The blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise (1968) is a way to teach white people what racism is like. It was something that an American schoolteacher, Jane Elliott, came up with to teach her class of eight- and nine-year-olds in the all-white town of Riceville, Iowa.
Elliott had made Martin Luther King, Jr the Hero of the Month for her class in April 1968. But then a few days later he was shot dead. Her students asked why.
She asked them what they knew about black people. Even though few of them had ever met one, they informed her that:
- They’re dirty
- They stink
- They don’t smell good
- They riot, they steal
- You can’t trust them, my dad says they better not try to move in next door to us.
So then she in turn informed them about blueys, you know, those blue-eyed people: they lacked intelligence, they do not work hard, they cannot be trusted. They just were not as good as brown-eyed people. Science has proved it!
She had a blue collar pinned round the neck of each blue-eyed child in class.
Because brownies, the brown-eyed people, were better, they got special privileges: five more minutes of playtime, second helpings of lunch, the right to drink water straight from the water fountain instead of from a cup, the right to tell the blueys what to do.
The blueys meanwhile suffered disadvantages: they were not allowed to play on the playground equipment and were not allowed to play with brownies.
In addition whenever a brownie did something good, she pointed it out. And when a bluey did something bad she made sure everyone knew about it.
What came next shocked even her.
Schoolwork: Some of the brownies were dyslexic, they had trouble reading, but then suddenly they could read and spell words they never could before! The blueys meanwhile became unsure of themselves and did poorly even though they had done just fine the day before.
Behaviour: The brownies called the blueys names and got into fights. The brownies became “arrogant, ugly, domineering, overbearing”. The blueys became sad, violent and their spirits sank. Not unlike the prisoners in the the Stanford Prison Experiment a few years later.
She did not tell the brownies how to act, she did not tell them to be mean, she just told them they were better and favoured them. But, as she pointed out later:
They already knew how to be racist because every one of them knew without my telling them how to treat those who were on the bottom.
The next day she told the class that she had lied: blue-eyed people, in fact, were better. After all, she was blue-eyed. So the collars went off the blueys and onto the brownies. Now the blueys did better in school and became overbearing – but they were not as bad as the brownies because they knew what it was like to wear the collar.
It proved to her that racism is learned, that it is not something you are born with, that it does not have to be.
See also:
- The Stanford Prison Experiment
- The eight stages of genocide – she went through the first three
- whites-only proms – blueys cannot play with brownies
- white privilege – brownies get five more minutes
- All blacks are racist – blueys start to believe they are no good
- There is absolutely nothing wrong with being black
- How to help end racism
Abagond 
we did this at school in 8th grade for one class only, the brown eyed people got to sit in the front of the class and go some cupcakes and the blue-eyed people had to wait out in the hall until all the brown-eyed people were settled in, then we watched the video and at the end of class everyone ultimately got cupcakes (blue-eyed people go theirs) but it was interesting.
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i wonder if those people at those all-white proms have done this excercise…
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I remember reading about her, her experiment and the backlash she and her family suffered in their town because of it. Some people really hate it when you shine a light and a mirror on their flaws.
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Yes, especially when it comes to racism.
Her father went broke because people stopped shopping at his store. She herself received death threats. But that just made her more determined since she saw the need was so much greater than she imagined.
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my husband and two of my sons have blue eyes
myself and my youngest have brown eyes.
my youngest son often comes to me and complains about the blue eyeds…and suggests we hide from them.
sometimes I think my blue eyed sons treat my youngest different cause he isnt the same as them…
I wonder what they would think of this experiment.
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Wow.
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She could never get away with this experiment today. All hell would break loose. Parents would sue and sue again. That said, I think it was interesting. It’s really too bad that no one learned anything from the experiment.
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I’ve seen the youtube on this where she does it with adults. But it’s good to hear it again, and…wow. It’s unbelievable how racism can change people like that. Wow. This is really useful in helping me understand some things I’m observing myself.
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wow. ive never heard of this. ive heard and seen the videos of the baby doll experiments. that was very saddening. this is amazing that a school teacher could get away with this in the 60s.
