In TeachLab’s first episode, our host Justin Reich has a powerful conversation with renowned author, psychologist and educator Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. Dr. Tatum shares some of the stories that inspired her bestselling book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race and offers tips for addressing the ongoing challenges of racial issues in classrooms and schools.
In TeachLab’s first episode, our host Justin Reich has a powerful conversation with renowned author, psychologist and educator Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. Dr. Tatum shares some of the stories that inspired her bestselling book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race and offers tips for addressing the ongoing challenges of racial issues in classrooms and schools.
About Our Guest: Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum
Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, president emerita of Spelman College, is a developmental psychologist, administrator and educator who has conducted research and written several books on the topic of racism, including the recently published 20th anniversary edition of her bestselling book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race. A thought-leader in higher education, she was the 2013 recipient of the Carnegie Academic Leadership Award and the 2014 recipient of the American Psychological Association Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology. Dr. Tatum holds a B.A. degree in psychology from Wesleyan University, a M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of Michigan, and a M.A. in Religious Studies from Hartford Seminary.
About Our Host: Justin Reich
Justin Reich is an educational researcher passionate about the future of learning in a networked world. He is an Assistant Professor in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab, where Justin and his team design, implement, and research the future of teacher learning. Justin’s writings have appeared in Science, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Educational Researcher, the Washington Post, Inside Higher Ed, the Christian Science Monitor, Education Week, and other publications. Justin's favorite hobbies are spending time outside hiking, climbing, and boating with his wife and two school-aged daughters. He has a new book on education technology forthcoming this fall from Harvard University Press.
Additional Resources
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race – Read Dr. Tatum’s book updated and reissued in 2017.
ROPES – This blog post describes a protocol for collaboratively creating shared rules and expectations for the classroom. It could also be used to kick off challenging conversations with educators.
“White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism” – Dr. Tatum recommended teachers read Dr. Robin DiAngelo; this article provides pointers based on her book.
Is My Skin Brown Because I Drank Chocolate Milk? – Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum’s presentation at TEDxStanford about how people talk (or don’t) about race and how to approach the conversation with young children.
Transcript
https://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/dr-beverly-daniel-tatum/transcript
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Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices
Produced by Jesse Dukes and Garrett Beazley
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Justin Reich: Recently, Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum published the 20th anniversary edition of her bestselling book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and Other Conversations About Race? The title came from the time she spent visiting schools and classrooms and talking about race and racism in education.
Dr. Tatum: People would always ask me that question, and they would ask it as though they were concerned that it was a problem. Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria, and what can we do to make them stop? So I want to say it's a perfectly fine question to ask, but let's not assume it's a problem.
Justin Reich: Right, right.
Justin Reich: From the teaching systems lab at MIT, this is TeachLab, a podcast about the art and craft of teaching. I'm Justin Reich. Today, Beverly Daniel Tatum. She's a developmental psychologist and author and the president emerita at Spelman college. Her book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, was written for educators. And maybe you can relate to this. She developed the ideas in the book by teaching them to her students. It was part of a class she taught at Mount Holyoke called the psychology of racism. And one of the key ideas she tried to impart to those college students is that all of them, all of us, can take a leadership role in making institutions more sensitive towards inclusivity and more aware of the context of racism.
Dr. Tatum: We often think about leaders as the people who run organizations, but the fact of the matter is we're all leaders. Everyone influences other people to some degree. Teachers are leaders in their classroom. Parents are leaders at home. And so what was most rewarding for me was for my students to really give serious thought to their own leadership capacity and to think about how they could use it. So at the end of every semester, I would ask students to develop an action plan. And those action plans might vary from leading an unlearning racism workshop in their residence hall, to planning a family intervention at Thanksgiving, to doing a letter writing campaign about stereotypical advertising or problematic messages in a favorite television program. Lots of different ways of thinking about it.
Justin Reich: Dr Tatum's book did impact education, but of course the issues she addressed in 1997 are still with us today. I asked her to share what advice she has for schools who are tackling the challenge of creating an inclusive, welcoming learning environment.
Dr. Tatum: Well, I would probably talk about what I call the ABCs. A stands for affirming identity. B stands for building community, and C stands for cultivating leadership. So to elaborate on that, the A is of course the most, I like to think of the A as the most important, the starting place. The A, affirming identity, really speaks to the fact that everyone wants to be seen, heard and understood. And how do we know we have been seen or heard or understood? When we see ourselves reflected in the environments around us, then we know that someone's noticed us, right, that we have been seen. And so for example, if we were all together in a room, and someone took a group photo, the photographer took a picture of everybody in the room, told us to arrange ourselves and smile, and we got our picture taken. And a copy of that photo was given to each of us. The first thing any one of us would do when we got our copy would be to look for ourselves in that photo. You look to say, okay-
Justin Reich: Where am I?
