What color eyes do you have and do you think it really matters?
For over half a century Jane Elliott, a teacher and diversity trainer, has been teaching hard truths about racism, and they are not always well received. One of the ways she’s done this is through something she calls the “blue eyes/brown eyes” exercise.
Elliot started teaching the exercise immediately after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. It was that year that she decided to teach her class of all-white third-graders what discrimination and racism were.
She separated her class by two groups — those with blue eyes and those with brown.
She then proceeded to tell the class those with brown eyes superior—the brown-eyed kids got extra privileges and were told they were smarter, more talented and had more opportunity than the blue-eyed kids.
Those with brown eyes immediately began to show control over the blue-eyed kids, who became more subordinate.
Anger and disputes between the two camps popped up.
She made them switch roles, so both groups got a taste of what it was like to be discriminated against.
Elliot became nationally known, but her work has never ended. She has since brought these teachings to corporate America, the U.S. Department of Education, and numerous church and school assemblies.
While the reactions she gets aren’t always positive, she keeps fighting against racism, and she believes her lessons are more important now than ever before.
She said,
“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.”
Wow. Very powerful.
https://twitter.com/linda_wed1/status/1276916291979350016
Have you experienced discrimination in your life? Yeah you have. We all have.
So let us know what happened in the comments!
