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PSYCHOLOGY
The Problem With Jane Elliott’s “One Race” Theory
The good, the bad, and the ugly about the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes experiment and its creator
Jane Elliott, an educator, school teacher, and diversity consultant, has become well-known for her anti-racism work. Her claim to scholarly fame was her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes experiment, which she conducted for the first time in an all-white Ohio classroom on April 5, 1968, one day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. As a diversity consultant, Elliott has repeated his exercise numerous times. Companies like General Electric, Exxon, AT&T, and IBM hired her for training sessions. Even the Department of Education and Postal Service retained Elliott for diversity training. To understand the impact of her work and a key flaw in her “one race” theory, we should review her infamous study.
First, Elliott divided the classroom into two groups, one reserved for students with blue eyes and the other with brown eyes. Then, she told the class that blue-eyed children were superior and provided them extra privileges, like skipping to the front of the lunch line, receiving extra portions, and having more play time and attention from the teacher. She encouraged them to play only with other blue-eyed students and ignore brown-eyed students, who didn’t receive these privileges and were more likely to be punished. As with any system of oppression, there needed to be a legitimizing myth to sustain it. So, Elliott told students that blue-eyed students had a biological advantage, making them more intelligent with a greater learning capacity. On the flip side, the brown-eyed kids were stereotyped as “shifty, dumb, and lazy.” How did this experiment turn out?
As predicted, the group of blue-eyed children began behaving poorly, demonstrating bossy, arrogant behavior. In contrast, the brown-eyed children behaved more timidly and subserviently and isolated themselves in their free time. A week later, Elliott switched groups, giving the brown-eyed students more privileges and attention. Afterward, students wrote essays about their experiences, and members of both groups agreed that being treated differently based on their eye color was unjust. Their essays were published in the Riceville Recorder in an article…