Dr. Tatum: where am I in this picture? And not only would you want to see yourself in the picture, but you would want to see yourself in the picture looking good. Right? You would be evaluating, was I smiling? Are my eyes open? How did that outfit look today? And so if we think about the learning environment, the classroom, the school as like a big photograph, we step into that photograph, and we want to see ourselves in it. We want to see ourselves in the curriculum. We want to see yourself standing in front of the room sometimes, if not all the time. We want to see ourselves being recognized as part of this learning community in very tangible ways, in ways that white children regularly see themselves. They don't really have to think much about it because even if the teacher doesn't look like them, they're in the textbooks. They're in the reading room, library materials, they're everywhere. And so we have to be more intentional about making sure that kids are not invisible.
Justin Reich: Well, I want to make sure you get a chance to tell us about B and C too, but drilling down on affirming. So there's some things that teachers and educators can do to build a more affirming environment before kids are in the room. They can think about what's on the walls.
Dr. Tatum: Absolutely.
Justin Reich: They can think about what's in their libraries. They can think about what materials, what topics are we choosing to delve more deeply into. And knowing something about my kids and where they're from, how are they going to see themselves in that? If I was in the classroom with a teacher who's doing a really good job of affirming identity, do you have examples of sort of what moves I would see that teacher making or what kinds of things that teacher might be doing? What are the sort of actions, what are the behaviors that we can kind of cultivate in teachers that have are characteristic of people who are really good at affirming?
Dr. Tatum: Well, let's imagine that the materials are there. Let's imagine there's a diversity of materials. And let's imagine that kids are being given some free choice time. And let's imagine you have a reluctant reader. Maybe that reluctant reader says, I'm not into books. I don't really like to read. And you might say to that person, well, I know it's not your favorite thing, but I have a book that I think you might really be interested in, and then pulls out a book that does represent that kid in some meaningful way.
Dr. Tatum: I had an experience of this with a relative. I have two sons. My sons are four years apart, six and 10 at the time that this happened. They're now in their 30s, right? But they had cousins, two cousins, similar age, six and 10, and they were spending several weeks with us in the summer. And the 10 year old said just that. He wasn't into reading. My kids were voracious readers. And I was trying to get him to read, and he said, I don't like to read. And he wasn't an excellent student. He was doing okay in school. But anyway, I said, well, I have some books you might be interested in. Let me just show you one. And I handed him a book. The title of it was Wagon Wheels. Some of your teachers listening might know this book, but it's about a black family after the end of the Civil War traveling West to settle in what was a black community in Kansas, Nicodemus, Kansas. And according to the story, it's based on a true story actually, according to the story, the mother unfortunately has died. And so the father is single parent with these two boys. And they're going out West to settle. It's very adventurous, and at a certain point the father has to go ahead alone and leaves the oldest boy in charge of his younger brother. There might've been actually three boys, so two younger siblings. And they have to really-
Justin Reich: Survive on the trail out West.
Dr. Tatum: Survive on the trail out West. And it's quite an adventure. And they are very successful. They have some assistance from some local Indians, I think, that they meet up with. But when I offered him this book, he was skeptical, but then he read it voraciously. And so the question we have to ask is are we engaging kids in a way that captures their imaginations and allows them to feel part of the story?
Justin Reich: And for us here at MIT, I think one of the things that we try to think about in our lab is not only doing that in the humanities, but where else does that fit in the science and technical subjects? That was why it was such a tremendous contribution. The movie, Hidden Figures-
Dr. Tatum: I was just thinking it when you said that.
Justin Reich: That there's this incredible history of African American women, women in general, who are absolutely central to the history of computer science and trying to, both say, look, the conversations about power and race and identity are meant to be part of technical topics. I mean physics and chemistry and math and computer science, it's not just how we accomplish things, but it's realizing that these are things that are part of society.
Dr. Tatum: Absolutely. And of course, right now we're talking about the missing information, the hidden figures, particularly as it relates to African American history in the United States. But similar stories could be shared about other underrepresented groups as well. And so that's the A. So let's talk about the B.
Justin Reich: Okay. Great.
