Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum, PhD

Expressing [...] deep frustration in response to [George] Zimmerman's acquittal, Alicia Garza, a community organizer based in Oakland, California, posted this message on Facebook: "I continue to be surprised at how little black lives matter . . . Black people, I love you. I love us. Our lives matter." Garza's friend, Patrisse Cullors, a Los Angeles-based activist, shared the Facebook post and added the hashtag, powerful in its simplicity, #BlackLivesMatter. Opal Tometi, a social-justice activist living in New York City, reached out to Garza and offered to help build a digital platform that could mobilize action for meaningful change. [...] The #BlackLivesMatter message resonated with many across the social media platforms of Facebook and Twitter, and with that amplification a rallying cry for the millennial generation was born. 

~p. 27

I chose this quote because I watched a video, a few days ago, in which a White man held a sign saying "Black Lives Matter" and people yelled abuse at him, calling him a traitor to his race, flipping him off, asking him, "What about White lives?" Maybe those people will never get it but it's always been clear to me what the protesters in the BLM movement are saying has never meant Black Lives Matter More Than Others. If they did, I'm sure that's what the hashtag would say. No, it's always been about the fact that Blacks are treated with less value and dignity, killed by police and incarcerated at a higher rate, discriminated against quietly through societal structure. Black people in this movement —a peaceful movement started by women— have done their best to explain, although it shouldn't be necessary. But, the anger amongst certain groups who choose to take offense persists. And, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? makes it crystal clear why such a movement is necessary, why it's particularly necessary for young people of any color to find their people, at least for a time.

The author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? is a psychologist who was charged with teaching about racism at university level, way back in the 80s or 90s (I didn't mark the date mentioned), who has been researching, talking about, and living racism as a light-skinned Black woman, for decades. She knows her stuff. The book I read is the updated 2017 version; the original was published in 1997. And, it is not exclusively about Blacks. It's about the psychology of why Black kids cluster together (the short answer: because they need to, at least for a time, to understand who they are) but the book is also about dominant groups and how those who are dominant convince the people they consider beneath them that they are, in fact, lesser. That includes women and other minorities.

The relationship of the dominants to the subordinates is often one in which the targeted group is labeled as defective or substandard in significant ways. For example, Blacks have historically been characterized as less intelligent than Whites, and women have been viewed as less emotionally stable than men. The dominant group assigns roles to the subordinates that reflect the latter's devalued status, reserving the most highly valued roles in the society for themselves. Subordinates are usually said to be innately incapable of being able to perform the preferred roles. To the extent that the targeted group internalizes the images that the dominant group reflects back to them, they may find it difficult to believe in their own ability. 

~p. 104

The comment about the targeted group internalizing images reflected back by the dominant group explains the women who claimed Hillary Clinton should not be president because women are weak.  If you've never seen the video in which a woman said Hillary shouldn't be president because she might have a hormone swing and start a war to Jordan Klepper, and then he asks, "But, haven't all wars been started by men?" you should. It's both hilarious and a good object lesson.

I'm getting off-track. There is so much depth to this book that I feel like I can't adequately describe it but it's a 5-star read that talks not only about the importance of developing identity for Blacks but about the concept of redlining that's kept blacks in less affluent neighborhoods, Affirmative Action (how it started and what it does and not do; the false concept of "ratios" as a legal imperative, for example), the ideology of "color blindness", White identity, multi-racial identity, and also that of Latinx, Native, Asian and Pacific Islanders, Middle Eastern/North African . . . everyone has some need to band together with other people who bear some similarity to them as their identities are developing. Tatum also goes into the importance of making sure children of other races and ethnic backgrounds adopted by White parents are exposed to people like them and how damaging it can be to not do so.

Highly recommended - I wish every adult would read this. An incredibly detailed and easily digestible book about race that goes far, far beyond what you expect from the title of the book but also explains the reasoning for banding together as one is developing his or her identity in a way that has completely clarified it, at least for this reader. In my case, I felt like I learned a lot about myself, as well. For example, while my friends were not entirely homogeneous, I mostly hung out with Christians because my identity was so thoroughly wrapped up in church, as a child. And, it was the Native Americans clustered together on the steps at lunchtime that I always wondered about, not Blacks. There were not many Blacks or other minorities in my hometown, in fact. It was White Bread City, probably 98% White. I'm fortunate that I grew up with a father who made it clear to us that racism was wrong. Most of my friends from home didn't learn that lesson.


