In an exercise to demonstrate racism, a teacher separated students into groups with brown and blue eyes. She verbally abused the blue-eyed students while the brown-eyed students watched. Some blue-eyed students cried or left, experiencing what African Americans face daily through racism. The author believes the powerful exercise opened their eyes to how prevalent and unconscious racism remains in society, showing that people are not truly "color blind."

1. Christa Navy
FYS 100
Harold Blanco
Brown Eyes Experiment
In this experiment, a lady separated a class in two groups: one with brown eyes and one with
blue eyes. They put the people with blue eyes in the center of the room and the woman started verbally
abusing them, while the people with brown eyes sat outside the middle and watched it all take place.
Some teens were so hurt by this that they even started crying or walked out of the room. This activity
was done to make a point about the racism in our society. It calls to attention the negative attitudes that
are portrayed to African Americans and how, while the people with blue eyes were only being
discriminated about during that exercise, African Americans experience that discrimination for their
entire lives, and can’t escape from it.
I believe this exercise was useful and it even opened my eyes as I learned that racism is still
prevalent in our society. People may say that they don’t see race or that they are “color blind,” but this
exercise made it so that we understood that that was not the case. After watching this video, I am more
aware of the things that I say and what I do and how even sometimes I catch myself being racist without
even thinking about it.