Dr. Tatum: So the B is about building community. How do we create a sense of shared belonging. And the B and the A really go together because if we're doing activities in the classroom where some of the kids feel left out, feel invisible, feel marginalized, they don't actively participate. Every learning community, every teacher, every school leader is thinking about how do we create a sense of belonging so that people are motivated and want to be part of this community.
Dr. Tatum: Sometimes they're reluctant to focus on the A because they think, well, if I really pay attention to the differences, I will somehow lead to-
Justin Reich: Make things worse.
Dr. Tatum: Exactly. I will make things worse rather than bring people together.
Justin Reich: If we don't talk about it, it's not a problem.
Dr. Tatum: Exactly. Exactly. But the fact of the matter is, it may not be on your radar that it's a problem, but for the kid who feels invisible in that classroom, it already is a problem. It already is a problem. So thinking about the B in the context of the A is the really critical thing. How do we think about what we're doing in new ways? And sometimes those new ways might mean creating a special club, particularly at the middle school level. We might have affinity groups. Some schools have them and have used them very effectively. Other schools worry that that's going to cause separation.
Dr. Tatum: But acknowledging the developmental needs of kids who are really thinking about their identity issues, particularly in early adolescence, can be an important part of building community.
Justin Reich: But certainly extent all the way through higher education.
Dr. Tatum: Absolutely.
Justin Reich: Really powerful, effective. The black student union here-
Dr. Tatum: Absolutely.
Justin Reich: Is an incredible group for organizing. But both, I think conversations with people about what does it mean to be an African American at MIT, which is a challenging thing given the limited number of faculty. We have amazing African American faculty here.
Dr. Tatum: Yes, but a small number.
Justin Reich: But not as many as we would like. And as well as the programming that they can offer to the rest of the community to help us see what things look like through their eyes and through their perspective. So through middle school, all the way up through older ages, I think, there's room for-
Dr. Tatum: Well, and then the C, cultivating leadership is about helping all of our students, whether they are underrepresented or part of the majority, think about or develop the skills for connecting across lines of difference. What we know in today's society is that most of our students are growing up in relatively segregated communities, and as a consequence of that, particularly when they come to college or go into the military or go into the workplace, they find themselves in communities that are more diverse than the ones that grew up in. Those who come into higher education have a unique opportunity to have direct contact with people they didn't have direct contact with in their elementary, middle, even high school sometimes. And so it means that there's an opportunity to learn some new things. But if we don't take full advantage of that opportunity, then it is lost and perhaps won't be replicated again.
Justin Reich: The question, why do all the black kids sit together in the cafeteria? One of the things it evokes for me, so I was a young white teacher. When I've finished in college, I went, and I taught high school. I actually taught in a school that was organized, it was a high school around a really long hallway. And there are five alcoves. So the freshmen had an alcove, and the sophomores had an alcove. The juniors and the seniors, and there was one alcove in the middle that was called the black alcove. And this was a place where African-American and eventually Latino students would congregate.
Dr. Tatum: Regardless of grade year?
Justin Reich: Yeah. Regardless of grade year. So obviously there... And there's sometimes there are white kids who are sitting in the black alcove, and sometimes there are African American kids who are sitting with the sophomores because they were sophomores. But it was a distinctive feature of school life. I thought a lot at the time about walking by the alcove. So when when the black kids are sitting together in the cafeteria, or my case when black kids are sitting together in the alcove, what are some of the most productive ways that white teachers can walk by, can be near that space? Is the thing to do to like leave them alone and to do their thing. Like how, what can white teachers do sort of in that moment in interactions with the black kids sitting together that build upon the ABCs as you described them.
Dr. Tatum: The first thing I think to acknowledge is the value that can come from gathering with students or having a shared experience. So when I wrote my book back in 1997, the first version of it, and titled it Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and Other Conversations About Race?, it was in part because of my experience working as a consultant, sometimes coming to do professional development in schools that were majority white, but had a significant population of black students, enough for them to be sitting together in the cafeteria. People would always ask me that question, and they would ask it as though they were concerned that it was a problem. Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria, and what can we do to make them stop? It was like that kind of a question.
Dr. Tatum: And so part of what I talk about in the book is the value that can come from sitting together with people with whom you have some shared sense of identity, particularly when you're a teenager and actively beginning to explore that identity. So I want to say it's a perfectly fine question to ask, but let's not assume it's a problem.
Justin Reich: Right, right.