Link to review of another book I recommend highly:

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrice Kahn-Cullors and Asha Bandele


©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis

Racism, as it has evolved in the history of the United States, has always involved a measure of criminalization so that it is not difficult to understand how stereotypical assumptions about Black people being criminals persist to this day. Racial profiling is an example. The fact that driving while Black can be dangerous. Recently, one of the trending Twitter conversations had to do with "criming while White." A whole number of white people wrote in and described crimes they had committed for which they were never suspected, and one person pointed out that he and a Black friend were arrested by the police for stealing a candy bar. The cop gave the white person the candy bar, and the Black person was eventually sentenced to prison. 

~pp. 33-34

I chose Freedom is a Constant Struggle as my read for Black History Month and I'm obviously a bit late getting around to talking about it so it's not as fresh in my mind as I'd like it to be, but I remember enough to say a few words about it.

Freedom is a Constant Struggle is a set of speeches and interviews about the intersection of racism in the U.S. and oppression in other countries. The author is a well-known activist who travels the world speaking about oppression, the history of oppression and ways in which large corporations contribute to the problem, why oppression is profitable, and how prison is used to oppress certain populations, among other things. She offers alternatives and ideas for change.

I like these words on what keeps Angela Davis going:

[...] I don't think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it's only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect. 

~p. 49

One of the things Davis talks about quite a bit in Freedom is a Constant Struggle is the private prison system and how profit-making leads to a higher level of incarceration. I remember the Obama administration had started working on closing down private prisons for exactly that reason but I've since read that the current administration is doing the opposite, allowing for more private prisons and expanding their reach by using the same corporation(s) who run prisons to take on housing of immigrants. The book was published in 2016, so it's a little outdated in that regard but you can fill in the blanks of what's happened with a little reading up on the Internet. It's still got a lot of valuable information.

The only thing that I kept puzzling over was the fact that Davis is for banishing imprisonment entirely. As in no prisons, whatsoever. I kept thinking, "So, what do you do with the hard-core criminals, those who committed violent crimes?" That was not addressed and it's something I would love to ask the author, if I were given the opportunity to talk to her.

Highly recommended - A very thought-provoking book, worth reading and discussing. I was familiar with the name Angela Davis but I didn't realize she was a Black Panther, although it's clear from the reading that she's been an activist for a very long time. I'd actually love to read more about her. She is highly educated and I often found myself thinking, "This is just a bit above my intellectual level" but it's not at any point unbearably dry; it's very readable but with moments that required extra concentration. The reading made me want to get to my book about the Black Panther Party, which I also bought for last year's Black History Month. I may go ahead and read that, this year, if I can fit it in. I would also love to reread Freedom is a Constant Struggle with a group, some time. It's ripe for discussion.


©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Unpunished Murder by Lawrence Goldstone

OK, bummer. I've been staring at the computer screen because I feel like Unpunished Murder is so important that I want to get it right, but the pressure is making me draw a blank. So, I'm going to make this review a self-interview to see if I can get the words out. Today, I will be interviewed by a Sharpie pen. It's the handiest thing.

Sharpie Pen (SP): I'd rather be writing.

Bookfool (BF): Me, too, but it's not going well.

SP: Well, then, shall we?

BF:  Yes, please.

SP:  Tell me about Unpunished Murder. Who was massacred and where is Colfax?

BF:  Colfax is a town in Louisiana that was founded in 1869. In 1873, a white supremacist militia attacked the town, the home of former slaves or "freedmen". About 100 blacks and 3 of the white militia members were killed, most of the blacks gunned down after they surrendered.

SP: And, why are you having so much trouble describing this book?

BF:  I think I waited a little too long and should have written about it immediately, like the moment I closed the book. Having said that, the book describes a fairly complex background situation.

