Part Two: Rhetoric Analysis/Style

Source: Denorious Non-Profit

Hello everybody, welcome back to my blog! Today I am responding to the second part of the book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum. I will provide a brief explanation of the section and also analyze her rhetoric and style choices in the novel. This will include her organization, appeals, and sentence-use. Have fun reading my second blog post!

↣ PART TWO: UNDERSTANDING BLACKNESS IN A WHITE CONTEXT ↢

This section primarily discusses how children develop an understanding of racism and prejudice, starting from Preschool all the way until going to college. Tatum uses personal experience through raising a child to explain how children can best understand these abstract concepts. Later on, she also explains her experience going to a primarily African American college and discovering a new identity. 

An important stylistic aspect that is continuously used throughout the book is starting out with a broad but important question which she then goes into a deep explanation to answer. This style of an explanation after showing a commonly asked question allows for the reader to understand the larger concepts and questions by also being provided clear examples and evidence. This is also how she organizes the chapters, which is by titling them with these commonly asked questions. 

Tatum first begins this section by answering the question of "Are children 'color-blind'?". Many people believe that racism is not something you are born with, but something you are taught. Is the color the same way? 

The answer is yes, children can "see color". Similar to the color of your hair or eyes, the pigment of your skin is just another trait of a person in the eyes of a child younger than Preschool-aged. It is not necessarily a bad thing that children can see color, it is just something that identifies what you look like. However, the ideas of color and race become an issue later on when prejudice is involved.

Young children are known for constantly asking questions and being naturally curious because of their development. With that being said, skin color often comes up sometimes in a child's early developing years. Race is a fragile subject, and often parents are afraid of potentially saying the wrong thing. Tatum regards her own experience of the first time her son asked about race while shopping in a supermarket. She then goes on to explain how to correctly answer these questions without leaving a child confused or with the wrong message:

"An appropriate response [would] have been 'Honey, that little girl is not dirty. Her skin is as clean as yours. It's just a different color.'... If the child still seems interested, the explanation of melanin could be added." (Page 116)

She explains to the audience that it is very important to provide a detailed but simple understanding for children. She responds to her own child by giving them a general understanding of color. While race is complicated, not answering these questions can create confusion and problems regarding racial identity when they grow older. 

Similar to most of the formatting of other sections, Tatum begins explaining a concept first by providing personal experience. She uses this to make the section more personal and relatable to the audience so that they know that everyone goes through the same varying confusion regarding race. Tatum understands that a portion of her audience are parents who want their children to better understand race, and so Tatum chose to include her experience with her children to show how her explanations relate to real-life concepts. 

This use of explaining experience is also used when she goes on to explaining how college helps you understand your racial identity. The stories that she uses appeal strongly to ethos because the personal experience of the concepts that she discusses allows for her to appear qualified to speak on behalf of her arguments. The stories also appeal to pathos because they exploit how horrible racism is, which makes the reader be able to relate to Tatum's explanations because they are a part of a minority or will provide empathy and will understand the concepts more deeply. 

To provide her personal experience with being an African American going to college, she explains that:

"I thrived socially and academically... I stopped straightening my hair and har a large Afro á la Angela Davis circa 1970. I happily sat at the Black table in the dining hall every day... I can't remember the name of one White classmate. I don't say that with pride or malice. It is just a fact" (Page 165) 

Here she describes how college had a positive impact on her live because she was surrounded by only people of her race. Before arriving at college, she had primarily lived in primarily White towns and cities, and so the cultural shock helped her develop her racial identity. 

Compared to other quotes, when describing personal experience, she uses shorter sentence length and the opposite for the abstract concepts. This passage is more light-hearted, especially since she referenced having hair like Angela Davis from the 70's.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this section significantly more than I did of the previous section. In the first section, she primarily defined vocabulary, which I did not find as interesting. In this section she mainly described her personal experience which is what I personally enjoy more and find entertaining because she occasionally uses humor or emotion. This second section is what I prefer more because I feel that it is more personal through family stories and because there is less mentioning of credibility to establish ethos. 

Thanks for reading the second part to my blog! I look forward to reading the next section and learning more about these important concepts. ☺️☺️

SOURCES:
Discrimination. Denorious Non-Profit, 24 Feb. 2018, youthintegration.org/2018/02/
     24/africa-racial-discrimination/. Accessed 15 Mar. 2019.

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