s only one race, the human race”); the Black Lives Matter movement (“It’s insane what we’ve been doing to people of color for the last 250 years”), White supremacists (“They’re coming out of the woodwork”), persistent women (“‘Bitch’ is an acronym for ‘Being in Total Control, Honey’”), former President Trump (“He is basing his political philosophy on writings of Adolf Hitler”), racism among White evangelicals (“Jesus did not look like the little Pillsbury Doughboy”), and oppression of Native Americans (“We call Native Americans ‘savages’ but it was Whites who killed them and stole their lands”). Her most recent lectures mention COVID-19, as well as the LGBTQ and Latinx communities. Elliott hasn’t given up her interest in public education, which is at the center of any presentation she gives (“We could destroy racism in two generations by changing what is taught in classrooms all over the United States, but first we’d have to change the level of racism among the teachers”).

For decades, Elliott has issued sweeping generalizations, including her oft-repeated declaration that all Whites in America are racists. “If you are looking at a White person who was born, reared, and schooled in the United States, then you are looking at a racist,” she told an audience at the University of Northern Colorado as far back as 1993. “Blacks aren’t racist; they are only reacting to the actions of Whites.”

Elliott often refers to herself as “a faded Black person.” When she spoke with actress Jada Pinkett Smith on her Facebook Watch show, Red Table Talk , in 2018, she said, “My people moved far from the Equator and that’s the only reason my skin is lighter. That’s all any White person is.” She concedes that as a White woman speaking about how some Black people might feel, she may be guilty of accusations that she’s a charlatan and a poseur. “There are those Blacks who ask me what a White woman like me is doing talking about their experience, since I can’t possibly know what it’s like to walk in their shoes. Sometimes I’m accused of just running another White woman’s game. Those are valid criticisms.”

What truly motivated Elliott to introduce an experiment to a roomful of third graders and to make two days last more than five decades? Perhaps she was seeking an exit from what she envisioned would be her own humdrum life. She had something personal to prove, a game of one-upmanship amid a landlocked sea of naysayers who had looked down on her ever since she’d been born. What was it about her that seemed to require that she push the limits, shocking everyone—starting with children? Was it to make up for the shortcomings the locals had assigned her? Was it to make her father proud? Was it to get back at the locals and their sense of what it meant to be successful, particularly as a woman? Was it to show the other teachers in the chatty teachers’ lounge how horribly wrong they were?

Based on the author’s 2021 book Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: A Cautionary Tale of Race and Brutality , published by University of California Press, excerpted with permission. © 2021 by Stephen G. Bloom

About the Author

Stephen G. Bloom is a professor of journalism at the University of Iowa and author of six nonfiction books: Postville ; Inside the Writer’s Mind ; Tears of Mermaids ; The Oxford Project ; The Audacity of Inez Burns ; and Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes .

Stephen Bloom on The Michael Shermer Show

Listen to Michael Shermer’s conversation with Stephen Bloom exploring the never-before-told true story of Jane Elliott and the “Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes Experiment” she made world-famous, using eye color to simulate racism. Shermer and Bloom discuss: Jane Elliott and how she came to conduct her famous experiment • reactions to it (in the classroom, locally, nationally, internationally) • whether the “experiment” was really more of a demonstration • public interest, from Johnny Carson to Oprah Winfrey • the questionable ethics of the experiment • what it reveals about tribalism, racism, obedience to authority, role playing, social proof • whether the experiment reveals hidden racist attitudes or creates them in children • Does it indicate bad apples or bad barrels? • race sensitivity training programs, then and now (and why they don’t really work) • what drives moral progress • the future of journalism.

This article was published on November 22, 2022.

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Blue eyes, brown eyes: What Jane Elliott's famous experiment says about race 50 years on

Jane Elliott is 84 years old, a tiny woman with white hair, wire-rim glasses and little patience.

She has been talking about how ridiculous it is to judge someone based on the color of their skin for almost 50 years. She can hardly believe she still has to say it.

“We need to fix this,” she says.

