3. For a description of the professional development course for educators, see Sandra M. Lawrence and Beverly Daniel Tatum, “White Educators as Allies: Moving from Awareness to Action,” in Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society, ed. Michelle Fine, Lois Weis, Linda Powell Pruitt, and April Burns (New York: Routledge, 2004), 362–372.
4. Tatum, “Talking About Race, Learning About Racism.”
5. I was honored to serve as president of Spelman College, the oldest historically Black college for women in the United States, from 2002 to 2015; however, I did not teach any courses there.
Chapter 1: Defining Racism
1. C. O’Toole, “The Effect of the Media and Multicultural Education on Children’s Perceptions of Native Americans” (senior thesis, Department of Psychology and Education, Mount Holyoke College, 1990).
2. For an extended discussion of this point, see David Wellman, “Prejudiced People Are Not the Only Racists in America,” chap. 1 in Portraits of White Racism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 1–44. A second edition was published in 1993. See also Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “The Strange Enigma of Race in Contemporary America,” chap. 1 in Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, 4th ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), 1–24.
3. For specific statistical information, see Tim Sullivan et al., State of the Dream 2012: The Emerging Majority (United for a Fair Economy, 2012), http://www.faireconomy.org/dream12. It measures the impacts of the past thirty years of public policy on the racial divide and offers thirty-year projections, from 2012 to 2042, based on data trends since the Reagan presidency.
4. Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peace and Freedom, July/August 1989, 10–12. Now available at http://nationalseedproject.org/peggy-mcintosh-s-white-privilege-papers.
5. For further discussion of the concept of “belief in a just world,” see Melvin Lerner, “Social Psychology of Justice and Interpersonal Attraction,” in Foundations of Interpersonal Attraction, ed. Ted L. Huston (New York: Academic Press, 1974), 331–351.
6. For a brief historical overview of the institutionalization of racism and sexism in our legal system, see “Part VII: How It Happened: Race and Gender Issues in U.S. Law,” in Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study, 9th ed., ed. Paula S. Rothenberg (New York: Worth Publishers, 2014). See also Daria Roithmayr, Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock In White Advantage (New York: New York University Press, 2014).
7. Phyllis A. Wentworth, “The Identity Development of Non-Traditionally Aged First-Generation Women College Students: An Exploratory Study” (master’s thesis, Department of Psychology and Education, Mount Holyoke College, 1994).
8. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York: Penguin Random House, 2015), 144.
9. Walter L. Updegrave, “Race and Money,” Money, December 1989, 152–172.
10. See Ani Turner, The Business Case for Racial Equity, (Battle Creek, MI: W. K. Kellogg Foundation and Altarum Institute, 2013), http://www.wkkf.org/resource-directory/resource/2013/10/the-business-case-for-racial-equity.
11. For further discussion of the impact of racism on Whites, see Benjamin P. Bowser and Raymond G. Hunt, eds., Impacts of Racism on White Americans, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996); Joseph Barndt, Understanding and Dismantling Racism: The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007); Paul Kivel, Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 2011); and Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and a Bridge to a New America (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2016).
12. Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989), 3–4.
13. It is important to note here that these groups are not necessarily mutually exclusive. For example, people of Latin American descent may have European, African, and Native American ancestors. The politics of racial categorization has served to create artificial boundaries between groups with shared ancestry.
14. It is difficult to know which is the preferred term because different subgroups have different preferences that may change over time. According to Amado Padilla, younger US-born, university-educated individuals of Mexican ancestry prefer Chicano/a to Mexican American or Hispanic. On the other hand, Latino/a is preferred by others of Mexican ancestry or other Latin American origin. Those of Cuban ancestry may prefer Cuban American to Latino, whereas recent immigrants from Central America would rather be identified by their nationality (e.g., Guatematecos or Salvadoreños). See Amado Padilla, ed., Hispanic Psychology (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995).
15. For an expanded discussion of the social construction of race, see Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2015).
