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

This was a really useful book as a white educator in a diverse school. It's a well-researched look at how racism affects development across various developmental stages and life markers and what can be done to mitigate these effects. As a white person, I know a lot of microaggressions and small moments of discrimination go completely over my head, and this book has clear methods of active anti-racist actions that I can take to help combat this. While it is primarily about Black-White relationships, there are also a couple chapters about other people of color and multiracial families that are limited but good starting points here. It's a book for both POC's and allies, and I highly recommend it to educators specifically.

Very thought provoking! Excellent insight on stereotypes of different races,behaviors, multiracial family issues! Highly recommend!

Short Thoughts: This is going to be one of my top recommendations for an introduction to racial issues. It isn't perfect, but it is very good. The 20th anniversary edition has a good introduction to racial history in the past 20 years (71 pages of introduction). The most important part of this book is the development of what child and teen racial identity development is like and why that is important. It includes discussion not just of traditional minority children's racial identity development, but also of White children, multi-racial children and minority adopted children of White parents. The nuanced development of those different groups makes this very helpful for teachers and others that work with children

The 20th anniversary edition is very current. I did not read the first edition, but the research and examples are all very up to date.

My concerns. One the narration is great and it is by the author, which I like. I do not like that the narration is not synced with the kindle edition. I mostly listened, but I have the kindle edition as well and I will read this later.

Second, while systemic issues were not ignored, I felt like the ending section on interpersonal dialogue and the hope around that was too focused in the individual and not focused enough on the systemic. Racism is primarily a systemic problem that has ramifications on the individual. It is not primarily an individual problem with systemic ramifications. So that part I think is framed wrong. But I still think this is an excellent introduction to issues around race.

My longer thoughts are on my blog at http://bookwi.se/why-are-all-the-black-kids-sitting-together-in-the-cafeteria/

Good starter. I'm reading it as someone who studied this subject to see if this is truly the gold mine for beginners everyone says that it is. I think it is.
There were moments that made me pause, but it's for folks new to this cinversation. I even found myself learning about identity-development theory and terminology.
I see why this is on all the reading lists.

Second Reading, Spring 2020:
My edition is the 20th anniversary edition, and I was reading this alongside a friend who had a copy from 2003. Tatum indicates that a lot of the chapters in the middle had been re-written for the newer version, as new data and new language have been made available. It's interesting seeing how the two versions compare, though it seems like they are pretty similar overall.

I'm thankful that I was able to re-review the highlights I had made on my first reading, and came away with new highlights this time around - things that struck me that, maybe, I wasn't ready for on my first reading. This is a very good book, though admittedly there are a few sections that I ended up skimming this time, particularly when it got bogged down in statistics or talked really in any way about the 2016 election (I was there, we're still living it, I don't need to relive that).

Original Review, Summer 2019:
This is one of those books that was actually quite dense, but super informative and interesting, so I'd let it sit next to me and ignore it for a few days, and every time I picked it up, I'd get suuuuper sucked into it and wonder why it was taking me so long to get through. But yes, it is a bit dense, it's highly researched and academic, and I don't especially consider myself a person that's that interested in child development, though this is much more about teen identity development, and ... what can I say but that the sociology of race was really fascinating to me in a really inexplicable way. I learned a lot, it was fairly accessibly written so I didn't have too hard a go of it. I really just wanted to hand this over to my mom when I finished, since she teaches kindergarten in a very diverse school district, but alas, she doesn't know how she raised someone who wants to read all the time, and would never pick this up if I gave her a copy.