Elliot is best known as the teacher who, on April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, put her third-grade students through a bold exercise to teach them about racial prejudice.

She divided the children, who were all white, by eye color, and then she told the children that people with brown eyes were smarter, faster and better than those with blue eyes.

What happened next proved to Elliot that prejudice is a learned behavior.

Which means, she says, it can be unlearned.

It was an exercise that would catapult her into a heated national discussion, land her on television and in newspapers, and eventually make her the subject of a half-dozen documentaries and a mainstay in textbooks.

All these years later, Elliott hasn't stopped talking about what she learned. She thinks her message is more important than ever amid growing conflict over race. She minces no words. She wants you to listen. Really listen.

Maybe you will learn something, too.

One race, the human race

“It’s 10 o’clock, and we’re going to start now,” Elliott announced. It was a Thursday morning, and she was speaking in the Memorial Union at Arizona State University.

About 25 people are there, mostly students, and a few invited guests.

Elliott would speak later that day to a full auditorium of 1,200 people at Central High School in Phoenix as part of ASU’s Project Humanities  campaign to create opportunities for dialogue about issues like this. 

As part of her visit, Elliott had asked to speak with a small group of students.

She got right to it.

“Anybody here who considers themselves a member of the white race, stand up,” Elliott said. A handful of people stood.

“Anybody here who considers themselves a member of the black race, stand up.” Ten or so people got up.

“Stand up if you consider yourself part of the brown race,” she said next.

“Hispanic,” one young man corrected as he stood.

People glanced at each other awkwardly as Elliott continued. “Stand up if you consider yourself part of the yellow race,” she said. “Stand up if you consider yourself part of the red race,” she said, until everyone was standing.

Elliott studied the room.

“Now everyone who considers themselves part of the human race, sit down,” she said.

Everyone sat down.

This is important to understand, she said. She paused, looking into the faces in front of her.

“There are not four or five different races. There is only one race on the face of the earth, and we are all members of that race — the human race,” Elliott said.

Yes, Elliott knows we have been taught that people can be divided into groups based on shared inherited physical characteristics.

But science has shown that human physical variations don’t fit into neat racial categories, she says. They overlap. Because, genetically, DNA analyses show, all humans are more alike than they are different. Scientists agree that biological races do not exist among humans.

“It is a lie perpetuated so some of us can see ourselves as superior to others,” Elliott said. “You’ve got to stop believing it, and you have got to stop living it.”

Judging people based on skin color is as ridiculous as judging people based on eye color — or gender, religion or sexual orientation, she said. “It’s indecent, it’s not fair and it’s ignorant.”

That was what she wanted to teach her students all those years ago.

The exercise: Brown eyes, blue eyes

Elliott taught third graders at a school in Riceville, Iowa, a small town in rural northern Iowa. 

Her 28 students had filed into the classroom the morning after King was assassinated, talking about what had happened. 

“How do you think it would feel to be a Negro boy or girl?” Elliott had asked her students. All of the children were white.

“It would be hard to know, wouldn’t it, unless we actually experienced discrimination ourselves? Would you like to find out?”

The children had answered eagerly, “Yes!” 

Elliot separated the blue-eyed children from the children with brown and green eyes. She had the blue-eyed children put on green construction paper armbands.

And then she told the children that the brown-eyed students were smarter.

Elliott came up with an explanation: Intelligence, she told the children, was determined by melanin. She wrote the word on the board. The more melanin, the darker the person’s eyes — and the smarter the person.

A child noted that Elliott was a “bluey,” yet she was a teacher. A boy piped up to explain that if she had had brown eyes, she would be the principal or superintendent.

Elliott sent the brown-eyed children to lunch first and gave them a longer recess. The brown-eyed children could drink from the water fountain, but the blue-eyed children had to use paper cups.

The change was instant, Elliott said. The children with brown eyes were suddenly more confident — and condescending. They hurled nasty insults at the blue-eyed kids. 

The children with blue eyes made silly mistakes and became timid and despondent. 

The two groups stopped playing together. Fights broke out.