16. Pierre L. van den Berghe, Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective (New York: Wiley, 1967).
17. See Richard Alba, Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990).
18. In the year 2000 the US Census Bureau began allowing people to choose more than one racial category to describe themselves. For a discussion of the census classification debate that led to the policy change and the history of racial classification in the United States, see Lawrence Wright, “One Drop of Blood,” The New Yorker, July 25, 1994, 46–55.
Chapter 2: The Complexity of Identity
1. See Charles Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York: Scribner, 1922). George H. Mead expanded on this idea in his book Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934).
2. Abigail J. Stewart and Joseph M. Healy, “Linking Individual Development and Social Changes,” American Psychologist 44, no. 1 (1989): 30–42.
3. Erik. H. Erikson, Identity, Youth, and Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 22.
4. For a discussion of the Western biases in the concept of the self and individual identity, see Alan Roland, “Identity, Self, and Individualism in a Multicultural Perspective,” in Race, Ethnicity, and Self: Identity in Multicultural Perspective, ed. Elizabeth Pathy Salett and Diane R. Koslow (Washington, DC: National MultiCultural Institute, 1994), 11–23.
5. Becky Thompson and Sangeeta Tyagi, eds., Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity (New York: Routledge, 1996).
6. Ibid., xi.
7. Anti-Semitism is a term commonly used to describe the oppression of Jewish people. However, other Semitic peoples (Arab Muslims, for example) are also subject to oppressive treatment on the basis of ethnicity as well as religion. For that reason, the terms Jewish oppression and Arab oppression are sometimes used to specify the particular form of oppression under discussion.
8. Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: Crossing Press, 1984), 115.
9. Jean Baker Miller, “Domination and Subordination,” in Toward a New Psychology of Women (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), 3–9.
10. Ibid., 8.
11. Valerie Adams-Bass, Keisha L. Bentley-Edwards, and Howard C. Stevenson, “That’s Not Me I See on TV… : African American Youth Interpret Media Images of Black Females,” Women, Gender and Families of Color 2, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 79–100.
12. Susan T. Fiske, “Controlling Other People: The Impact of Power on Stereotyping,” American Psychologist 48, no. 6 (1993): 624.
13. Richard Wright, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An Autobiographical Sketch,” in Uncle Tom’s Children (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1938; New York: HarperCollins, 2009), Kindle edition, location 401.
14. An article in the popular weekly magazine People chronicled the close encounters of famous Black men with White police officers. Despite their fame, these men were treated as potential criminals. Highlighted in the article is the story of Jonny Gammage, who was beaten to death by White police officers in 1995 following a routine t
raffic stop in Pittsburgh. Thomas Fields-Meyer, “Under Suspicion,” People, January 15, 1996, 40–47, http://people.com/archive/under-suspicion-vol-45-no-2/. These incidents are strikingly similar to some of the twenty-first-century examples provided in the prologue of this book.
15. Miller, “Domination and Subordination,” 10.
16. Herbert Kohl, “I Won’t Learn from You,” in I Won’t Learn from You, and Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment, 2nd ed. (New York: The New Press, 1995), 6.
17. Miller, “Domination and Subordination,” 12.
18. Audre Lorde, “There Is No Hierarchy of Oppression,” in I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings of Audre Lorde, ed. Rudolph P. Byrd, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 219–220.
Chapter 3: The Early Years
1. For an in-depth discussion of preschool children’s recognition and understanding of racial differences, see Louise Derman-Sparks and Julie Olsen Edwards, “Learning About Racial Identity and Fairness,” chap. 7 in Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves, (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2010), 77–89.
2. For an expanded discussion of the role of Black families in the positive socialization of their children, see Beverly Daniel Tatum, Assimilation Blues: Black Families in a White Community (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
3. See Patricia G. Ramsey, “The Context of Race,” in Teaching and Learning in a Diverse World: Multicultural Education for Young Children, 4th ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 2015), Kindle edition, locations 1684–2073.
4. For other examples of good responses to preschoolers’ questions, order the helpful brochure “Teaching Young Children to Resist Bias: What Parents Can Do,” available from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, https://store.naeyc.org/store/teaching-young-children-resist-bias-what-parents-can-do. The flyers are very inexpensive and can be ordered in bulk to be given to parents at school meetings and other educational forums. They are also available in Spanish.
