The Eye Of The Storm Experiment

Despite popular belief, judgement based on the appearance of someone else’s skin, hair, and/or facial structure is still very prevalent. In 1970, in small town Riceville, Iowa, Mrs. Elliot decided to present an experiment she had started previously with a third grade class after the shooting of Martin Luther King Jr. Mrs. Elliot, had always presented the topic of racism in her classes, as she felt it was important for her students to truly understand what was occurring. The day after the wrongful killing of MLK Jr., she said she wanted to start an experiment with her class because the predominant white male adult newscasters, spoke of the African American culture as if they were a whole different type of human. To her the experiment went well,
Almost instantly, the blue-eyed children began to say the reason the brown-eyed students were slower finding pages in their books was due to the fact that they had blue eyes. The quick change of heart these young children had was shocking. Furthermore, the poor brown eyed children felt so subjected to the bullying that they did not even feel comfortable enough to play on the equipment at recess and two boys got into a fist fight because of the harsh words said. Following that day, Mrs. Elliot decided to reverse the roles, now those with brown eyes were superior to those with blue. Again, it was shown that the children quickly became nasty, viscous and discriminative. It was heartbreaking to see how quickly an innocent child would conform to believe a concept that someone they trusted had presented to them. Lastly, Mrs. Elliot even did a small experiment with oppression of women. Once again, the children completely transformed to believe and support the ideals that they had been presented
While it can be very aggressive, I feel that it showed the children how people not of the white race must feel in those types of situations. It is true that we as whites can never know exactly how those of a different race feel, this experiment at least showed the children how oppressing and hurtful it can be to not be the majority race. To support my opinion, the reunion of the former third grade students shows that they took these ideals taught by Mrs. Elliot to heart and stuck up for people being wrongfully spoken of or judged. Conversely, after watching this short film, it makes me wonder why more schools do not go about teaching the topic in a similar way. It is so painful to realize that I am so sheltered in terms of what I have been taught by racism. It raises the question, if I and other children my age would have been taught this way, would judgement based on the appearance of someone else’s skin, hair, and/or facial structure truly be a thing of the