“I watched them exhibit all the behaviors the significant adults in their lives modeled for them,” Elliott said. “I didn’t like what I saw.”

What Elliott said she learned from the exercise was that people are not born prejudiced but learn the behavior. And if it can be learned, she said, it can be unlearned.

'Why is no one outraged about that?'

After the exercise, Elliott asked her students to write about what they had learned, and their essays ran in the Riceville Recorder under the headline, “How Discrimination Feels.”

The Associated Press did a follow-up story. Johnny Carson invited her to be on his show.

When Elliott returned to Riceville, population 840 at the time, from her appearance on “The Tonight Show,” she found her town divided. The other teachers, save a few, snubbed her. Her children were bullied at school, her oldest son beaten up.

She got mail from people who said the exercise taught white children self-contempt and abused their trust. She received death threats.

While controversial, her exercise would be cited as a social science landmark. Textbook publisher McGraw-Hill listed Elliott on a timeline of 30 notable educators, along with Plato, Horace Mann, Booker T. Washington and Maria Montessori.

Elliott continued to conduct the exercise in Riceville for nine more years in her third-grade class and another eight years with her seventh- and eighth-grade students.

She argued that it taught children that prejudice was arbitrary and illogical and helped develop empathy.

“It was one day,” Elliott said. “We are worried about white children who experience a couple of hours of made-up racism for one day when children of color experience real racism every day of their lives.

“Why is no one outraged about that?”

It would have made life easier if Elliott had kept quiet after that, but she said she couldn’t.

“Prejudice is an attitude. It can’t hurt anyone,” she said. “But discrimination is a behavior, and people get killed because of it every day.”

When it is uncomfortable

At ASU, Elliott asked a young man sitting up front if anyone ever referred to him as bi-racial. He nodded. Yes. The next time someone said it, she said, he should respond with, “What other planet do you think I’m from?”

Because, she reminded him, holding up one finger, “One race. The human race.”

Then she asked a young woman, "Has anyone ever said to you, ‘I don’t see you as black?'” 

The woman nodded.

“What did you say?” Elliott asked and when the woman hesitated, she continued: “You were polite, weren’t you? You smiled and didn’t say anything.

“What you should say is, 'You got an eye problem, fool ?'" Everyone laughed.

Because of course, people see color. They pick the color of their car, and of their couch.

“You know why they say that? Because your skin color makes them uncomfortable," Elliott said. "If white folks are uncomfortable because of your skin color, that is because they are ignorant.”

Don’t let people get away with saying things like that, Elliott said. “If we don’t start confronting racist remarks, they will continue to be acceptable,” she said.

The rules of listening

Suddenly Elliot stopped talking, put one hand on her hip and stared at someone in the back of the room who was using a cell phone. 

“You’re not listening,” Elliott said simply. She turned and noticed another student on the other side of the room with a video camera pointed at her.

“Did I give permission?” she asked. “Turn it off.” She told him to put it away, sit in a chair and listen.

We learn a lot by listening, Elliott said, but there are rules. The first one: Good listeners have quiet hands, feet and mouths.

Elliott looked at a young man chewing a cookie. He was suddenly still.

“How are you going to swallow that without moving your mouth?” she said. He swallowed hard and pushed the rest of the cookie on a napkin away from him. So did other people at other tables.

Elliott had thought America had made some positive progress in terms of racism, at least until recently. She thinks she knows why.

“This is the response of white people to eight years of a black man in the White House,” Elliott said.

“That means that we didn’t make progress in the first place. We made people go underground and that’s what they did.”

Now, she said, “It’s like when I go off a diet and eat like a fool.”

“We had to give up our ignorant statements and behaviors for a while, and now the lid is off,” she said.

People can say anything they want now, even march in the streets with swastikas on their arms, she said, and President Donald Trump would say there are “some very fine people” among them.

“Now they can do and be and say anything they want to because they can get away with it,” she said.

Elliott said we have a responsibility to speak up when we hear racist talk and take action when we witness discrimination.