5. In terms of Piaget’s model of cognitive development, preschool children are considered to be in the preoperational stage. For more information about the preoperational stage as it relates to children’s understanding of racial and other forms of difference, see Ramsey, Teaching and Learning in a Diverse World. For a clear discussion of the cognitive characteristics of children at various stages of development, see Barry J. Wadsworth, Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive and Affective Development: Foundations of Constructivism, 5th ed. (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2003).
6. Sandra M. Lawrence and Beverly Daniel Tatum, “Teachers in Transition: The Impact of Anti-Racist Professional Development on Classroom Practice,” Teachers College Record 99 (Fall 1997), 169.
7. Faith Ringgold, Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky (New York: Crown, 1992).
8. Jeanette Winter, Follow the Drinking Gourd (New York: Dragonfly Books, 1988).
9. See Louise Derman-Sparks, Carol Tanaka Higa, and Bill Sparks, “Children, Race, and Racism: How Race Awareness Develops,” Interracial Books for Children Bulletin 11, no. 3–4 (1980), 6, https://www.teachingforchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ec_childrenraceracism_english.pdf.
10. Ibid.
11. For a more in-depth discussion of the impact of colorism, see Kathy Russell, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall, The Color Complex (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992). See also David Knight, “What’s Colorism?,” Teaching Tolerance, no. 51 (Fall 2015), http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-51-fall-2015/feature/what-s-colorism.
12. Nancy Boyd-Franklin, Black Families in Therapy: A Multisystems Approach (New York: Guilford, 1989), 34.
13. bell hooks, Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery (Boston: South End Press, 1993), 95.
14. John Steptoe, Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters: An African Tale (New York: Scholastic, 1989).
15. The first book in this series by Gertrude Chandler Warner is The Boxcar Children (Niles, IL: Albert Whitman, 1942). Other books in the series include Surprise Island, The Yellow House Mystery, Mystery Ranch, and many others.
16. Janie Victoria Ward, “Raising Resisters: The Role of Truth Telling in the Psychological Development of African-American Girls,” in Urban Girls: Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities, ed. Bonnie J. Ross Leadbeater and Niobe Way (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 85–99. See also Janie Victoria Ward, “Uncovering Truths, Recovering Lives,” in Urban Girls Revisited: Building Strengths, ed. Bonnie J. Ross Leadbeater and Niobe Way (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 190–207.
17. For a useful set of guidelines for analysis of media, see Council on Interracial Books for Children, “Ten Quick Ways to Analyze Children’s Books for Racism and Sexism,” in Rethinking Our Classrooms, vol. 1, rev. ed., (Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools, 2007), 10–11.
18. Derman-Sparks and Edwards, “Learning About Racial Identity and Fairness.”
19. “Kids Pluck Arrow from Pilgrim’s Hat,” United Press International, November 23, 1989, http://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/11/23/kids-pluck-arow-from-Pilgrims-hat/4156627800400.
20. Louise Derman-Sparks and the ABC Task Force, Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children (Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1989), 77.
Chapter 4: Identity Development in Adolescence
1. James E. Marcia, “Development and Validation of Ego Identity Status,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 3, no. 5 (1966), 551–558.
2. For a review of the research on ethnic identity in adolescents, see Jean S. Phinney, “Ethnic Identity in Adolescents and Adults: Review of Research,” Psychological Bulletin 108, no. 3 (1990): 499–514. See also “Part I: Identity Development” in Urban Girls: Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities, ed. Bonnie J. Ross Leadbeater and Niobe Way (New York: New York University Press, 1996). See also Sabine Elizabeth French et al., “The Development of Ethnic Identity During Adolescence,” Developmental Psychology 42, no.1 (2006): 1–10.
3. William E. Cross Jr., Shades of Black: Diversity in African-American Identity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991).
4. William E. Cross and T. Binta Cross, “Theory, Research, and Models,” in Handbook of Race, Racism, and the Developing Child, ed. Stephen M. Quintana and Clark McKown (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley and Sons, 2008), 156.
