Final Blog Post

     Over the past few weeks I have been reading the book "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria" This book is about race and what it effects mainly inside of the United States. For the final section me and my book group read from pages two hundred ninety nine to three hundred fifty eight. This blog post will be reflecting on the general message of the book and the ideas that should be taken away from it. The question that the author stated at the beginning of the book was along the lines of has anything changed since she wrote her last book. At the end of the book she states on page 358 "No, not yet, but it could be." I would argue against this.

    One of the major things that I would cite to show that her conclusion was wrong would be the recent Black Lives Matter protests. As long as there is a majority that wishes for change it is inevitable that change will come. As all civil rights movements in the past, first people must come together for things to happen. Over the summer hundred of thousands of people were seen coming out to support the marginalized community's in our country. I do realize that the author wrote this passage before this summer and because of that she could be right at the time of writing. The major gap in my understanding of civil rights would have to be in the early 2000s because I was a baby at the time and later in life studied current events and earlier civil rights movements. However, based off examples in the book I would still argue that there was change during those years as well.

    Overall the author established her main point and used a plethora of examples and data points to back it. She connected big ideas using these smaller points to paint the picture of her main thesis for the book. She mainly relied on an appeal to logos which may have been a wise choice strategically when considering her audience. If I were her I would try and explain her ideas to people of polar opposite political views and try and make them see where she is coming from. In my opinion, logos is the strongest of the three appeals to others.

    

    Overall, it was a very enjoyable read and a great way to educate yourself on modern and past issues in the united states regarding race. Weather you agreed with the authors main and supporting points throughout the book it made you think in depth in ways you may not have done before about race. As a white male, I really don't have race brought up all that often unless it is in academics or with friends from other races. This book was really good at bringing up topics that had a close relation with current events. Overall it was a great read and I would recommend it. 

Blog Post Four

    I am currently reading a book called "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?". I have dove right into the first two hundred and twenty pages in the past three posts and in this blog I will review from pages two hundred twenty too page two hundred ninety eight. In these pages the subject I found the most interesting was definitely the historical background of the Latinx community in America. In history we have learned a good amount about this subject and I found reading about it again very interesting. Another part of this chapter I found interesting about this section of the book was the section dedicated to Native Americans. 

    

    One of the things I found the most interesting was the history of Puerto Rico. I have visited it a few times in the past and found it to be a really cool place. On page 239, Tatum talks about how Puerto Rico was taken over by force in the Spanish- American war in 1898. While I do think that is very unfortunate, I also think that at this point unless there is a two thirds vote to leave the country, that it should probably stay with the united states. I also know that the US is in some hot water with various groups for politically "forcing" Puerto Rico to stay part of the country. The theory behind this is that the United states has invested into Puerto Rico so that if they decided to try and leave they would have an unmanageable amount of debt. It has been called an attempt to buy a country for almost nothing. Despite the fact that some Puerto Ricans do want to succeed, a lot of them enjoy being US citizens. It is a very complex issue that doesn't really have any easy solutions and that is why it'll probably stay the same.

    The next part of this section I found interesting was the part that addressed Native Americans. On page 262, the author talks about an advertising campaign centered around the statement, "Have you ever seen A real Indian?". I think that I have a very interesting perspective when discussing perceptions of native Americans. On one hand, I grew up watching shows such as tom and jerry which had stereotypical perception of Native Americans and reading books like lonesome dove that was a classic cowboys Vs Indians type of book. However, on the other hand, my father had worked on a reservation in the black hills. Out of  these two things, the one with the stronger influence on me were the stories that my father told me about the time spent on the reservation. This is definitely one of the areas that I think Id have the lowest amount of implicit bias because even though there aren't any natives in my community, I still learned about them and their culture from a young age. 

    Overall this chapter was very interesting and made me think differently than the others thus far. Instead of just reading along I took the time to delve deeply into my past and the past of our country think about how it has effected the world and my life today. While I did not pay as much attention to the raw facts of this chapter, I still found it intuitively challenging.

    

Blog Post Three

     This is the third in a series of blog posts about the book "Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together In the Cafeteria?" The third section of the book that I read was in between pages one hundred fifty two and two Hundred twenty. The main point from these pages that drew my attention was the answer to the question posed in the title. Having never really experienced this phenomenon due to the lack of diversity where I reside, I found this to be extremely interesting. 

    The first point that the author made that attracted my attention was that black students cant vent too their white friends in many instances because it is much more difficult for them to understand what they are going through. While I understand where the author is coming from and there is some truth to that statement I don't think that it is necessarily true. I can vent to my female friends about girls and it does not prove to be anymore difficult than talking to my guy friends. While this is a flawed example because my girl friends go through similar experience's with guys, I still think it has some value. Also I think that the majority of white teens today are more aware of how damaging little comments can be to our peers who are not white. However, a point that the author makes that could disprove this point is that black students perform better at traditionally black university's. The only real difference between these and more "white" university's is that there are many more black students there. As the author points out this would indicate that  black students do better when surrounded by peers who are like them. Either way, that's one of the main reasons that black students tend to sit together in the cafeteria, justifiably or not. 