“It proved to her that racism is learned, that it is not something you are born with, that it does not have to be.”
THIS LINE SHOULD BE THE OVERALL STATEMENT OF EVERY DISCUSSION ON THIS SITE!!!!!!!! its summed up perfectly. great quote.
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You know what? There’s no actual reason this couldn’t be done today. “Oh, but it’s not ethical!” you say. Eh, arguable. Either way, a parental consent form solves the legal issue. And personally, I think it’d do much more good than harm.
Anyone ever read the book “The War Between the Classes”? I remember it fondly. It was about an exercise like this— a “color war”— in a mostly white-and-wealthy (Californian?) high school. The kids were issued randomly colored armbands representing different ranks/castes, and of course all hell broke loose. The main protagonist was a working-class East Asian girl, which was nice. A trifecta! Pretty rare at that time. Good book; I’d read it again today if I found a copy. *adds to Amazon wishlist*
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She’s still doing the same exercise, but according to this Guardian article, these days she’s a lot meaner and people are a lot more aware of racism, so it’s not going down too well in 21st-century Britain.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/oct/18/racism-psychology-jane-elliott-4
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I remember watching the Channel 4 programme where she took a bunch of volunteers into a warehouse and conducted the same experiment, but with adults. It doesn’t always work in making people more aware of racism and/or less racist. If I remember correctly, there was one woman in particular arguing with a man who was half black, half white. She compared racism against this man and his family to her white husband having to wear a uniform to work because that’s what is expected of him, or something equally ridiculous. How do you even begin teaching a person like that about racism and discrimination?
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Of course racism is a learned behaviour! There is not a child on this planet who comes into this world hating anything. It is a physical impossibility. The laws of the universe do not allow it.
Hatred, anger, jealousy, racism, sexism (any “ism”) is ALL learned behaviour. A room full of children of all races will play, have fun, get up to mischief together and it isn’t until an adult who has had all the time to become hateful and bitter, enters the room and teaches just ONE of them how to hate that one will see a change take place.
Once people get older, they forget this and will argue, debate and fight till the end of time to defend their erroneous beliefs yet if they quieted their minds and listened from within, they would find out that what I’ve written above is %100 true.
If you meet a racist, sexist or hate-mongering they are only in a place where they can get better and grow. Being like that isn’t conducive to living life in all fullness.
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Couldn’t agree more Frederica. What you say is 100% true!!!
Everything comes down to belief in the end. Once you give up your erroneous belief in any -ism. What you once believed was once true magically disappears!
A common misconception many people often indulge in is “seeing is believing” rather than the reality of “believing is seeing”
This is why children free from the adverse learned behaviour of adults can be so open and honest with each other.
A child wants to learn and grow rather than stagnate and plateau.
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Frederica Bimble,
I would somewhat disagree that racism is necessarily a learned behavior, or at least I’d describe it as a socially directed behavior based upon a common natural instinct.
Humans appear to invariably organize into various discrete units with often sharply defined in-groups and out-groups. These can be based on family, clan, tribe, ethnicity, culture, etc.
People within the in-group are loved, those in the out-group are mistrusted and/or despised. This paradigm seems endemic to the human experience.
Therefore, it doesn’t seem implausible for those of different races (however you might define that) to tend towards mutually seeing one another as out-groups, especially where differences in appearance, culture, and history are pronounced.
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@kwamla,
These brown eyed kids in the experiment were told that they were superior to the blueys and they were given more privileges than them and voila! Bullying started! The only reasonable inference seems to be that people can be mean towards anyone they think inferior to them if they have the power to. They only needed to be pointed out whom to bully.
Children aren’t little angels as they’re portrayed to be. Many of them can be extremely selfish and abusive. In fact, many bullies I knew at school became better when they were adults.
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The problem you confront yourself with Randy in attempting to hold onto your chosen racist beliefs is demonstrating, in a practical scenario, how this “common natural instinct” manifests itself in young children.
This is because you would be unable to prove with a similar social experiment anything which might add substance to your otherwise banal assumptions.
