Videos

EYE OF THE STORM (ABC News) - (1970)

"Eye of the Storm sends as powerful a message today as it did when filmed back in the 1960's. Through the eyes of elementary school children, the video depicts serious issues around prejudice and discrimination that adults face today ... has played an integral part in delivering our message of diversity and inclusion to associates nationwide." - Robert Jarrett, Bank of America

A wake up call for all ages, this best-selling program teaches about prejudices using a dramatic framework. It provides an examination of the realities of discrimination as experienced by actual students in the classroom of third grade teacher, Jane Elliott, whose demonstration shows how quickly children can succumb to discriminatory behavior. The video shows how easily prejudicial attitudes can lead to frustration, broken friendships and vicious behavior. Thus begins the new famous blue-eyed, brown-eyed exercise.

Produced by ABC News, this was the first video to document Jane Elliott's courageous undertaking. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., her, all-white, all-Christian third grade class hungered to understand the significance Dr. King's mission. Living in the homogenous farming community of Riceville, Iowa, many of Ms. Elliott's students harbored subtle and not so subtle prejudices despite the fact that many of them had never even seen a black man before. So where did these prejudices come from? And, more importantly, how could she make them understand how arbitrary and unfair they were?

This video chronicles her, now famous, exercise where she divides her class based upon the color of their eyes and bestows upon one group privileges and on the other group impediments. Needless to say, her eye color exercise created quite a storm at the time. But her work endures to this day and this ABC video, nearly 35 years later, still has a great deal to teach us.

Spanish subtitles available.

A CLASS DIVIDED - (1984)

Filmed 15 years after Eye of the Storm, this sequel explores what the children in Jane Elliott's daring classroom exercise learned about discrimination and how it still affects them today. Ms. Elliott meets with some of her former students to analyze the exercise in prejudice and its impact on their lives.

In 1968, the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, the students in a small third-grade class came to school confused. King had been the "Hero of the Month" the previous February. They couldn't understand why he had been killed. Their teacher, Jane Elliott, knew that she would have to try to help them understand the enormity of his death. She decided to try a daring classroom exercise on the meaning of discrimination. What she taught those children and the effects her lesson had on them throughout their lives are explored in A CLASS DIVIDED.

First broadcast in 1985, A CLASS DIVIDED was hailed as a "riveting, and potentially life-changing hour" and was honored with the Sidney Hillman Prize Award and an Emmy Award for outstanding informational programming. Over the years, A CLASS DIVIDED has become a classic -- a powerful exploration into the nature of prejudice which has been used in classrooms, prisons, corporations and many other governmental and educational settings.

This award-winning documentary is enhanced by a comprehensive Trainer's Guide applicable to all ages.

• Sidney Hillman Prize Award
• Emmy Award

BLUE-EYED (1996)

BLUE-EYED offers viewers a chance to watch a full-length workshop with America's most dynamic diversity trainer, Jane Elliott.

Elliott's exercise, initiated in 1968 as a ground breaking experiment in anti-racist training, has been featured on Today, the Tonight show, Donahue, Oprah, ABC News and PBS' Frontline. Elliott believes, "BLUE-EYED is by far the most comprehensive and useful video on my work available; it sums up 28 years of experience in schools, universities and corporations."

Elliott contends that "A person who has been raised and socialized in America has been conditioned to be a racist... We live in two countries, one black and one white." In contrast to the more usual encounter group strategy, the feisty Elliott believes it's important for whites to experience the emotional impact of discrimination for themselves.

In BLUE-EYED, we join a group of 40 teachers, police, school administrators and social workers in Kansas City - blacks, Hispanics, whites, women and men. The blue-eyed members are subjected to pseudo-scientific explanations of their inferiority, culturally biased IQ tests and blatant discrimination. In just a few hours under Elliott's withering regime, we watch grown professionals become despondent and distracted, stumbling over the simplest commands.

Jane Elliott's approach is especially relevant today. It demonstrates irrefutably that even without juridical discrimination, hate speech, lowered expectations and dismissive behavior can have devastating effects on minority achievement. Black members of the blue-eyed group forcefully remind whites that they undergo similar stresses, not just for a few hours in a controlled experiment, but every day of their lives. And Elliott points out that sexism, homophobia and ageism work in the same way.

Back at her Iowa home, Elliott reflects upon how the simple classroom exercise she devised the day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's assassination has transformed her life. After her experiment got national television coverage, she recalls, townspeople made threatening phone calls, beat and spit at her children and boycotted her parents' coffee shop, eventually forcing it out of business.

Clips from her original classes and interviews with former students confirm that Jane Elliott's workshops make them permanently more empathetic and sensitive to the problem of racism. Counselors, student program administrators, corporate trainers and psychologists agree: BLUE-EYED is a film every American needs to experience.

THE ANGRY EYE with Jane Elliott - (2001)

Hailed as "a fascinating revisit" to the famous 1968 Blue-Eyes/Brown-Eyes Exercise in discrimination by Jane Elliott, this film documents the effects of racial prejudice with startling force and emotional intensity. Taking pigmentation - in this case, eye color - as an arbitrary dividing line, Jane Elliott builds a microcosm of contemporary American society, compelling her more privileged blue-eyed participants to live in another world for the longest two and a half hours of their lives.

THE ANGRY EYE skillfully interweaves the young adults in the exercise with post-session interviews that show the participants struggling to come to terms with their recent experiences. Through the intense and often painful emotions that the exercise provokes shines a hope that, someday, we will overcome the capricious lines that divide us - if only we can learn to accept and appreciate our differences.

This award-winning documentary is enhanced by a comprehensive Trainer's Guide applicable to all ages.

• Audience Favorite, Palm Springs International
• CINE Golden Eagle, Public Affairs
• Chris Award, Columbus Film and Video Festival
• The New York Festival's Gold World Medal
• The Axiem Award
• The Telly Award

THE STOLEN EYE with Jane Elliott - (2002)

Jane Elliott's latest - and perhaps most moving - film documenting her universal Blue-Eyes/Brown-Eyes Exercise in discrimination.

Imagine that you had been forcibly removed from your parents and raised never knowing your true heritage -- all because of the color of your skin. The White government wanted to make your entire race extinct -- just because you weren't born White. If you lived in Australia and were Aboriginal, this was your fate and you became part of the "Stolen Generation." How would it be if for one day the tables were turned and the Whites could be made to feel what it was like to be part of this "Stolen Generation "?

America's foremost diversity educator Jane Elliott did just that, as she conducted her world famous Blue-Eyes/ Brown-Eyes Exercise in discrimination in Australia with the Whites and Aborigines. Watch the astonishing and thoughtful results of this exercise.

American educators and diversity trainers may find that removal to a remote landscape opens up discussion of oppression here in the United States.

A must-buy for Jane Elliott admirers.