Caste, Education and the Job Market: Blocked by Caste: Economic Discrimination in Modern India edited by Sukhadeo Thorat and Katherine Newman

I n 1968, in the United States, a small town schoolteacher called Jane Elliott in Iowa conducted a unique experiment. The foremost leader of the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr, had been assassinated the day before in Memphis by a white supremacist. Elliott wanted to bring home the message of racism to her third grade students, very few whom had ever met an African-American. The teacher asked her class what they knew about blacks. Her class responded with stereotypes – “Negroes are dumb” and “could not hold jobs”. So Elliott suggested an exercise. She divided the class into two groups, blue-eyed people and brown-eyed people, while declaring that the blue-eyed were better than the browneyed. Blue-eyed people “were cleaner… more civilised…And they were smarter than brown-eyed people”. “Blue-eyed people can go out during recess, but brown-eyed people must stay indoors.” “The brown-eyed people must not drink from the drinking fountain, they must use the paper cups.” Students first resisted this division. But Jane Elliott countered these with pseudo-scientific explanations for her actions. As notions of equality fell away, blue-eyed people became assertive and domineering towards their browneyed classmates, who slumped in their seats, eyes on the floor. The next day, the teacher reversed the roles, and behaviour switched as well.