“You can make a difference if you chose to," she said, "or you can just leave these things as they are."

Decide to learn something

Elliott told the students that one of the driving forces in this election was the projection that, within 30 years, white people will have lost their numerical majority in the United States.

“If you are thinking, ‘We are here to talk about racism, so why is she talking about politics?’ you should know that there is nothing in this country that is not impacted by racism,” Elliott said.

She stopped talking again, this time because a woman was taking notes, her head down. Elliott waited until the woman looked up.

The second rule of listening: Good listeners keep their eyes on the person who is speaking.

Elliott sighed. She might as well get all the rules out at once, she said.

The third rule: Good listeners listen from the beginning to the very end.

No interruptions. No thinking about counter-arguments, or what you are going to say when you get a chance.

And then, probably the most important rule: Good listeners decide to learn something.

Afterward, Elliott said listening is imperative for this kind of conversation to take place.

“The listening skills are something that I teach for the classroom," she said, "and for every minute of our lives."

Nothing they could Google or see on their Facebook feed is going to be as real and have the same kind of impact as listening to the person in front of them.

“And if you are going to learn anything, you have to listen, and you have to decide to learn.

“That’s the most important one. You have to decide to learn.”

The exercise: Blue eyes, brown eyes

Elliott left teaching in 1985 and since then, she has traveled the world speaking and sometimes conducting the eye-color exercise in workshops at schools, universities, businesses and government agencies.

She's taken lessons from that first exercise in April 1968, a time that can still bring her to tears when she talks about it and tried to change people's minds about prejudice.

Because there was something a lot of people don't remember about that first exercise. 

On the following Monday, Elliott reversed the exercise, telling the children that it was blue-eyed students who were smarter. She sent them to lunch first and let them stay at recess longer, the same as before.

But this time, something was different. Elliott noticed that the blue-eyed kids were not as condescending, not as mean, as the brown-eyed kids had been. She asked why.

"They said, ‘I found out what it felt like to be on the bottom, and I did not want to make anyone feel like that ever again,'” Elliott said.

They learned. 

Reach Bland at [email protected] or 602-444-8614.

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Updates: The Fight Against Racial Injustice

America reckons with racial injustice, we are repeating the discrimination experiment every day, says educator jane elliott.

Rachel Martin

Simone Popperl

Avery Keatley

Emma Bowman

Jane Elliott, an educator and anti-racism activist, first conducted her blue eyes/brown eyes exercise in her third-grade classroom in Iowa in 1968. Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images hide caption

Jane Elliott, an educator and anti-racism activist, first conducted her blue eyes/brown eyes exercise in her third-grade classroom in Iowa in 1968.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 prompted educator Jane Elliott to create the now-famous "blue eyes/brown eyes exercise ."

As a school teacher in the small town of Riceville, Iowa, Elliott first conducted the anti-racism experiment on her all-white third-grade classroom, the day after the civil rights leader was killed.

She wanted them to understand what discrimination felt like. Elliott split her students into two groups, based on eye color. She told them that people with brown eyes were superior to those with blue eyes, for reasons she made up. Brown-eyed people, she told the students, are smarter, more civilized and better than blue-eyed people.

More than 50 years after she first tried that exercise in her classroom, Elliott, now 87, said she sees much more work left to do to change racist attitudes. The May 25 killing of George Floyd set off weeks of nationwide protests over the police abuse and racism against black people, plunging the U.S. into a reckoning of racial inequality.

"It's happening every day in this country, right now," she said in an interview with Morning Edition . "We are repeating the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise on a daily basis."

When Elliott first conducted the exercise in 1968, brown-eyed students were given special privileges. She said she watched and was horrified at what she saw.

The students started to internalize, and accept, the characteristics they'd been arbitrarily assigned based on the color of their eyes.

Code Switch

Dispatches from the schoolyard.

'I See These Conversations As Protective': Talking With Kids About Race

Elliott started to see her own white privilege, even her own ignorance. At her lunch break that day in the teacher's lounge, she told her colleagues about the exercise. One teacher ended up displaying the same bigotry Elliott had spent the morning trying to fight.