Which by the way don’t lend themselves to enabling people to engage with life to the fullest possible extent as Frederica correctly “instinctively” observers.
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“…The only reasonable inference seems to be that people can be mean towards anyone they think inferior to them if they have the power to…”
I rather think you miss the point here anglesanddimensions. The only reasonable inference is that people can be made to learn. And just as easily unlearn. The only thing which could be considered intrinsic are the abilities of learning and unlearning themselves.
Substitute “loving” in place of “mean” and “equal” in place of “inferior” and you will realize this too could also be true.
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@kwamla
But nobody taught the brownies to be mean to the blueys.
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@anglesanddimensions
Thats because they had already learned this from the actions of blueys!!!
Substitute those words again!!!
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Ok, wait. I need a little more explanation. The first day brownies were favoured, the second day the blueys. What were the actions of the blueys that taught brownies how to behave with them?
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Kwamla,
Children are not adults. We often tend to read too much into their innocence. Adult human social organization, in its various natural forms, is a survival adaptation as it is with all other social animals.
In-group social cooperation and out-group competition seem baked in to the species. Racism appears to be the manifestation of these natural tendencies applied to our modern world, where diverse peoples who would otherwise never encounter one another are brought together by modern transportation.
In the absence of racism you’ll find tribalism. In the absence of tribalism you’ll find clannism. Etc etc. I’m not saying that racism ought to be lauded, but rather that we should be honest with ourselves that ingrouping and outgrouping of all types are natural to the species.
Racism is but one manifestation of that, and not an evil inorganic construct that perniciously arose one day and despite our best efforts has not yielded to extinguishment.
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**Substitute those words again!!!**
I’m not arguing against the fact that many people favour whom they consider to be ‘their own kind’.
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***I’m not saying that racism ought to be lauded, but rather that we should be honest with ourselves that ingrouping and outgrouping of all types are natural to the species. ***
@RG
I’m not a history student but the root of this ingrouping and outgrouping that you refer to always seems to be exploitation of one group by the other. So I’m not sure if racism is natural to our species. In this experiment until brownies were told that blueys were different, there was no problem between the two groups.
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@Randy
Statements of the previous kind you’ve made are littered throughout the entirety of this blog. They are just assumptions, beliefs, conjecture (racists ones. Yes) but thats all they can ever amount to. This is the number one reason why you’re unable to substantiate any of it. I don’t expect any of that to change anytime soon here.
In fact most of what you say has as much validity as stating Cats are naturally racist against dogs!!!
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@anglesanddimensions
Basically. This is learned behaviour. The question is where or who did they learn this from?
Of course Randy will just argue its the development of natural intrinsic human behaviour.
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Kwamla,
The existence of clannism and tribalism persists to the modern era. I’m surprised that the idea would prove controversial to anyone. Examples are readily found in India, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, and indigenous peoples of South America to name but a few.
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Perhaps it might assist you Randy to re-read this same argument your attempting to bring up again here.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/racism-is-unnatural/
Your not exactly saying anything new as usual!!!
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Kwamla,
Abagond somewhat endorses my view on this. In the posting you reference, he writes:
Both the Jews and the Greeks divided the world into an us and a them, but neither used race to do it: the Jews used religion and the Greeks used language. The colour of your skin meant little to them.
In other words, evidence for the propensity for in-group and out-group designations dates from antiquity.
also,
Second, there is no reason for racism to be wired into our brains by evolution: coming across people of other races was rare till the last few thousand years.
All I’m doing is connecting the dots, and suggesting that for a species which strongly tends towards the formation of in-groups and out-groups of various types, developing such a distinction between people who are quite genetically different (with pronounced differences in appearance, culture, and history) doesn’t seem unexpected.
This is not the same as saying “racism is natural”.
