On an ordinary spring morning in 1968, a quiet classroom in rural Iowa became the stage for one of the boldest lessons in history. Prejudice, power, and empathy were about to be tested by a single teacher’s experiment.

When news broke that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in April 1968, a small-town teacher Jane Elliott in Iowa decided to turn grief into a lesson. Her third-grade class walked in confused about why someone would kill the man they had recently celebrated as their Hero of the Month. Elliott wanted them to discover the concept of racism for themselves, so she put them through a bold experiment. The experiment, popularly known as the “Blue-Eyed, Brown-Eyed” exercise, demonstrated that discrimination is incredibly easy to learn. Elliott pitted children of one eye color against the other and watched the kind and thoughtful kids turn into cruel, discriminating little people within just 15 minutes.

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Day One: The Blue-Eyed Privilege

She told her class that blue-eyed children were smarter, cleaner, and better. They got extra recess time, second helpings at lunch, and front-row seats. Brown-eyed kids had to wear collars and were told they could not drink from the same fountain.

By midday, the class had transformed. Blue-eyed children teased their classmates, calling them “lazy” and “stupid.” Brown-eyed kids became quiet, withdrawn, and made more mistakes on tests. In a few hours, prejudice had taken root, completely invented yet completely real.

Day Two: The Reversal

The next day, Elliott flipped the rules. Now brown-eyed children were “superior.” The same pattern repeated instantly, but in reverse. Those who had been victims of discrimination the day before now became its enforcers.

Elliott’s lesson revealed a striking truth: discrimination is not born, it is taught.

Children, unburdened by ideology, mirrored the biases handed to them. They did not need years of conditioning, only permission.

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The Experiment’s Legacy

The film “A Class Divided” captured this transformation and later became a landmark in anti-bias education. The footage shocked adults: the cruelty, the anxiety, and how easily kindness could turn into superiority when power was assigned by something as random as eye color. Today, the exercise is studied in psychology and ethics courses worldwide as a living demonstration of social learning, group identity, and systemic bias.

The same lesson continues to echo across the world today. While Elliott’s students learned prejudice through eye color, modern societies replay the same pattern through race, religion, and nationality. Immigrants, especially Asians, Indians, and Latinos in the United States, are often told, “Go back to your country.” The words sound simple, but they carry centuries of exclusion and fear. They reduce a person’s entire identity to foreignness, as if belonging has a skin tone or an accent.

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans faced harassment and violence because of where the virus was believed to have come from. Latino families have long been stereotyped as “illegal” or “job stealers.” Indian immigrants are sometimes mocked for their accents or told they are “taking over tech.” Each insult draws from the same false idea Jane Elliott exposed: that difference equals danger, and that some people naturally deserve more respect than others.

Why It Matters Today

Understanding Elliott’s experiment helps us see how quickly those ideas can take hold. Her students believed blue eyes made them better because an authority figure said so. In the same way, societies learn prejudice when leaders, media, or history books repeat narratives that divide “us” from “them.” The phrase “Go back to your country” works because it activates that same ancient reflex — to protect one’s group by excluding another.

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But the truth is the opposite: difference does not weaken a society, it strengthens it. Immigration builds economies, expands culture, and forces communities to confront what equality really means. Elliott’s classroom showed that empathy can be learned just as easily as hate. If prejudice begins with a story, then compassion must begin with a counter-story — one that recognizes everyone’s right to belong.

Fun Fact

After the experiment, many students grew up to say that that single day shaped their lifelong understanding of empathy and equality. Some even became civil rights advocates.