Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? summary

Think of someone you haven’t seen or spoken to in a while – say, a person who’s drifted away from your circle of friends. How is she doing? What sort of issues has she been dealing with lately? 

Not sure? Well, that’s the point. It’s hard to be aware of other people’s problems when you don’t even have contact with them. 

When the author was teaching at Mount Holyoke College back in the early ’90s, one of her students conducted a research project on preschoolers’ perceptions of Native Americans. As part of her research, the student went to a local daycare center and asked children of three to four years of age to draw a picture of a Native American.

Most of the children were dumbfounded by her request. They didn’t know what a Native American was. However, when she asked them to draw a picture of an Indian, they immediately grabbed their pens and began scribbling away. 

We all know what beginning puberty is like. You start to get pimples on your face, hair erupts in all sorts of new places, and an increase in hormones sends your mood swinging from happy to stressed to sad and back again in just a few hours.

Adolescents entering puberty also begin to explore their identities. They start asking the all-important questions: Who am I? Who was I before? Who will I become? 

To this day, people of color have only to flip through a magazine or switch on the television to see a negative, stereotypical image of their minority group reflected back at them. For Black women, there’s the stereotype of the “welfare queen” and the “gold digger.” And for Black men, there’s all the news footage of young Black men being led away in handcuffs – to give just a few examples. 

Faced with all of these harmful images of themselves, Black teens growing up in mixed-race communities have to affirm alternative definitions of themselves. And they do this by connecting with their Black peers. 

When the author was in high school in the early 1970s, she didn’t sit at the Black kids’ table in the cafeteria – simply because there weren’t enough Black kids to fill one. 

Being one of the few Black people at her school, the author experienced feelings of isolation from an early age. But that changed when she got to college. There, something happened that helped her develop her sense of Black identity. And the lessons of her experience are applicable to other Black children, adolescents, and young adults, along with the parents and educators who work with them. 

When the author begins classes and workshops on issues of race, she often asks participants, “What’s your class and ethnic background?” People of color always answer without hesitation, but white participants often pause before responding.

On one occasion, a young white woman described herself as middle class, but she wasn’t sure how to describe herself ethnically. Finally, she blurted out, “I’m just normal!” 

Fear is a powerful emotion. It can make us freeze up in panic, leaving us unable to think, move, or even speak.

When it comes to discussing race and racism, many white people remain silent out of fear. The result? A culture of silence, in which the problems of race and racism have become taboo topics in American society.