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The Book 'Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?'

Decent Essays

In the book “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” by Beverley Tatum she starts off by explaining the difference between prejudice and racism. She describes prejudice as preconceived judgments or opinions made with limited information. Prejudice is considered a consequence of cultural racism, where images and messages affirm assumed White superiority and assumed inferiority of non-whites, and people of color. Racism is then defined to be a system of advantage based on race. (Tatum, 2003, 7) It can either be actively participated in such as what the members of the KKK do, or can be passive in nature, such as a person listening to racial jokes and not speaking up about them. It is compared to conveyor belt style walkways at the airport; it moves you forward in a direction towards white advantage (racism). Actively racist is walking or running forward on the belt, passively racist is just staying on the belt, passively going along with things, or being actively anti-racist by moving in the opposite direction.(Tatum, 2003, 11) …show more content…

I had never looked at it as a “system” of advantage. While reading, I became angered because the first couple chapters of this book I felt were “white” bashing. As a white male I felt like I was not as privileged as she described white males to be but at times disadvantaged. The ideas that came to mind are the wide variety of clubs and organizations catering specifically to people of color, there are no organizations specifically for white skin that aren’t controversial, people of color or females could potentially benefit from affirmative action. There is almost no affirmative action for white people on the basis of skin, even for foreign-born whites, and black pride is considered a form of empowerment and while white pride is considered a form of

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