Part Three: Understanding Whiteness in a White Context

Source: Seattle Pi

Hello everybody! Welcome to my third blog post. Here I will be analyzing part three of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Tatum. In this section, Tatum's main focus is explaining the development of White identity, Affirmative Action, and the ideology of those who are "color-blind" through the main use of logos and some pathos. I hope you enjoy reading!

↣ PART THREE: UNDERSTANDING WHITENESS IN A WHITE CONTEXT ↢

Unlike the other parts of the book, this specific section has portions that were taken from two previously published articles by Tatum. In these articles she discusses different social experiments and her experience teaching students who struggle developing their white identity. 

Tatum first begins this section by explaining how White people often lack the education of race until much later in life than when needed, and so it is the reason why that white privilege is hard to acknowledge. Stereotyping and prejudice is unknowingly built into the minds of White people, and so even if we believe that we are not racist, we still have the underlying presence of discrimination. 

To explain this argument, she uses an example of a famous White writer who researches White identity, Peggy McIntosh. Here, she quotes McIntosh from one of her pieces of writing:

"'I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth'" (188)

In this passage, McIntosh reflects on the lack of knowledge regarding underlying racist tendencies. Tatum included this passage because she understood that White people could relate to an explanation from not only someone of their own race but who has most likely gone through the same struggles of discovering the realities of having a racial identity. Therefore, she uses this example to add on to the argument that prejudice is passively gained because of the lack of education. 

To solve this problem, Tatum segues into the topic of "color-blindness". Many White people believe that the way to resolve racism is by making themselves believe that "I don't see color, we are all the same". However, Tatum believes this is untrue, and is just people "color-evading", which means that it is a way of denying or rejecting the concept and reality of White superiority. 

Tatum then explains what she argues is the correct way to diminish the act of racism and superiority:

Disintegration is marked by a growing awareness of racism and White privilege as a result of personal encounters in which the social significance of race is made visible. For some White people, disintegration occurs when the develop a close friendship or a romantic relationship with a person of color. The White person then sees firsthand how racism can operate" (189)

Here, Tatum explains that the true way that racism resolves itself is through the act of "disintegrating", in which you familiarize someone of another race through a friendship or romantic relationship. To a complex problem, Tatum argues a simple answer: racial representation in developing lives diminishes racial ideas because of the positive associations with people of another race that is not your own.

In the second half of the section, Tatum uses almost entirely logos. Here she focuses on multiple studies made about unknowing racial prejudice amongst White people. She briefly overviews two studies about how predominantly White businesses are more likely willing to hire people who have stereotypical White names compared to stereotypical African American names, even though there are laws against discrimination in the workplace. However, the study that she uses the most for her argument is the results of a well-known study: The Implicit Associations Test (IAT).

After explaining the IAT, Tatum then provides statistical results of the test to prove her main argument of the section for example, she explains that:

Almost seventy-five percent of those who take the Race IAT on the Internet or in laboratory studies reveal automatic White preference... This is a surprisingly high figure..." (223).

In this statement, Tatum explains that a large majority of the White people tested automatically held a White preference.

However, here is where I felt that Tatum's credibility dropped considerably. As someone who has taken the IAT - you have too if you are in my class - I am familiar with the large debate on whether this test reveals accurate data or not. It is highly controversial, and so I was surprised that Tatum included this information as direct evidence for her argument without stating how it's credibility is nowhere near perfect. This made me question a lot of other evidence and statistics that Tatum has used in the past, especially since she explained this evidence so confidently.

In conclusion, as I am reading further into this book, it is very hard for me to agree with her opinions because this section seemed to have too much statistical information, while the previous section had too much personal experience. If she were to have a more balance in each section and more reliable data I would definitely be more willing to change my views (even though they are mostly similar to hers already). Unfortunately, there seems to be a constant lack of recognition that Tatum's actions and views are not entirely correct all the time, for that's the reality of most people. In my opinion, I believe that the majority of the red flags that I have noticed about this book is that Tatum is too confident in the fact that she faces writing this book with a "I'm right, your wrong" mentality.

SOURCES:
Ho, Vanessa. “Doctors Treated Black Patients Worse in UW Study.” Seattle Pi, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 20 Mar. 
      2012, www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Doctors-treated-black-patients-worse-in-UW-study- 
      419063.php.

Tatum, Beverly Daniel. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the
     Cafeteria? New York, Basic Books, 1997.