Blue Eyes / Brown Eyes
The Background
In 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, teacher Jane Elliott carried out what became one of the most famous exercises in social psychology. In her all-White classroom in Iowa, she divided pupils by eye colour. Blue-eyed children were told they were smarter and more deserving; brown-eyed children were told the opposite.
The results were immediate. Children in the “superior” group became arrogant and dismissive. Those in the “inferior” group became withdrawn and performed worse academically.
Today, forcing children to play the roles of “superior” or “inferior,” even for a day, would be unacceptable due to the emotional risk it carries. Yet the lesson it revealed was undeniable: prejudice is not innate. It can be taught, absorbed, and acted on in the space of a single day.
Elliott didn’t stop with children. Versions of the experiment were later recreated with adults, including in the UK. Channel 4’s The Event: How Racist Are You? (2009) placed volunteers from different backgrounds into the exercise. The findings were equally striking; grown adults, given minimal justification, still internalised and enacted superiority and inferiority almost immediately.
The experiment exposed a brutal truth: once social permission is given, people will act out prejudice, often at the expense of others.
The Context
Fast forward to the UK today. Anti-Islam rhetoric has gained momentum in politics, the media, and public discourse. Muslims are frequently portrayed as a problem to be solved, a threat to be contained, or outsiders who do not belong.
The parallels with Elliott’s classroom are stark. When society signals that one group is suspect or lesser, behaviours shift. Casual prejudice hardens into exclusion. What begins as rhetoric seeps into everyday life: suspicious glances, assumptions about values, jokes that sting, decisions that sideline, and sometimes even violence.
This isn’t just about Islamophobia. It’s a blueprint for how prejudice operates. When authority figures legitimise stereotypes, those attitudes spread. And when left unchallenged, they become the “common sense” of the day.
Why this matters in the workplace
If Elliott’s experiment showed how quickly children can learn prejudice, workplaces show how quietly adults can sustain it. Anti-Muslim bias in recruitment, promotion, and day-to-day culture is well documented. But the lesson is bigger than that.
Workplaces are microcosms of society. If exclusionary narratives are on the rise outside, they will surface inside too, whether in who gets opportunities, who is seen as “a good fit,” or who has to work twice as hard to be believed.
For HR leaders and senior professionals, this means:
Interrogate “fit”: Are hiring and promotion decisions shaped by assumptions about who belongs?
Challenge normalisation: When stereotypes about faith, race, or culture go unchallenged, they gain legitimacy.
Model allyship: Silence can be read as agreement. Leaders must be vocal in pushing back against bias, even when it feels uncomfortable.
Jane Elliott’s classroom reminds us that prejudice is a learned behaviour. Which means it can also be unlearned. But only if we are willing to confront it head-on, challenge the narratives that give it cover, and create workplaces where difference is not just tolerated, but respected.