"She said, on the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, 'I don't know why you're doing that — I thought it was about time somebody shot that son of a bitch,' " she said. "Not one of them reprimanded her for that or even corrected her. They all either smiled or laughed and nodded."

The interaction only strengthened Elliott's resolve. She decided to continue the exercise with her students after lunch.

"No person of any age [was] going to leave my presence with those attitudes unchallenged," Elliott said.

Two years later, a BBC documentary captured the experiment in Elliott's classroom. The demonstration has since been taught by generations of teachers to millions of kids across the country.

Still, Elliott said the last few years have brought out America's worst racist tendencies. The empathy she works to inspire in students with the experiment, which has been modified over the years, is necessary, she said.

"People of other color groups seem to understand," she said. "Probably because they have been taught how they're treated in this country — that they have to understand us. [White people] on the other hand, don't have to understand them. We have to let people find out how it feels to be on the receiving end of that which we dish out so readily."

But the protests happening now have given her hope.

"Things are changing, and they're going to change rapidly if we're very, very fortunate," she said. "If this ugly change, if this negative change can happen this quickly, why can't positive change happen that quickly? I think it can."

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Creator of famous ‘blue eyes/brown eyes’ exercise, Jane Elliott, returns to CSUSB

News Release

Jane Elliott, who in 1968 developed a classroom experiment for her all-white class of third graders to teach them about discrimination and racism by separating those with blue eyes from those with brown eyes, will speak at Cal State San Bernardino on Thursday, April 7.

“Jane Elliot on Race and Racism,” presented by the university’s Institute for Child Development and Family Relations, will take place in the Santos Manuel Student Union Events Center, room 106, from 2-3:30 p.m., followed by a 25-minute video. The public is invited to the free event; parking at the university is a daily rate of $6.

No stranger to Cal State San Bernardino, Elliott presented a diversity lecture on campus in 1998 as part of Conversations on Diversity lecture series, and as a guest speaker for a psychology social sciences class in 2014 and 2015.

Elliott, who developed what has become known as the “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., will show how people can learn to recognize and identify disparities in the ways in which power is assigned and maintained.

She asked her students if they wanted to participate in an exercise to see how discrimination worked. The students agreed. The next day, she separated the children with blue eyes from the children with brown eyes. The blue-eyed children were told they were the superior group and given extra privileges such as more food portions at lunch, more playtime and they sat at the front of the class. The blue-eyed children were encouraged to play only with other blue-eyed children and ignore those with brown eyes.

The brown-eyed children wore collars made of fabric to identify them as a minority group and made to sit in the back rows. Elliott also reprimanded the brown-eyed students when they made mistakes or didn’t follow the rules.

The brown-eyed students initially resisted the notion that the blue-eyed students were better, but Elliott deliberately lied, telling them that the melanin responsible for making the students blue-eyed also gave them higher intelligence and learning ability. As the experiment progressed, the blue-eyed students became arrogant, bossy and otherwise unpleasant to their “inferior” classmates. Their grades also improved. The brown-eyed “inferior” classmates changed into timid and subservient children, who isolated themselves during recess. Even their studies suffered. The following week, Elliott reversed the exercise, making the brown-eyed children superior. While the brown-eyed children did taunt the blue-eyed ones in ways similar to what had occurred the previous day, it was not as intense.

At the end of the exercise, the students were asked to write down what they learned. The students wrote that it was not right to be judged by the color of their eyes and that the color of their eyes did not make a difference on the type of person they were.

The children’s compositions were printed in the local papers and the story was picked up by the national news media.  The story led to Elliott’s invitation to be a guest on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” to talk about the experiment and the children. After her appearance, the “The Tonight Show” received hundreds of phone calls and letters, many of them complaining. An often-quoted letter states, “How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children?”

But not all the reaction was negative. As more people learned about the experiment, Elliott was asked to repeat the exercise and it eventually evolved into professional training for adults. In 1970, Elliott staged the exercise at a White House Conference on Children and Youth, staging it for adults.

