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social experiment

Race & Ethnicity

Oprah's secret 1992 racism experiment on her audience is still incredible today

On an old episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in July 1992, Oprah put her audience through a social experiment that puts racism in a new light. Despite being nearly two decades old, it's as relevant today as ever.

She split the audience members into two groups based on their eye color. Those with brown eyes were given preferential treatment by getting to cut the line and given refreshments while they waited to be seated. Those with blue eyes were made to put on a green collar and wait in a crowd for two hours.

Staff were instructed to be extra polite to brown-eyed people and to discriminate against blue-eyed people. Her guest for that day's show was diversity expert Jane Elliott, who helped set up the experiment and played along, explaining that brown-eyed people were smarter than blue-eyed people.

Watch the video to see how this experiment plays out.

Oprah's Social Experiment on Her Audiencewww.youtube.com

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When customers at one San Francisco grocery store went to the checkout one day, they were outraged. The cost of their groceries had increased astronomically.

Look, we've all cringed once or twice while the cashier rings up the fancy yogurt we decided to get last minute because "screw it, I wanna eat fancy yogurt," but this wasn't a few pennies or dollars here and there. This was $25 for a box of spinach and $40 for a loaf of bread and some cigarettes.

GIF via Tipping Point Community/YouTube.

The cost of their groceries had inflated. But why?

It was all part of a social experiment meant to show people what buying groceries is like for people living in poverty.

1 in 10 families in the Bay Area live on $24,300 or less per year, below the poverty line and well below the Bay Area average. The experiment was set up by Tipping Point Community, a poverty relief organization, which set up a register in a Nob Hill grocery store where customers checking out would be given "poverty line prices," or prices that were proportionally representative to living in poverty.

"If eggs cost $6 for someone living on the poverty line, or 1.4% of their weekly salary, the adjusted price would be $29.64 for someone living on the average San Francisco salary," TPC's website explains.

Imagine if your groceries, rent and college supplies were five times as expensive. For the 1 in 10 families living below the poverty line in the Bay Area, this is how it feels. Visit tippingpoint.org to calculate how expensive your basic needs would be if adjusted for #povertylineprices
A photo posted by Tipping Point Community (@tippingpoint) on Nov 17, 2016 at 1:26pm PST

Tipping Point also set up a website where anyone can plug in their annual salary and see what grocery shopping would be like if they lived in poverty.

While those skyrocketed prices were temporarily frustrating for the people trying to buy groceries, the sticker shock they experienced is one millions of Americans face every day.

In 2015, over 43 million people in the United States were living in poverty. That's down 1.2% from 2014 but is still a massive number. Sticker shock doesn't just affect people below the poverty line either. According to the Corporation for Enterprise Development, nearly half of all Americans are one financial shock — a job loss, a medical emergency, etc. — away from poverty. Feeling financial discomfort while you shop for basic needs is something that could happen to any of us.

The income gap between the rich and poor in the United States is ever-widening, and closing it would require landmark financial restructuring, or at least some out-of-the-box thinking.

If you had to pay $30 for cold medicine or $15 for a gallon of milk, you might be outraged like the folks in the video. Most of all though, you'd want to do something about it. You'd want somebody to recognize that it's an unfair burden on you and your family.

You'd want things to change.

Watch people react to poverty line prices here:

Once all the life-size, huddled, hoodie-wearing mannequins are in place on the streets, Karen McHenry prepares to deliver her message using her bullhorn.

A group of people place slouched and hooded mannequins in public spaces around downtown Cleveland.

Why are they carrying them like that? What is this all about? What do the slogans on their sweatshirts say?

The reactions from the people walking by them say it all. They look confused, concerned, and slightly disturbed.

Watch the video, and see how long it takes for you to figure out what's happening:

This short video from Bellefair JCB might only be a minute long, but it sheds a much-needed light on people and issues that can seem invisible when we're not paying attention — even in places full of people.

