Jane Elliott quotes are a great way to get in touch with the truth. She is an anti-racist educator and her works help us understand how systematic racism thrives in our culture.
Her famous exercise, the Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, has helped many students understand how racist people can be. It has been a staple in social studies education and is widely known around the world.
She is an activist, an educator and a role model for children of all backgrounds. She has spoken out on racial issues throughout her career, including appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Red Table Talk.
In 1968, after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Jane Elliott paired her third-grade class in Iowa to do an exercise about racial discrimination called the “Blue Eyes Brown Eyes” experiment. This was a controversial practice that mirrored how minorities were treated in the 1960s, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
When she started the experiment, she asked her students if they had ever been discriminated against based on their eyes. Then she separated the brown-eyed students from the blue-eyed ones.
After a short time, the brown-eyed students began to be rewarded and given privileges. The blue-eyed students started to feel disadvantaged and were ostracized.
After watching the experiment, Elliot says she felt a deep sadness. She says that she wanted to make sure her students could see how racial prejudice could affect them. She said she wanted to teach them that they were not superior to others, even if they had a blue-eye.