Elliot now works as a diversity trainer and lecturer who is recognized most prominently as an anti-racism activist and educator. She has been the focus of two television documentaries, “Eye of the Storm” in 1971 and “A Class Divided” in 1985, and has received many awards, including the National Mental Health Association Award for Excellence in Education.

No longer a classroom teacher, Elliott has continued to do the Blue-Eyed/Brown-Eyed exercise, which is considered as the basis for diversity training. She has done training for corporations including General Electric, Exxon, AT& T and IBM. Elliott has also given lectures on diversity to the FBI, IRS, the U.S. Navy, the federal Department of Education and the U.S. Postal Service. Established in 2002, the CSUSB Institute for Child Development and Family Relations promotes the optimal development and well-being of the children and families in the geographic region through research, providing services, and educating future professionals. The institute draws upon the strengths and expertise of faculty throughout the university, who have devoted their careers to researching and teaching subjects related to both child development and the family dynamic.

The faculty members provide training within established graduate and undergraduate programs. Programs include Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Child Assessment, Special Education, Elementary Education, and Early Childhood Education, Family and Child Health.

For more information on the event, contact Kim McDonald at (909) 537-3679 or by email at [email protected] .

Visit Jane Elliott’s website at for more information about her work.

Also visit the CSUSB Institute for Child Development and Family Relations website for more information on its programs.

Set in the foothills of the beautiful San Bernardino Mountains, CSUSB is a preeminent center of intellectual and cultural activity in inland Southern California. Celebrating its 50 th anniversary in 2015-2016, CSUSB serves more than 20,000 students each year and graduates about 4,000 students annually.

For more information about Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university’s Office of Strategic Communication at (909) 537-5007 and visit news.csusb.edu .

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A second look at the blue-eyes, brown-eyes experiment that taught third-graders about racism

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The killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, was a seismic event , a turning point that compelled many Americans to do something and do it with urgency. Many educators responded by holding mandatory workshops on institutional racism and implicit bias , reforming teaching methods and lesson plans and searching for ways to amplify undersung voices.

As a journalism professor and author of a book on race that spans more than 50 years, I’ve watched these developments with great concern. We’ve been here before, with unsettling and disturbing results.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 was also an event that spurred educators to action, motivating one teacher to try out a bold experiment touted to reduce racism.

The experiment took the nation by storm.

The day after King’s murder, Jane Elliott , a white third-grade teacher in rural Riceville, Iowa, sought to make her students feel the brutality of racism. Elliott separated her all-white class of students into two groups : blue-eyed children and brown-eyed children.

On the first day, the blue-eyed students were informed that they were genetically inferior to the brown-eyed students. Elliott instructed the blue-eyed kids not to play on the jungle gym or swings. They wouldn’t be allowed second helpings for lunch. They’d have to use paper cups if they drank from the water fountain.

The blue-eyed children were told not to do their homework because, even if they answered all the questions, they’d probably forget to bring the assignment back to class. That’s just the way blue-eyed kids were, Elliott told the students.

On the second day of the experiment, Elliott switched the children’s roles.

After the local newspaper published a story on Elliott and the experiment, she was flown to New York to appear on May 31, 1968, on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, where she extolled the experiment’s effectiveness in cluing in her 8-year-old white students on what it was like to be Black in America.

A darker side

But Elliott’s experiment had a more sinister impact. To most people, it seemed to suggest that racism could be reduced, even eliminated, by a one- or two-day exercise. It seemed to evince that all white people had to do to learn about racism was restrain themselves from an impulse to engage in made-up cruelty. They needed not acknowledge their privilege or reflect on it. They didn’t need to engage with a single Black person.

But in reality, I found in researching for my book “Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” that the experiment was a sadistic exhibition of power and authority – levers controlled by Elliott. Stripping away the veneer of the experiment, what was left had nothing to do with race.

It was about cruelty and shaming.

