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Racial Identity By Dr. Beverly Tatum

Decent Essays

Author, Dr. Beverly Tatum a clinical psychologist whose main study of interest is Black children’s racial identity development wrote the text Why Are All the Black Kids sitting Together in the Cafeteria? After receiving a letter from a school principal in New Jersey applauding her on her reason of why, in racially mixed schools all over the country, Black kids were still sitting together in school cafeterias. In the text Tatum shares her thoughts about the development of racial identity faced by the African American population and how it is interrelated to racism at the turn of the twentieth century while highlighting the Black-White relation in childhood and adolescence age group. The book entails controversy in that, Dr. Tatum understanding of racism is centered heavily on race. Tatum’s explanation of racism suggest that Blacks cannot be racist based on the fact their racial bigotry do not stand or rest on a structure of advantage.
Racism is defined as a structure of benefit based on race there is a significant difference between racism and prejudice, racism is the sum of prejudice and power "system of advantage based on race" (Tatum, 1997) with examples such as housing, better schools, jobs, social and economic status. Benefits of talking about racism may include improved level of consciousness regarding the impact of race on students and their accomplishment in the classroom; opportunity to compare data that suggested African American students were not experiencing the

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