5. Ibid., 158.
6. Ibid., 156.
7. For an expanded discussion of “race-conscious” parenting, see Beverly Daniel Tatum, “Making Choices,” chap. 6 in Assimilation Blues: Black Families in a White Community (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 111–130.
8. Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor et al., “Ethnic and Racial Identity During Adolescence and into Young Adulthood: An Integrated Conceptualization,” Child Development 85, no. 1 (2014): 21–39.
9. Ibid., 27.
10. Jean S. Phinney and Steve Tarver, “Ethnic Identity Search and Commitment in Black and White Eighth Graders,” Journal of Early Adolescence 8, no. 3 (1988): 265–77. See also French et al., “The Development of Ethnic Identity During Adolescence.”
11. Umaña-Taylor et al., “Ethnic and Racial Identity During Adolescence and into Young Adulthood.”
12. See Beverly Daniel Tatum, “African-American Identity, Academic Achievement, and Missing History,” Social Education 56, no. 6 (1992): 331–334; Beverly Daniel Tatum, “Racial Identity and Relational Theory: The Case of Black Women in White Communities,” Work in Progress, no. 63 (Wellesley, MA: Stone Center Working Papers, 1992); Beverly Daniel Tatum, “Out There Stranded? Black Youth in White Communities,” in Black Families, 3rd ed., ed. Harriet Pipes McAdoo (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996), 214–233.
13. For an in-depth discussion of the negative effects of tracking in schools, see Jeannie Oakes, Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985). See also Sonali Kholi, “Modern-Day Segregation in Public Schools,” The Atlantic, November 18, 2014,
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/11/modern-day-segregation-in-public-schools/382846/.
14. Roslyn Arlin Mickelson and Anne E. Velasco, “Bring It On! Diverse Responses to ‘Acting White’ Among Academically Able Black Adolescents,” chap. 1 in Beyond Acting White: Reassessments and New Directions in Research on Black Students and School Success, ed. Erin McNamara Horvat and Carla O’Connor (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 27–57.
15. Catherine E. Lhamon, “Dear Colleague Letter: Resource Comparability,” version 1.02, October 10, 2014, US Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights. http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-resourcecomp-201410.pdf.
16. For further discussion of the social dynamics for Black youth in White communities, see Tatum, “Out There Stranded?”
17. Leadbeater and Way, Urban Girls, 5. See also Bonnie J. Ross Leadbeater and Niobe Way, eds., Urban Girls Revisited: Building Strengths (New York: New York University Press, 2007).
18. Valerie Adams-Bass, Keisha L. Bentley-Edwards, and Howard C. Stevenson, “That’s Not Me I See on TV… : African American Youth Interpret Media Images of Black Females,” Women, Gender and Families of Color 2, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 81.
19. Ibid., 88.
20. Ibid., 90.
21. Lawrence Otis Graham, “I Taught My Black Kids That Their Elite Upbringing Would Protect Them from Discrimination. I Was Wrong,” Washington Post, November 6, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/06/i-taught-my-black-kids-that-their-elite-upbringing-would-protect-them-from-discrimination-i-was-wrong/.
22. Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 36.
23. William E. Cross Jr., “The Psychology of Nigrescence: Revising the Cross Model,” in Handbook of Multicultural Counseling, ed. Joseph G. Ponterotto et al. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), 93–122.
24. See page 25 for a discussion of the Trayvon Martin case. Jordan Davis was a seventeen-year-old teenager who was shot and killed by Michael Dunn, a forty-seven-year-old White man, at a Jacksonville, Florida, gas station on November 23, 2012. Dunn told Davis and his friends in the car that they were playing their music too loud. Words were exchanged between Dunn and the teens inside the car, and Dunn responded by shooting ten shots into the car, killing Davis. The shots missed the other passengers. The case took on additional national significance because it occurred just a few months after the killing of Trayvon Martin. Unlike George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin, Michael Dunn was eventually convicted of first-degree murder for the killing of Jordan Davis.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Page 47