Subsequent research designed to gauge the efficacy of Elliott’s attempt at reducing prejudice showed that many participants were shocked by the experiment, but it did nothing to address or explain the root causes of racism .

The roots of racism – and why it continues unabated in America and other nations – are complicated and gnarled. They are steeped in centuries of economic deprivation and cultural appropriation . The nonstop parade of sickening events such as the murder of George Floyd surely is not going to be abated by a quickie experiment led by a white person for the alleged benefit of other whites – as was the case with the blue-eyed, brown eyed experiment.

Sought-after diversity trainer

Nevertheless, Elliott became as famous as a teacher could become in America.

The 1970s and 1980s were ripe for diversity education in the private and public sectors, and Elliott would try out the experiment at workshops on tens of thousands of participants, not just in the U.S. and Canada, but in Europe, the Middle East and Australia. She traveled to corporations, banks, prisons, schools and military bases.

Thousands of educators across the United States folded the experiment into their curriculums. She was a standing-room-only speaker at hundreds of colleges and universities.

She appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” five times.

Unsettling insults

Elliott turned into America’s mother of diversity training .

The anti-racism sessions Elliott led were intense. To get her points across, Elliott hurled insults at workshop participants, particularly those who were white and had blue eyes. For many, the experiment went horribly awry.

In doing the research for my book with scores of peoples who were participants in the experiment, I reached out to Elliott. At first, she cooperated with me. But when she discovered that I was asking pointed questions of scores of her former students, as well as others subjected to the experiment, she made an about-face and said she no longer would cooperate with me. She has since refused to answer any of my inquiries.

Scores of others did participate. I interviewed Julie Pasicznyk, who had been working for US West, a giant telecommunications company in Minneapolis. She was hesitant to enroll in Elliott’s workshop but was told that if she wanted to succeed as a manager, she’d have to attend. Pasicznyk joined 75 other employees for a training session in the company’s suburban Denver headquarters in the late 1980s.

“Right off the bat, she picked me out of the room and called me ‘Barbie,’” Pasicznyk told me. “That’s how it started, and that’s how it went all day long. She had never met me, and she accused me in front of everyone of using my sexuality to get ahead.”

“Barbie” had to have a Ken, so Elliott picked from the audience a tall, handsome man and accused him of doing the same things with his female subordinates, Pasicznyk said. Elliott went after “Ken” and “Barbie” all day long, drilling, accusing, ridiculing them, to make the point that whites make baseless judgments about Blacks all the time, Pasicznyk said.

Elliott championed the experiment as an “inoculation against racism.”

[ The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. Sign up for Politics Weekly .]

Questioning authority

The mainstream media were complicit in advancing such a simplistic narrative. They embraced the experiment’s reductive message, as well as its promised potential, thereby keeping the implausible rationale of Elliott’s crusade alive and well for decades, however flawed and racist it really was.

Perhaps because the outcome seemed so optimistic and comforting, coverage of Elliott and the experiment’s alleged curative powers cropped up everywhere. Elliott was featured on nearly every national news show in America for decades.

Elliott’s bullying rejoinder to any nonbeliever was to say that however much pain a white person felt after one or two days of made-up discrimination was nothing when compared to what Blacks endure daily.

Back when she introduced the experiment to her Iowa students more than five decades ago, at least one student had the audacity to challenge Elliott’s premise, according to those who were in the classroom at the time.

When she separated the class by eye color and announced that blue-eyed children were superior, Paul Bodensteiner objected at every turn.

“It’s not true!” he challenged.

Undeterred, Elliott tried to appeal to Paul’s self-interest. “You should be happy! You have the right color eyes!”

But Paul, one of eight siblings and the son of a dairy farmer, didn’t buy Elliott’s mollification. “It’s not true and it’s not fair no matter what you say!” he responded.

I often think about Paul Bodensteiner. How can we teach kids to be more like him? Is it even possible today?

This article is republished from The Conversation , a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Stephen G. Bloom , University of Iowa .

In times of racial injustice, university education should not be ‘neutral’

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Stephen G. Bloom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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