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Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? QUOTES

Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? QUOTES

1 " It is important to understand that the system of advantage is perpetuated when we do not acknowledge its existence. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

2 " For many people of color, learning to break the silence is a survival issue. To remain silent would be to disconnect from her own experience, to swallow and internalize her own oppression.The cost of silence is too high. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

3 " In a situation of unequal power, a subordinate group has to focus on survival. It becomes very important for the subordinates to become highly attuned to the dominants as a way of protecting themselves from them. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

4 " The relevant question is not whether all Whites are racist but how we can move more White people from a position of active or passive racism to one of active antiracism. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

5 " Children who have been silenced often enough learn not to talk about race publicly. Their questions don’t go away, they just go unasked. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

6 " Learning to spot “that stuff ”—whether it is racist, or sexist, or classist—is an important skill for children to develop. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

7 " Social psychologist Susan Fiske writes,“It is a simple principle: People pay attention to those who control their outcomes. In an effort to predict and possibly influence what is going to happen to them, people gather information about those with power.”11 "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

8 " While I think it is necessary to be honest about the racism of our past and present, it is also necessary to empower children (and adults) with the vision that change is possible. Concrete examples are critical. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

9 " Sometimes the assumptions we make about others come not from what we have been told or what we have seen on television or in books, but rather rom what we have not been told. The distortion of historical information about people of color leads young people (and older people to) to make assumptions that may go unchallenged for a long time. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

10 " Regardless of your subject matter, there are ways to engage students in critical thinking about racism which are relevant to your discipline. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

11 " Resisting the stereotypes and affirming other definitions of themselves is part of the task facing young Black women in both White and Black communities. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

12 " Unfortunately for Black teenagers, those cultural stereotypes do not usually include academic achievement. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

13 " If young people are exposed to images of African American academic achievement in their early years, they won’t have to define school achievement as something for Whites only. They will know that there is a long history of Black intellectual achievement. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

14 " The task of resisting our own oppression does not relieve us of the responsibility of acknowledging the complicity in the oppression of others. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

15 " Despair is an act of resignation I am not willing to make. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

16 " We all have a sphere of influence. Each of us needs to find our own sources of courage so that we can begin to speak. There are many problems to address, and we cannot avoid them indefinitely. We cannot continue to be silent. We must begin to speak, knowing that words alone are insufficient. But I have seen that meaningful dialogue can lead to effective action. Change is possible. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

17 " What if I make a mistake?' you may be thinking. 'Racism is a volatile issue, and I don't want to say or do the wrong thing.' In almost forty years of teaching and leading workshops about racism, I have made many mistakes. I have found that a sincere apology and a genuine desire to learn from one's mistakes is usually rewarded with forgiveness. If we wait for perfection, we will never break the silence. The cycle of racism will continue uninterrupted. "

― , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

18 " The particular combination of the explicit communication of high standards and the demonstrated assurance of the teacher's belief in the student's ability to succeed (as evidenced by the effort to provide detailed, constructive feedback) was a powerful intervention for Black students...it was an exceedingly effective way to generate the trust needed to motivate Black students to make their best effort. "

― Beverly Daniel Tatum, , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

19 " We can shift a student's focus from the anxiety of proving ability in the face of negative stereotypes to the confidence of improving with effort despite the negative stereotypes. Embracing a theory of intelligence as something that can develop—that can be expanded through effective effort—is something all of us can do to reduce the impact of stereotype threat and increase achievement in all of our students. "

― Beverly Daniel Tatum, , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

20 " In the case of the Chicanx population, the US conquest and annexation of Mexican territory (a geographical area extending from Texas to California) following the Mexican American War (1846-1848) created a situation in which people of Mexican ancestry became subject to White domination...It was the general feeling among White settlers that they were superior to Mexicans...The question of how Mexicans should be classified racially was decided in 1897 by Texas courts, which ruled that Mexican Americans were not White. In California, they were classified as 'Caucasian' until 1930, when the state attorney general decided they should be categorized as 'Indians,' though 'not considered "the original American Indians of the US"'. "

― Beverly Daniel Tatum, , Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?