Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Experiment

The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, third grade school teacher, Jane Elliot decided to do an in-class experiment with her all-White class. Elliot divided the class amongst eye color to exhibit institutionalized racism. According to Week 12 lecture, institutionalized racism established laws, custom, and practices that systematically reflect and produce racial inequalities in society-despite it it is intended or not. If your eyes were blue, you were superior and if your eyes were brown, then you were inferior. Many of the kids were fine at first but after a while, the kids began to clash with one another over their eye color. One little boy is heard saying that he performed poorly because he had brown eyes. This experiment was reminiscent to the Jim Crow laws. Blacks began to feel inferior to their White counterparts because they did not have the same advantages they had.