Blue Eyes Vs. Brown Eye Stereotypes

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Blue Eyes vs Brown Eyes Essay On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was shot. (This Day In History: April 4) This event moved Jane Elliot in such away, that she felt that she needed to teach her 3rd grade class about discrimination. One would think that after watching the video that she had in mind King's I Have A Dream speech when he stated, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." (King, 1963). Jane Ellicott's experiment demonstrates that simply creating two groups where one group is judged to be superior to the other simply on the basis of their eye color would cause an outcome where children in one group …show more content…

In the first she made the blue eyed children the superior children and the brown eyed children the inferior children. She did this first by requiring the brown eyed children to wear a color. She then made up rules that favored the blue eyed children over the brown eyed children. She then further ascribed positive values on to the blue eyed children and spoke negatively of the brown eyed children and encouraged the blue eyed children to follow her lead. She then later reversed the roles of the children. The effect of treating one group of children superior to the others was clear in that the children who were treated superior performed better than those of the inferior group and the superior group also behaved better. This same effect is demonstrated in our society where children who are treated as superior tend to do better in school, find better jobs, and live better lives. Whereas, the children were selected to be in the inferior group acted out more and did not do as well scholastically. This is a very similar effect that we see today with minorities, where they do not perform as well in school and tend to find themselves more often than not in trouble with the

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