SP: What was complex about it?

BF: It goes into details about Reconstruction and the balance of political parties, the choice of a white supremacist for vice president, the slow changeover from Abraham Lincoln's party to domination by the Democrats (who were then the party of white supremacy) and how that change of party balance altered the course of Reconstruction, closed off legal rights that freedmen had obtained, and led to the rise of white supremacist groups and state laws that restricted black rights. It goes into some detail about states' rights and laws versus federal and the why federal law was not always enforced.

Basically, the slaves were freed and the Southern whites were angry but Reconstruction was on the road to being a positive thing and blacks were happily exercising their new rights. And, then the political pendulum swung, rights were suppressed through violence and intimidation, and lawlessness and cruelty took over. I guess it's a bit complex to me because so much of it is new. I'm a fan of history but I really never have read about Reconstruction, apart from snippets saying that it was a disaster. The author argues that Reconstruction was not quite what many historians have claimed. I feel like I need to reread it for the details to fully sink in, to be honest.

SP: What's the point of the book?

BF: The dual goal is both to spread the true story about what happened in Colfax (an incident I, for one, had never heard of) and to set the record straight about the fact that this particular incident was stone cold murder. Toward the end of the book, the author talks about how the slaughter of 150 black men was reframed as a riot, the whites declared heroes, and even a monument dedicated to the white murderers placed in the town.

SP: What else does it describe?

BF: It goes into great detail about how and why only a few of the men responsible for the slaughter were tried and then, eventually, nobody was punished. One man even went on to murder again and was still not brought to justice. In fact, he ended up being quite prosperous.

SP: You mentioned in one of your Monday Malarkey posts that you didn't know the correct age range for Unpunished Murder. Have you found out who the book is geared toward?

BF:  Yes, the author kindly wrote to me after he happened across my post and he clarified the age range. He said it's geared to high school, "maybe higher middle school for more advanced readers".

SP: You found it a challenging read. Why?

BF: Two reasons. So much of the information was new to me that I had to take my time to keep the political strands straight. I don't know if my education in history was awful or I just memorized instead of absorbing the information, as a kid, but till recently I'd forgotten that the parties flipped and Democrats used to be dominated by white supremacists. I found my brain didn't want to accept Republicans as the people who were trying to make sure freedmen were able to function in white society -- attend schools with whites, vote, etc. Anyway, that was the first reason.

Reason 2 is the fact that it's such a distressing story. Much like women's history (men getting credit for women's accomplishments), Black history has been rewritten or suppressed for far too long. It was only a handful of years ago that I found out about another incident, the so-called Tulsa Race Riot. That, too, was not really a riot at all but a slaughter. There are loads of contemporary illustrations and some of them describe blacks in horrifyingly demeaning terms. Reading about cruelty is miserable. Realizing that we haven't progressed that much is even more deflating. Now and then, I had to put the book down and just catch my breath. But, toward the latter half of the book I was so gripped by the story of how a bunch of men got away with murder that I stopped setting it down and read late into the night. Obviously, I knew how it was going to end (thank you, obvious title) but I had to know how and why. I knew I wouldn't get to sleep till I'd finished.

SP:  So, what's your recommendation?

BF:  I highly recommend Unpunished Murder and feel like it's a very important book -- one that needs to be taught, shared, and talked about. I'll pass my copy on to a school so that more people will have access to it because I feel like it's so necessary for as many people as possible to really understand this terrible tale from our American history.

SP: Any final remarks?

BF: Here's a website where you can read a little about the Colfax Massacre:

BlackPast.org - The Colfax Massacre

Any mistakes in my review are my own. In spite of living for decades in a city whose downfall was an important turning point in the Civil War, I honestly haven't read much about the Civil War. My lack of understanding was definitely brought home while I was reading Unpunished Murder.

SP: Thanks for the fun. I'm going to go hang out with a scratch pad and some googly eyes, now.

BF: These self-interviews really expose me as the knife in the drawer that fell into the garbage disposal, don't they? Thanks Sharpie Pen. You're an inanimate object and yet you managed to help. Amazing.


©2018 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.