1.
The brown eye experiment that we watched during class provoked an array of
emotions inside of me. I am the type to think that racism does not occur around me, but I
believe it does occur throughout the United States and the world. I believe it especially
occurs in the Criminal Justice field and there are statistics to back up my claim. Referring
to the experiment performed by Jane Elliot it proved the same thing that her experiment
in 1968 did; it proved discrimination does exist. In Jane Elliot’s first experiment she
involved elementary school children that she knew grew up in the small town and were
inherently racist towards African Americans. She stated that you do not realize racism
until you experience it. The same experiment she later did on college students proved to
have more drastic effects. One girl even tried to give up and leave because she could not
handle being talked to and judged the way she was. Elliot responded to the girl by
explaining that you cannot escape racism as an African American and that you cannot
just give up and walk out. African Americans are discriminated against every day and
Elliot portrayed that by dividing people into two groups: brown eye vs. blue eye. The
brown -eyed people subjected the blue-eyed people to discrimination and they were
looked down upon and called names just because of their eye color. This illustrated how
whites looked down on blacks just because of their skin color. After the experiment the
college kids understood racism more than they had in the past, because they were apart of
it and felt what it felt like to be singled out just because of something they were born
with. Elliot was able to effectively display the sociological effects of racism on the blue-
eyed group because many of them broke down and could not handle to negative remarks
from the brown eyes. Elliot is judged because of her practices but only because she has
an effective way to prove racism exists.