Shades of Brown: The Official Biography of Jane Elliott and the Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes Exercise

by Todd M Mealy

What if, by eight years old, children could possess the mechanism to disrupt prejudicial tendencies? That is an argument posited by Jane Elliott for more than five decades. She initially made the claim the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.—first with elementary school students in Riceville, Iowa, then with adults in seminar rooms full of corporate, correctional, educational, and military personnel. Elliott is famous for placing learners of all ages into a manufactured society of hate, oppression, and in-group synchrony. In Shades of Brown, historian Todd M. Mealy offers a fascinating, never-before-told reconstruction of Elliott’s life as a child on a Depression-era farm in Iowa to her rise as one of the world’s leading voices on the anatomy of prejudice.

Loved and despised by millions, this schoolteacher invested most of her life trying to expose the root cause of ignorance. Racism is not new. It will likely never end. However, in 1968, Elliott discovered a method to mitigate racist inclinations. She calls it the “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise,” a controversial role-play on discrimination that separates learners by the color of their eyes. Elliott contends that a short period of discomfort and alienation will teach her central lesson that we are one race.

Based on rarely tapped sources, especially never discovered family documents, Shades of Brown offers the full context of the origin, use, and implications of the Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise.

389 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 24, 2023

Reviews

[Harriet Bicksler · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s hard to know how to rate this book. I would give it 4 stars for the story it tells—a compelling account of Jane Elliott and her lifetime of anti-racism training and education. I learned so much about the extent of the blue eyes/brown eyes exercise around the world that I knew nothing about. But the book is frustrating in its excruciating detail—like the author had to figure out a way to include every single fact he found in his extensive research. It also is riddled with grammatical and punctuation errors, too many sentences that got away from the author—a general lack of basic copy-editing and proofreading. I’m glad I read the book, but I wish it had been more thoroughly edited.

[Mariah Mamas · Rating 5 out of 5]

In "Shades of Brown" Dr. Mealy brilliantly chronicles Ms. Elliott's journey from her childhood
living on a farm in Iowa to her evolution into the highly revered and controversial post civil rights
pedagogue combating discrimination. With a fluidity and an extraordinary eye for detail, Mealy
connects the historical events happening both near and far to Ms. Elliot's life and authentically
depicts to his readers how Jane Elliott morphed from someone far removed from racism in every
way into a fiercely anti-racist, color conscious educator and an internationally renowned
diversity trainer and lecturer since April 5,1968 - the day after Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr was murdered, and the day she first conducted the Blue eyes/Brown eyes exercise with her
third grade class at Riceville Elementary.

For those undoubtedly seeking anything and everything about the eye color exercise, there is a
gold mine of information to satiate you - both on the initial exercise and from the countless and
countless subsequent exercises Elliott conducted both in her classroom and later on The Oprah
Winfrey Show, within corporate walls, and in college lecture halls; from all over the United States
to Australia, complete with an invitation to South Africa! Readers will hear from Elliott's students
first hand on how the Blue eyes/Brown eyes exercise affected deep change within each of their
lives. Being treated as “other” for one of those two days allowed them to briefly experience what
melanicious individuals experience every day of their lives. The empathy brought to the forefront
from the flicker of shared experience shaped them into adults with a desire to actively combat
discrimination. “Shades of Brown” also goes behind the scenes of documentaries produced on
the exercise, books written, movie deals discussed, and both accolades and criticisms received
by this powerhouse woman, all of which highlight that Elliott has and will always remain true and
dedicated to the purpose of it all. Elliott's message is a simple one, and that is the heart of
"Shades of Brown" which Mealy brings front and center so beautifully: We are all part of ONE
race, the human race, and we are all different shades of brown. Ignorance is what creates
prejudice and discrimination - education and empathy is what cures it. And it absolutely cures it,
one will see first hand in "Shades of Brown"! Elliott explains and Mealy highlights that children
are indoctrinated from a Euro-centric lens instead of a color conscious lens at school. Combine
this with racist ideologies heard in homes and this utterly false and horrid superiority complex of
melanemic people emerges and continues to seep systemically into society. Colorblind
statements such as “I don’t see color”, discount the lived experiences of melanicious people and
devalue their beautiful differences, which then continues the same system. Elliott reiterates that
a change is needed in our entire education system, so we must consciously and continuously
educate ourselves and our children against indoctrination. She is a strong advocate for
experiential learning because it works, but at the same time, Elliott stresses that those
conducting experiential learning exercises such as the eye color exercise in the classroom need
to be properly and professionally trained first.

Mealy, an INCREDIBLE anti-racist educator and curriculum writer in his own right, writes
superbly about Elliott, a deep respect and honesty resonating through his prose. He paints such
a vivid portrait of who Jane Elliott is that one feels as if they know her personally and when one
remembers that they actually don’t know her personally, her honesty and accessibility depicted
so clearly through Mealy’s words will make them desperately wish they did. She is consistent,
authentic, raw, fierce, unflinching, and dedicated to helping others recognize their biases and
squashing discrimination. Mealy utilizes so many primary documents, conducted so many
interviews, and did an immense amount of research to authentically bring this woman to life and
one can feel the labor of love. There is also this simultaneous feeling while reading "Shades of
Brown" of "Why on earth don't we have Ms. Elliott's exercise as a part of every single
elementary school curriculum?!" and "I cannot believe that we live in a world where this exercise
is needed!" That is the point. This book will jolt you awake to the amount of work that needs to
be done to achieve a world of equity and it is impossible not to be disheartened by that aspect
of it, but more so it is impossible not to be motivated and moved by this book, because the
solution lies in our actions, how we choose to educate ourselves and the people around us, how
we choose to stand up for justice for all. I beg you, if you read one book, let it be this one. Read
this phenomenal book about this powerhouse woman and her fight for an empathetic, unbiased
world, and then share it with all of your friends - circulate it as much as you can so that the Jane
Elliott's of the world can be the rule and not the exception. Ignorance CAN be changed and
education and empathy are the keys.