Friday, April 14, 2017

The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment

How can you can lower kids' test scores, self-esteem, get them angry, gas-lit stupid, humiliated, and awful in just one day?

Discriminate!

Turns out throwing shade is a skill children can pick up after being told simply "Brown eyed kids are stupid, Blue eyed kids are smart!" They will do the rest.

What do the cute little tyrants say about how it feels to treat others as less than? "I felt like a king, like I ruled the brown eyes, like I was better than them. Happy!" If that makes you a little sick, you may not want read more about the famous Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment. Creator Jane Elliott, to this day, has grown adults come up to her and talk about what awful suffering they experienced at the hands of her and their peers. Those are the ones, IMHO, that don't get it. "It" is that many people, are discriminated against that way, or worse daily. Not just once in their life. Every day. Luckily though, hearing her original students talk most of her original students did get it, and got to the level of empathy required to be a good person.




The same area of our brains light up when we are sexist, racist, homophobic as when we are creatively stumped! Under pressure these spill out even easier. While I love RuPaul's Drag Race, one competition involves grown men picking on each other to the delight of RuPaul. What do they immediately attack when instructed to be mean? Race & physical appearance.