This is a famous classroom experiment, in which kids were relegated to higher or lower status, based on their eye color. Of significance is what the kids say about how they felt, such as feeling like something wasn't worth trying, because of the weight of their (temporary) lower social standing. It's 12 minutes, well worth the time:
The compositions that the children wrote about the experience were printed in the Riceville Recorder on page 4 on April 18, 1968, under the headline "How Discrimination Feels", and the story was picked up by the Associated Press. Because of the Associated Press article, Elliott was invited to appear on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. After she spoke about her exercise in a short interview segment, the audience reaction was instant as hundreds of calls came into the show's telephone switchboard, much of it negative.
An often-quoted letter stated,
"How dare you try this cruel experiment out on white children? Black children grow up accustomed to such behavior, but white children, there's no way they could possibly understand it. It's cruel to white children and will cause them great psychological damage."