Week Six

Beverly Tatum pointed out so many interesting points in Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? that it was difficult to choose what I wanted to put in my blog. I decided to start with black school performance. Tatum discusses the benefits of racial/ethnic grouping in the adolescence section of "Understanding Blackness in a White Context." In her exploration of alternatives to students segregating themselves, she found the desegregation program, METCO (Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity), at work in a Massachusetts middle school (71). It worked by bringing colored students from the same background together with mentors to discuss problems in school both academically and socially, and it was successful in improving the grades of those students. It also helped those colored students interact better with white students and teachers in the classroom environment. Tatum definitively states that this sort of program will not work in all cases, but that it is important for parents of minority children to seek out similar programs that work in their area to provide a peer-group for their child. After reading this, I started to research what sort of programs were out there like METCO. I thought it sounded like such an excellent idea that a lot of people would have picked up on and tried to adapt in their own area. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any programs. There were quite a few article out there on how to set up a learning environment conducive to academic achievement for minorities.

While I was researching to find programs, I found one article on pedagogy and race. Regina A. Bernard-Carreño wrote the article that caught my eye, and changed the direction of my research. Her article, "The Critical Pedagogy of Black Studies," addresses the state of the Black Studies Major at the Ivy League College, City University of New York. It references how minority students (Black and Latino/a) frequently avoid Black Studies classes because of the predominately white professors. She relates that the students feel that white professors are unable to competently teach the material because of the persistent racism and culture that prevent white people from ever knowing what it is like to be a part of the minority. Therefore, white professors teaching Black Studies would be easier on minority students, failing to challenge them. Bernard-Carreño uses this information to support her opinion that more minority professors are needed in prestigious higher education. She also builds her argument upon the fact that minority students in Black Studies classes are usually the source of information for the rest of the class in the usual situation of one or two minority students and the rest of the class, including the professor, being white. When the professor is part of the minority, he/she is the main source of information, leaving all of the students the opportunity to be the receivers of knowledge instead of the bearers.

In my continued search for broader solutions which could apply to all subjects, I encountered the article "Affirmative-Action Programs for Minority Students: Right in Theory, Wrong in Practice" by Charles et al. It discusses both sides of the issue of affirmative action in the admissions process into college. I think it addresses an important issue that is often ignored in the discussion of racism - this being the effect on minorities who supposedly benefit from the affirmative-action system. Oftentimes in college, the minority students who are accepted are aware of the role their race played in that decision, especially when their grades and test scores are below the average of the students admitted into the college. This discrepancy is known to a lot of students and can create a stigma for the minority students. Claude Steele, who coined the term Stereotype Threat to describe it, significantly researched this phenomenon. In his extremely interesting research article "Stereotype Threat and African-American Student Achievement," Steele proves that black students hinder themselves on tests when they feel that there could be a bias against their race. Since African-Americans have been stereotyped as less intelligent by the media, when they took a challenging test that they thought was testing their performance against white students, the performed poorer. Yet when they were unconcerned with their performance being compared to that of white students, they performed equally. This shows how deeply stereotypes affect all people, but it also proves that there are ways to equalize the opportunities for success in standardized tests among black students. It also discredits the assumption that black students who are admitted into college with lower standardized test scores are poorer students than their white counterparts, thereby validating and supporting affirmative action.

Both Tatum and UNC Asheville's guest speaker for Martin Luther King Jr Day, Damali Ayo, brought up the large gap in the Education system in regards to famous minorities who made significant contributions to our society. While there have been movements such as Black History Month and Martin Luther King Jr Day, we still only hear about a select few. Tatum explains, "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." (65) I think that the curricular gap is still huge in this arena, so I took some time to look for some helpful resources on this subject. Enchanted Learning composed a website filled with mini-biographies of famous African Americans. I especially enjoyed that the timeline reaches back to the 1500s. While I am certain that this website does not have an inclusive list of all famous African Americans, I was pleasantly surprised by how many names were included. Damali Ayo also mentioned the large gap in mainstream knowledge of famous black intellectuals. In an effort to share the education that she received in her household growing up, she created Black History Flash Cards and posted them on her website in an easy to print design. This way the knowledge can be spread to others immediately with the hopes that the school curriculum directors will pick up on the hint and start to diversify our text books. Some places are starting to pick up the slack in this arena, though. I was pleased to find an article dated for this month about a group of students doing projects on modern day famous African Americans. A group of students at Asbury Park High School have set up an exhibit of Black History Month Portraits in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

In conclusion, I truly enjoyed Why Are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?. It is definitely a book I will be revisiting because I know that there are things I missed on this first read-through. It definitely opened my eyes to things I had never thought of before, and I think I have changed for the better because of it.