An Amazing Social Science Experiment in Racism

The 51-minute video, "brown eye blue eye, Jane Elliott", describes a social science experiment on college student volunteers. The students didn't know what the experiment was going to be. If you can't stomach the whole thing or don't have the time, I highly recommend watching just the first 10:05. You can guess how this monster will play itself out once you understand the protocol and what it is intended to do.

This is shocking. I would never have guessed that this could be done on the basis of ethics or lack of informed consent today. I suspect this experiment would be illegal today. If it is a legal, recent experiment, that's amazing.

My thanks to tttbnr for bringing the brown eye blue eye, Jane Elliott video to my attention.

The experiment also appears in a Frontline broadcast. The broadcast shows this lesson in racism being taught to adults such as prison guards. It appears to me to be probably the single best way to get the point of what white privilege really means across to people (like me) who do not fully understand the reality of the concept.