The "Take a Closer Look" campaign wants to increase awareness of this problem to encourage a greater sense of empathy and compassion. The goal is to get pedestrians to notice and try to help the mannequins, who represent the huge population of young people living on the streets.

If you take a closer look, on each mannequin's hoodie is written a reason why young people might find themselves out on the street.

One sweatshirt reads: "My dad kicked me out because I'm gay."

Another says: "My mom's boyfriend hurts me."

Another hoodie's heartbreaking message is poignant: "I'm missing and my parents don't care."

Sometimes it takes uncomfortable and dramatic images like people walking past these mannequins without a second thought to remind us to think twice about how we can help homeless youth.

You never know what circumstances led up to a teen becoming homeless.

There are about 1.3 million homeless youth in the U.S. on any given night, and many don't have a choice.

This video is a powerful reminder that homeless youth are around us, often in plain sight. It's up to us to take a closer look and offer help when we can.

Maybe the next time you're out in public and see someone young, lost, and living on the street — offer a helping hand. You may be exactly what they need to turn their life around.

You've probably noticed that anti-Muslim sentiments have become more common and more blatant recently.

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris by ISIS (or, if you like, Daesh) extremists and the mass shooting in San Bernardino by two people who claimed to be Muslim, a lot of Americans are allowing their thinking to be replaced by fear. Some people are even reacting violently.

Others are working hard to find justification for their beliefs — even if they're not acting out.

One of the things I've noticed is that in support of anti-Muslim comments, many people keep offering up quotes from the Quran.

Image by Metropolico.org/flickr.

They do that as justification for their belief that Islam is founded on violence and that the religion teaches its followers to act violently — and as such, we should be worried that any Muslim could be a violent terrorist. I've also seen several people refer to the marriage of very young girls as being in the Quran — as justification that Islam is just incompatible with Western ways of life.

I mean ... sigh.

I think most rational people know better. But for those who don't, some folks carried out a little experiment to make a point.

They took a Bible and wrapped it in a different cover, making it appear to be a Quran.

All following GIFs and images by Dit Is Normaal, a group based in the Netherlands. The video is in Dutch and subtitled in English.

Then they found some passages that aren't exactly compatible with the way most Westerners live these days.

Passages like:

"A woman should live in quietness and full submission."

"If you reject my commands and abhor my laws, you will eat the flesh of your own sons. And your own daughters."

"I don't allow for a woman to teach. You will have to cut off her hand. Do not forgive her."

"If two men sleep with each other, they will both have to be killed."

When the interviewers asked passersby what they thought of those passages, they were honest.

Believing they were being read passages from the Quran, people reacted with surprise, disgust, and negativity.

The interviewers also asked how the Quran compared to the Bible.

That's when the interviewers let the folks in on what we knew all along: These aren't teachings of the Quran.

They're Bible verses.

Everyone was visibly surprised.

The lesson, of course, is that we need to step back and look at what we're doing here.

This guy gets it:

The best part of this video is that the folks were willing to acknowledge their biases.

Nobody got defensive or angry. They realized what happened.

Information comes at us from many directions and is often framed in a way that influences our thinking. This woman sums things right up:

And so does this man. We need to step back and think it through.

Religions adapt and change with the times.

The Quran, like the Bible, is very old. Muslims don't follow every last word verbatim, just as Christians don't follow every last word in the Bible verbatim. That's ridiculous.

We need to stop applying a double standard.

If we're going to assume that radicals who commit terrorism in the name of Islam are representative of Muslims, we must do the same with radicals who commit terrorism and proclaim to be Christians.

I think we all know better — the Planned Parenthood shooter doesn't represent the great majority of Christians, nor do the San Bernardino shooters represent the great majority of Muslims.

Let's keeps our fears in check and remember that Muslims are peaceful people. They want to raise their families and enjoy their lives and have the same opportunities as anyone else. It's pretty simple.

You can watch the full video here. It's worth it to see how the biases that people probably don't even realize they have influence their thoughts: