Jane Elliott is an American former third-grade schoolteacher, anti-racism, feminist and LGBT activist and educator. She is best known for her “Blue eyes-Brown eyes” exercise initially devised to teach third graders about racial prejudice.
Elliott was born in 1933 in Riceville, Iowa on her family’s farm. She attended a one-room rural schoolhouse before continuing her education at the University of Northern Iowa, graduating with a degree in teaching. Elliott took a job teaching 3rd and 4th grade at a small, all-white, all-christian school in Riceville.
In 1968, the day after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, Elliott taught a controversial lesson with the intention of teaching her class about racial prejudice. The lesson began with a discussion on racism, but as her pupils had grown up in a town where they did not see often black people, the discussion was unsuccessful. Elliott asked the children if they would like to learn about what segregation would be like, and they agreed. She separated the class into blue eyes and brown eyes, and on the first day the blue-eyed children were told they were superior. Brown collars were given to brown-eyed children to easily identify them as the ‘minority’ group and the blue-eyed children were given extra-privileges including second helpings at lunch, extra time at recess and seats at the front of the classroom. Elliott encouraged the blue-eyed children to only play with others with blue-eyes and would use negative associations to the brown-eyed children to strengthen the idea that they were inferior. The blue-eyed children began acting superior, arrogant and bossy towards the brown-eyed children, and in turn the brown-eyed children transformed into isolated, less academic pupils regardless of their previous behaviour. The exercise was then reversed on the next day, so that the children were able to experience both sides of prejudice.
Elliott’s exercise and the compositions the children wrote following the exercise were printed in the Riceville Recorder under the title “How Discrimination Feels.” The story then being picked up by the Associated Press, and its success led to Elliott appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Her appearance proved controversial with one letter asking “How dare you try this cruel exercise out on white children? Black children grow up accustomed to such behaviour, but white children, there’s no way they could possibly understand it. It’s cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage.” The letter seemed to confirming the importance of the exercise itself in teaching the importance of understanding your privilege and the effects of prejudice.
Elliott continued to appear on television shows, and began using the exercise as part of professional training days for adults. In 1970, she staged her experience to adult educators at a White House Conference on Children and Youth. That same year, ABC produced a documentary about Elliott entitled “The Eye of the Storm” which increased her fame.
Elliott is now known as the “foremother of diversity training”, and her blue eyes-brown eyes exercise is used as the basis of the majority of diversity training. In the mid 1980’s, Elliott left teaching so that she could focus on diversity training, and has provided training for General Electric, Exxon, AT&T, and IBM, as well as lectured to the FBI, IRS, US Navy, US Department of Education, and US Postal Service. Elliott has encountered a strong resistance to her exercise, in one instance having a knife pulled on her by a young white male who was taking part in it and being spoken about by a superintendent of schools who said that “If you don’t get that bitch out of town we’re going to shoot her.” In addition to the blue eyes-brown eyes exercise, Elliott also uses a culturally biased test with adults which tests the participants against material that they are unfamiliar with. For example, white participants are asked about life in the black community in the 50’s and 60’s so that they can get a hint of what it’s like for those who encounter a white washed history.
Elliott continues to deliver diversity training, and is the recipient of the National Mental Health Association Award for Excellence in Education. She has been a guest lecturer at numerous colleges and universities internationally and has appeared on a variety of television shows including The Today Show, Tonight with Johnny Carson, Donahue, and the Oprah Winfrey show. She has been the subject of several television documentaries, including ABC’s “The Eye of the Storm” which won the Peabody Award, “A Class Divided” which investigated the long-term impact of the exercise and “The Eye of the Beholder”, both of the latter were the recipients of an Emmy Award.