Eye Color Vs. Racism
With everything that has been happening in the world during this past year, what do you think the biggest issue would be? Would your mind go straight to the global pandemic? Racism? Riots? Politics? Or are all of these a result of another? Though minds and hearts have been insanely heavy and full this year in positive and negative ways- I think there is a bigger issue that we keep continuing to look past. We need change in the world that will bring us all together and the biggest change we need to make is moving towards a resolution towards racism.
To Jane Elliot who is the creator/ director of the “Blue eye versus Brown eye” experiment, racism has been her main concern since Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination. I brought up this topic to many adults and all of them seemed to wonder, “How could a white woman teach about racism?”. This is a very valid question and I have wondered the same thing. Since white people are not normally the target of racism, how is it that this woman is making such an impact on thousands of peoples lives when she does this experiment? Elliot has constructed this experiment for over 50 years. She does this experiment in front of multiple different ages, races, and genders. Each time she has gotten a different result based on the crowd she was dealing with.
Some may wonder what being separated by eye color is going to accomplish. What no one knows until after the experiment is how passionate Elliot is about this. She has taken the time to nearly perfect each step and lesson in this experiment because she wants others to truly grasp and learn what other races go through. In her experiment, the blue eyed people were the
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ones being treated as lesser than. They were talked to aggressively, told what to do/how to do it, and if they were asked to do a task and it wasn’t done the way Elliot wanted, they would have done it until she was satisfied. This would all happen while the brown eyed people just sat and watched, they were very rarely spoken to and they seemed to find the experiment entertaining because they weren’t the ones being yelled at.
After watching multiple videos of her experiment with different groups, it led me to wonder what would happen if we did this experiment today. Would it be allowed? Is it too
“harsh” for some high school students to handle? Will the students even try to retain the information? How would the students handle the situation given to them? Are people too sensitive now-a-days for “tough love” sessions as such?
I initially watched this video in my SUPA Sociology class and we had a discussion about it. My class was asked the question, “Do you think we could do this experiment at our school in the future?” and everyone’s answer was no. Unfortunately I was one of the people that said no because I do not think that this exact experiment would be able to perform properly in a school like ours, or in any school these days for that matter. What changed within the past 50 years to make this experiment not work properly?
Back when this experiment was first being shared, there weren’t as many distractions as there is now. People are too caught up in their phones and social media to actually pay attention to a valuable life lesson. Now more than ever we are glued to our electronic devices because we are so disconnected from our social/ outside world. We also are so quick to believe the things we read on social media because “who would lie behind a screen?” Everyone would. For
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entertainment. Instead of doing useless things to pass time on our phones, we should take the time to actually learn a thing or two about what’s going on around us.
Lately I have been paying more attention to the news so I can be updated on the world around me. The trial for George Floyd’s murder has been all over the news and the ploice officer that took his life was charged with 3rd degree murder, but there are other sentances that are added to that as well. He was handcuffed and pinned to the ground by the officers knee for over 9 minutes. With the use of my phone, I was able to see the video for myself but couldn’t bear to finish it. I personally do not know what 3rd degree murder is, but my phone does! The little computer knows everything, so I’m really glad I was able to use it to learn something useful. I learned that 3rd degree murder is when a person commits and action that they do not mean to intentionally kill the person they’re doing that action to, but they die anyway.
After George Floyd’s death, it seemed like one bad thing happened after another. This summer was the reason I noticed all of the horrible things going on in the world and I finally opened my eyes. I’ve always known about racism, but when all of the riots and movements started is when I started to notice the shift in our country. The division was noticeable to everyone. Since I personally do not experience racism on a daily basis, I was very naive about
the matter. It broke my heart to see people fight for their basic human rights and having to convince people that their lives mattered. After watching this experiment it made me think and put myself in others shoes. It helped me get a glimpse of the pain and anger some others feel.
The events that took place this summer remind me of the event that changed Jane Elliot’s life, Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination. Since his death was what sparked her experiment, it makes me wonder what her thoughts on all of this are. Is someone else in Elliot’s boat about this
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topic because of the events that took place over the summer? Is someone going to continue her experiment after she retires from it?
It’s very disheartening that racism is still a topic of discussion in this day and age but all my generation can do is change it, grow from it and learn from it. My generation will be able to work hard enough for this to not be an issue anymore. There is absolutely no reason for racism to still rule people's lives because we are all the same.We will not repeat history and we need to move forward.
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Work Cited
"NPHC, Jane Elliott Invite Eyes of all Colors to Challenge Racism." University Wire, Nov 16, 2015. ProQuest, https://libezproxy-syr-edu.libezproxy2.syr.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.libezproxy2.syr.edu/wire-feeds/nphc-jane-elliott-invite-eyes-all-colors/docview/1733361696/se-2?accountid=14214.
Bibliography
https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd.html.
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