"Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" And Other Conversations About Race

Journal of Engineering Education, Jul 2000 by Smith, Karl A, McNaron, Toni A H

"Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" And Other Conversations About Race

By Beverly Tatum

Basic Books, 1997, 270 pp.

Beverly Tatum advocates that race identity is a positive developmental factor for young people of color and that it is important, even necessary, for Black adolescents to have a strong sense of belonging. She begins by noting the racial segregation that occurs in many public meeting places, high school cafeterias, for example. Tatum astutely contrasts the frequent question "Why are all the Black kids sitting together?" with the absence of the question "Why are all the White kids sitting together?"

Tatum notes that it doesn't begin that way-"If you walk into racially mixed elementary schools, you will often see young children of diverse racial backgrounds playing with one another, sitting at the snack table together, crossing racial boundaries with an ease uncommon in adolescence." Moving to middle and high school level she notes that more and more racial grouping occurs, and she asks "What happens?" Her answer is "puberty" and the search for personal identity. For Black youth, asking "Who am I?" includes thinking about "Who am I ethnically and/or racially? What does it mean to be Black?"

The center of Tatum's conversations is an understanding of racial identity, "the meaning each of us has constructed or is constructing about what it means to be a White person or a person of color in a race-conscious society." She includes conversations about racism and advocates "We cannot talk meaningfully about racial identity without also talking about racism."

"Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" is focused on stimulating thoughtful conversations and helping faculty transform their curricula and interact with students of color in ways that facilitate rather than hinder those children's academic success. The five sections of the book are: A definition of terms, Understanding blackness in a white context, Understanding whiteness in a white context, Beyond black and white, and Breaking the silence. What Tatum invites us to do is begin to recognize, analyze and even critique whiteness as a racial category so that we stop seeing only behavior by people of color as strange or confrontive. Furthermore, she offers a persuasive argument for supporting at least temporary separatism, perhaps especially within academic settings where African American students and other students of color are so visible and so vulnerable. Ifwe ignore her invitation, we will continue making everyone different from us into "others" while leaving our own values and practices entirely unexamined.