86 minutes, color $295
The Essential Blue-Eyed is a shortened training version of Blue-Eyed, Jane Elliot's now-famous exercise in which she “teaches” people to discriminate against each other in a matter of minutes based on eye color. Elliott first developed the activity as an elementary school teacher looking for a creative way to address racism in her classroom after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. She later took the experience into the corporate world, building a reputation that led to appearances on Oprah Winfrey, Today, and Tonight.
Director Bertram Verhaag compiled the “essential” footage from several of Elliot's workshops into a 50-minute film, adding a 36-minute debriefing segment to help trainers process the experience with their students or workshop participants.
Essential Blue-Eyed reminds us how easily prejudices are learned and cycled and how easily we are persuaded to buy into a worldview that privileges us. To further illustrate this point, the film exposes how uncomfortable usually-privileged people become when removed from that privilege for only a short amount of time. This can be a powerful lesson for teacher education students who become frustrated and despondent when their place of power or biases are confronted—when they feel the slightest discomfort. As Elliott's activity reveals, if I am so discomforted from a few minutes of loss of privilege, I must consider the experiences of some of my students who effectively cross borders every time they step into my classroom.