Eye Opener

2004

50min

Jane Elliott, an internationally acclaimed diversity champion, conducts her Blue-eyed, Brown-eyed Exercise in Glasgow, Scotland with thirty-five volunteers from across the United Kingdom. Many of the blue-eyed participants were shocked at their own reactions to what for many of them was the new experience of being powerless. Many of the brown-eyed participants were shocked at how easy they found it to go along with what was happening even though they knew it was wrong. They all have a better understanding of the systematic nature of racism as well as the awareness of how their actions or inaction can reinforce and perpetuate it. Eye Opener shows this exercise is as relevant and necessary in the UK today as it was in Riceville, Iowa in 1968.