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Randy:
I think the “us and them” thing is natural since it is found in most human societies. But the degree to which it is taken in America by whites is NOT natural but is sick and twisted. As I pointed out here:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/there-is-absolutely-nothing-wrong-with-being-black/
and here:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/what-this-blog-has-taught-me-about-white-people/
The way the brownies acted towards the blueys comes from a profound sense of insecurity that is rooted in the abusive way many white parents bring up their children:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/how-to-become-white/
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I’m surprised this hasn’t already been posted. I saw this several weeks ago.
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Damn embed didn’t work how I wanted. Anyways here is the second part of the series. Their are more videos, but these two relate directly to Abagond’s post
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In 2001 Jane Elliott said that while racism is not as bad as when she was 13 (in 1946) it is worse than when she was 50 (in 1983).
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Ran across this video of Jane Elliot attempting the experiment in Britian…those white British people gave a her a hard time — they fought it to the bitter end.
The white people in the middle represent the minority “blue-eyed” group and the non-white people on the outside represent the majority “brown-eyed” group.
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g wiz
documentary available here http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/a-class-divided/
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From article: “Some of the brownies were dyslexic, they had trouble reading, but then suddenly they could read and spell words they never could before! The blueys meanwhile became unsure of themselves and did poorly even though they had done just fine the day before.”
Good G-d.
This is telling! The more you tell people they are worthless, the more they believe it and it becomes true.
Even to this day, blacks are told in a thousand small ways that white is better, even from childhood and up until death. 😦 It is still going on today, practically unfettered.
Whites are seen as ‘normal’ and ‘the standard’ and even statistics are ‘compared to Caucasians’ as if being white is something to aspire to.
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Here is the full British show that Linda’s video comes from:
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MYHBrJIIFU)
Jane Elliott’s exercise works well in America, Australia and South Africa – not so well in Britain. Not because the British are not racist – but because the white people, blue-eyed and brown, stuck together! They resented being called racist and saw Elliott as an immoral bully. They did not cow to her authority but stuck together, so she was not able to break their spirits.
The same thing happened when they tried the Stanford Prison Experiment for British television – the guards were not able to break the spirit of the prisoners, who stuck together and revolted:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/the-stanford-prison-experiment/
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We need a Jane Elliott for today. Jane Elliott, was doing the work to fight racism. I have always admired her for that. I wonder if Tim Wise is brave enough to get in the faces of racist whites and confront them like Jane Elliott. I always thought she was a brave woman. I wonder did she get death threats for her work of fighting white supremacy?, I am curious to know how her work affected her personal life? Did she lose friends and did her family support her work? She wasn’t just talking about it, she was doing something. I can respect white people and anyone who is about dismantling white supremacy.
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@ Abagond: That demonic racist stronghold is hard to break. Jane Elliott is to be admired. That’s why the r-word is like a mortal wound to those it applies to.
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After watching a portion of the video, one might explain.
– she treats adults like children and curses in front for them
– she makes no bones about it as an exercise in racism
I think it would have been more effective if she had not let them in on it until the experiment was almost over. They needed the brown-eyed participants to gain more solidarity with each other.
But, something else about britain – the US, Australia and South Africa has gone through their racist upheavals and they admit that their society had a naked racist past. The UK has never admitted that.
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Oh God. As a gray-eyed person (“grayey?”), I hate to imagine where I would have been placed. With the blueys, maybe? Also, what about the greenies, or green-eyed kids?
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///… They resented being called racist and saw Elliott as an immoral bully. They did not cow to her authority but stuck together, so she was not able to break their spirits. ///
Exactly my thoughts. I hate bullies, even if they claim to have an honorable pretext to act like one.
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I don’t like to see people cry, but when I saw those blue-eyed people get a smidgen of what brown-eyed people go through all the time, I wanted to pity them. However, their smug attitude made me change my mind.
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@Jeff Elberfeld: Most racist hate being called out on their b.s. I have much respect for Jane Elliott and her work. I wish there were more Jane Elliotts.
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Well Mary, if you prefer to have more bullies in this world, what does that say about you?
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@Jeff Elberfeld: Back at you, i know what your statement says about you, you are one who uphold white supremacy.
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So being against bullying makes a person a white supremacist.
Thanks Mary. I am learning a lot on this blog.
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