Welcome to my last blog post, everyone!
Today I will be wrapping up my thoughts on my book "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria." This week I read pages 299-358 which is to the end of my book, and it was a great last read. Overall this book was incredibly educational and I think everyone has something to learn from it.
In this last reading, it touched on a lot about bi-racial equality. A statistic that really stood out to me was on page 305, Tatum wrote; "In 2013 87 percent of Americans polled said they approve of marriage between Blacks and Whites, compared to only 4 percent in 1958" This is definitely something positive and nice to read after hearing about many not so positive ideas. This shows that there has been some growth and positive change towards the black community, however, this is only one small step and there must be a lot more done to truly progress. I believe that this could play into the overall argument of the book, which is that even though we may be progressing, there is still so much education to be done, and everyone has something to learn. We will never have to stop fighting for this equality, and we must share our stories and values to enlighten others on these topics.
Another heavily issued topic is about adoption and adopting kids into households who share different races and ethnicities. It is apparent that when this happens it is essential to the child's wellbeing to have an influence in their life that shares like qualities as them. Here is the contrast of the two options; "Eunliz is a twenty-year-old Korean adopted while still an infant. She had parents who encouraged her to learn about Korean culture and provided the opportunity for her to attend Korean culture camp every summer. She eventually studied the Korean language and traveled to South Korea, a trip she described as one of the best experiences of her life." (Tatum, 324) She was provided with the resources to experience her culture, and what she did with it was up to her, but as she said it ended up being life-changing. However, we can also take a look into the opposite side of this matter; Twenty-two-year-old Selma states "My dad, being a Christian, he sees humans as of one blood. He tells me all the time, "stop it, stop it, you're not Korean, you know you're American..." He couldn't fathom what it's like to be a minority." In this circumstance, it is one thing to not get to explore your culture because you were never provided with the resources, however, it is a whole other level to be told you aren't even your own race or ethnicity.
This book was an incredibly educational read. It shared real-life stories and narrated you through life as a person of diversity. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone learning about this topic, or who just wants to educate themselves for knowledge they can use in their daily life. The book is fairly easy to follow along with, and it is not too lengthy where it's an unbearable read. Thank you guys for joining me along my blog post journey, and I hope you enjoyed them!
Tatum, Beverly Daniel. "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the
Cafeteria?" : and Other Conversations about Race. New York :Basic Books,
2003.
I also found the part when she talked about how people of color raised in white households who were told that they're white or that it doesn't matter found it quite uncomfortable and even dangerous quite informative, I think that children need to be told that they shouldn't be ashamed of their race and color, and that race/racism are a thing to be aware of as ignoring the problem does not make it go away. As Tatum said at the start of the book, all that is needed for racism to continue is business as usual. This was an interesting book, and I agree with your recommendation of it.
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