Jane Elliott, the internationally acclaimed diversity champion, conducts her 'blue-eyed/brown- eyed' exercise in Glasgow in 2003 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. Similarly, 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 now 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.
