If this question sounds familiar, maybe you’ve heard of Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s book, Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race. But, this essay isn’t necessarily focused on the substance of her writing.
I mention Dr. Tatum, for two reasons. One, I really enjoy talking about what I’ve read, am reading, and how an author’s work impacts me — maybe a little too much. Two, as I read her book, my problematic and fuzzy perspective of whiteness, white people, and our role in the American story of race, was brought into sharper focus. It was the first time I remember being challenged to question what I notice about white people as I consider racial disparity, what contributes to it, and what to do about it.
As I read and imagined the scene of a cafeteria and how people are grouped, in my mind I see the black kids sitting together. I feel the normalcy of this — the seemingly automatic reaction to hone in on brown and black people whenever race or racism comes up. But, I never looked at my own table, who’s included there and my reasons for choosing this group and this space.
When I zoomed out, I saw my absence, and the general lack of whiteness, in my macro narrative of race and racism too. The conjured cafeteria scene was a good representation of my overall take on where white people stood with race in America. I recognized that I didn’t need to be asking what the black or brown kids are doing. Instead, I needed to start looking at and understanding what I, and the other white kids, are up to and why.
Dr. Tatum’s work helped redirect me. I found myself asking new questions. It was the start of me getting curious about my people and how we are with race and racism.
With my new found white folk curiosity, I began identifying and unraveling the script about race that I’d adapted to fit my life and the white environment of my childhood. The playbook of being white and relating to race in the US, which I, and the other white people around me lived by, said we needed only to look at people of color in order to understand why we’re so separated by race. Looking at brown and black folk, would show us how the problem of racism plays out and how we can fix it… for them.
And this sort of plot, the one that leaves white people out of the problem, serves a purpose. It keeps me, and white people in general, comfortably distanced — we aren’t in the picture so we’re off the hook. It benefits and fortifies whiteness.
This story, for as long as I keep to it, leaves me incapable of conceiving for myself what actions to take against racism because it tells me I have no personal stake in the problem. In it, I can avoid questioning myself and my role. I don’t have to look at how white is a race or how whiteness is tied to America’s problem with inequity.
But white is a race and, in the American context, it means something to be white. Not because I say so, but because purposefully defining people according to skin color is, and has always been, a part of America. And white has been the skin color bounded and protected as the default by US law (one-drop rule, anti miscegenation laws, school segregation, and redlining are just some of the ways the US government has worked to preserve whiteness).
According to the US census, white is the racial group that most fits me and the community of people that surrounded me for much of my life. We, white folk, are racialized, just as people of color are. We’re seated at the race table — even if our gaze is fixated on people of color and we can’t conceive of ourselves here.
And, there’s no doubt, racism and race-based violence are real — I’ve witnessed it. Moreover, my family and friends of color tell me their experiences of it. Denying racism, is to reject or delude myself about what I know is true and ignore the ways racial inequality hurts all of us. For me to be or do anything meaningful against racism, I need to let go of a narrative that serves whiteness.
When I start to operate as though I’m divorced from race and racism, I’ve learned to look back to the white kids. In these moments, I’m pressed to acknowledge our role, attend to our firsthand responsibility, and excavate what it is that lets me forget. Until I do this, it’s easy to ignore or walk away and, when uncertain or overwhelmed, fall back into what I learned and practiced in my white upbringing and make race and racism just like that image of the school cafeteria.
So, why are all the white kids sitting together? Well, if the white kids are anything like me and the white people that I know, it’s fear. My best guess for what’s going on with white people, when it comes to race and establishing equity, is we’re afraid.
What we’re fearing may differ — maybe it’s being uncomfortable, or of messing up and saying or doing the wrong things. Perhaps we’re only accustomed to being with other white folk and difference is frightening. It could be we’re afraid of being implicated in racism because racism is bad and that would mean we’re bad. Whiteness tells us there’s many reasons to be afraid. Fear binds us white folk together and even helped create whiteness.
And it’s not a harmless fear we learn. What I’ve seen, is that we white folk learn to direct our fear toward people of color. It’s why I, and the white people who showed me whiteness, didn’t pay attention to the white kids. We’re already too busy being afraid of the black and brown ones.
But, I face the fear, when I bring it back to us, white people, the ways we’re tied to racial inequity, what we’re doing, or not doing about it, and how we’re socialized to create and sustain racial disparity. And I learn to bring it back to white people in a new way — one that doesn’t protect and center whiteness or minimize the role of white people in the American story of race.
When I look at myself, my people, our relationship to race, and connection to racial inequity, I see how fear holds us. I’m brought back to common humanity and can remember that we’re all held together. All of us are stuck in the cafeteria that is life in the US, all being defined and shaped by race, and all tangled up in the problem of racism.
So, today, my people, white people, I’m asking us to see the white kids. To question our ideas of race and racism and look at how our lives and identities are intertwined with these. May we learn how to witness, believe, and connect with the stories and experiences we learned to fear, ignore, or separate from. May we practice together, listening with different ears and seeing with new eyes. May we understand that goodness for me, which causes harm to another, isn’t truly good. And, might we access the collective strength and wisdom to make the change we all need.
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