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

Beverly Daniel Tatum, an authority on the psychology of racism, takes up a familiar scene: in racially mixed high schools, Black, White, Latino and Asian Pacific students, and in some regions American Indian ones, cluster in their own groups. She asks whether this self-segregation is a problem to fix or a coping strategy to support, and argues that people lack a way to talk about race, with White people afraid of the wrong words and parents of color afraid of exposing children to painful realities too soon. Her answer is racial identity: rejecting negative stereotypes for people of color, and for White people, recognizing White privilege and working against injustice. A fully revised edition followed.

Denise Morris Kipnis, founder of ChangeFlow Consulting, first read it while serving on the board of a school where every group, the board included, went through diversity training.