    Another extremely intriguing point the author brought up was how black adolescences will do a lot to dodge stereotypes of black people and weirdly enough, just about the opposite as well, being to white. Black students who are in schools that have a majority of white students will go out of their way to avoid being seen engaging in a stereotype about them. An example that the author brought up was a student had said he avoided doing things such as basketball to not be categorized into the stereotype that all black people are good at basketball. Later in the book the author talks about how in some schools the black kids who are in advanced classes /mainly but in really any classes might not apply themselves as hard to fit in with the "cool" black kids. I found these truth's to be very sad. The fact that a lot of black kids cant just be themselves is extremely perverted in nature. I have never had this issue in my life and cant imagine how terrible it must be to have  to change your fundamental nature to just fit in. 

Blog Post Two

     The pages in the second section were from seventy three too one-hundred fifty one. In this section the author used logos as her prime form of rhetoric to make her main point. She started by establishing credibility on page seventy-three and page seventy-four. She did this by showing her experience and expertise in the field that was relevant to this section of the book. Her accomplishments show that she had no lack of understanding and is well informed on the subject. She has taught many classes over the decades and she uses this to establish a very strong point of reference for the reader early on. Her main point that she goes on to argue is that whether or not white people intend to, they benefit from racism and therefore are racist by her operational usage of the word. 

    She starts her appeal to logos by explaining how racism is baked into our everyday lives by using an example from one of her students. The student in question was conducting an experiment where they asked a group of children in kindergarten to draw a native American. The children at first didn't know what that meant until the student rephrased it as "Draw Indians". To this the students all drew images that had things like feathers and tomahawks. When asked where these ideas came from the children cited things such as cartoons. The author uses this to demonstrate how little things can lead to vast misconceptions over time. If no one teaches those kids that is not what the average native American looks like they are going to keep that misconception with them the rest of their life and could eventually make them prejudiced.

    The next point the author makes is along the same lines but the inverse of the last. She argues that not showing any imagery can lead to prejudice itself. The example she uses is of another student, but this one was asked to do something with black authors and couldn't, stating that it was not his fault that black people don't write books. This shows that not showing any media of people of color or any race can lead to wildly wrong ideas. Obviously, the student was not exposed to any black authors in their schooling career. This is a major problem that a lot of schools struggle with today and one of the last strong remnants of racism. Another example that the author cited was a student saying that Cleopatra was black. Another student said something along the lines of but I thought she was pretty. This is obviously racist but the student didn't realize what they just said was very problematic.  The author uses examples like these to show that we are surrounded by racism and by default white people will absorb some of the prejudices around them. The author uses some very well reasoned points to appeal to the reader's sense of logos.

Blog Post One

     Race is at the forefront of politics in America today. As always it is important to educate oneself on current events and formulate a well supported opinion while keeping an open mind. Due to these simple principles I decided to read "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?" It is a book that was written by Beverly Daniel Tatum about racial injustices and progressions in American civil rights. It will be sure to give me many insights about my own environment and life along with a better understanding of  America as a whole.

    One of the things that really resonated with me early in the book was the take on voter fraud and the use of it to suppress voters. To justify laws that require more identification to vote and therefore up the difficulty of voting many politicians will cite voter fraud as a reason to implement these rules. However, the costs in these scenarios outweigh the benefits by magnitudes. An example that Tatum cites on page twenty about when the legislatures of Texas passed a bill that required a drivers license because of voter fraud but when asked for examples they came up with almost none. However to stop those two cases of voter fraud they sacrificed the accessibility of hundreds of thousands of voters that were mainly black. Things like this are very underhanded and seem innocent until the facts are realized and there are no real reasons for a law like this. This made me think to the presidential election of twenty twenty one. All over the country there claims of voter fraud that were completely not based in fact and the only reason to claim something like this was to create unease around the security of our elections.

    Another thing that really caught my attention was something that definitely struck close to home. On page forty five, the author talks about white people being insulated from all of these problems because they tend to live in towns with very high percentages of other white people so these issues don't ever really come up around them. This has been pretty much accurate in my life due to the fact that I live in a small town that is probably ninety nine percent white. I am very blessed to have had parents who recognized this as an issue and have brought on trips to other countries with different cultures and ethnicities. However, whenever I discuss race or encounter a situation where race is a large factor I always think if I am operating off assumptions or reality. It is very important to identify any bias that you may carry with yourself and counter it with what you know about the environment around you. As I progress through the book I will confront more ideas such as these and more. As the author develops their main point I will pick it apart and analyze the points made and their legitimacy.