Social Discrimination In The Girls And The Brown Eyes

Social differentiation is the process by which different statuses develop in any group, organization, or society while social stratification is a relatively fixed, hierarchical arrangement in society by which groups have unequal access to resources, power and perceived social worth. In the film, the girls and the boys attained social statuses depending on their eye color. The students with blue eyes had a higher status compared to the students having brown eyes. This difference in status is called social stratification. Based on this social stratification, the students with higher status were given rewards while the students with the lower status were given punishments. Some of the rewards included extra recess, seconds at lunch, getting water from the water fountain, and no collar. Some of the punishments included wearing a collar, not playing with high status students, …show more content…
The white people are the ones with blue eyes and hence she ranked them lower to make them feel how in everyday lives African Americans feel when they are being labelled as lower to whites. She purposely switched their roles so that they would start having empathy for one another. This was the first-time blue eyed people were told that they are lower than brown eyed people. Since whites are always considered superior in society due to their color, they never got a chance to feel what it is like to be black and thus being labelled as a low status. The label of a low-status reduces the position of an individual in society and causes the society to actively limit their rights. This exercise was more effective in children than in adults. Some white people rejected Jane Elliot's idea that stated brown eyed people are superior than blue eyed people. Therefore, they misbehaved and questioned how she herself feels when told she is lower than the brown eyed