Dr. Tatum: That said, it is also important for students and teachers to learn how to connect across lines of difference. And so I often say, let's worry less about who is sitting where during the break times and think about what's happening inside the classroom. Social psychology tells us that the best way to build positive cross racial relationships is to give a group a task where they're working together toward a shared goal, where they've come together on equal footing and where that cooperative, collaborative behavior is sanctioned by an adult in authority. So a teacher at the front of the classroom can put kids in mixed groups, can have them working on projects together, can give them opportunities to really get to know each other on a level playing field relative to the task that they've been asked to do. Sports teams are an example of this, of course, where the coach is supporting the cross group in engagement.
Dr. Tatum: But when you give kids those opportunities, that activity often spills over into the classroom or into the alcoves. And the teacher who is seen as an ally, as someone who authentically cares about, knows me, knows my name, talks to me about my interests, engages me in conversation inside the classroom, is likely to be the teacher that I'm going to spontaneously speak to when they pass by me on the hall.
Justin Reich: Yeah. Building those relationships in classroom, being attentive. I mean, I remember in my third year of teaching, part of what shaped my experience there was I taught a class called race in America as a social studies elective. But the experience of building more relationships as a teacher there. I remember being more deliberate my third year of walking more slowly by the black alcove and think to myself, if they're having a good time, I'm not going to do anything, but I want them to see that I'm looking at them. I want them to see if I see some kind of, they want to wave and say, hey, Mr. Reich, hey Coach Reich, or if they want to reach out, I want to be there for them. And if they want me to just keep walking by because they're doing something else, I want to sort of leave them alone. But trying to be intentional about, I see you, and I'm here if you need me.
Dr. Tatum: Yeah. It's not unlike, a parent/child relationship in adolescence. There are times when your teenagers want to talk to you, and sometimes they don't.
Justin Reich: Sometimes they don't.
Dr. Tatum: And sometimes it's just being available. So if they do, they will.
Justin Reich: So one of the things that we try to do in our lab is to create opportunities for people to practice difficult situations. And so whether through simulations or other kinds of things, we sort of create these moments where teachers have to tackle particularly challenging moments in teaching. If you are creating some of those situations, what would be ones that you would sort of put together to kind of provoke, particularly for new teachers or particularly for white teachers, kind of challenging interactions that you wish teachers on average would be able to do better than they currently do?
Dr. Tatum: In general, I would say to teachers, don't be afraid to talk about race. Now I know that's easier said than done. And one of the things that I found when I was doing a lot of professional development in the greater Boston area, I was often working with white teachers, but yet these were teachers who were working with kids from the Boston area who were bused into their communities through what is known as the METCO program. And of course, listeners in the Boston area will know that that's a voluntary desegregation program that's been in place probably close to 50 years now. But one of the things that I found was that white teachers in particular struggled with giving honest feedback to students of color, particularly adolescents because their fear was that either this kid or the kid's parent would perceive their negative feedback, or I'm going to call it critical feedback, as somehow being racially motivated, like you're picking on my kid. You don't like my kid. You're telling my kid isn't doing what he needs to do in your class because you are "a racist."
Dr. Tatum: And I once asked the teacher, what would it feel like if someone said that to her? And she said, I would feel like I'd been punched in the stomach because no one wants to be labeled with that R word. And because of that, because of that fear, unfortunately it was leading to some very unproductive behavior, as in not giving the feedback. So let's say you've got Michael in your class, and Michael has not been getting his homework done and hasn't been turning it in. And you need Michael to do that in order to be successful in your class. And yet you're hesitant to either give Michael that honest feedback, or you don't want to call Michael's mother or his father to talk to them about Michael's performance for fear that somehow your critique of Michael will be misunderstood.
Dr. Tatum: If you withhold that information, then in some ways you are being discriminatory because you're giving that information to Tommy, the kid in the suburban white family. His parents-
Justin Reich: Who needs that and can use that to get better.
Dr. Tatum: Yes, exactly.
Justin Reich: Michael's not getting it.
Dr. Tatum: Exactly. So we talked about, well, let's imagine that happens. Let's imagine you have some concerns about Michael's performance, not just his homework, maybe his attitude. You've got some things you want to share with Michael's parents. And Michael's parents accuse you of being racist. What would you do? And she talked about how she would be very just paralyzed by that. And the first response perhaps is to defend oneself. Of course, I'm not. Not a prejudiced bone in my body.
Justin Reich: Right. I don't even see race. I don't see color.
Dr. Tatum: Yes, exactly. That is not a useful response. But what would be a useful response? The response that I tell teachers is to ask for more information. What if someone said, well, I think that was really a racist response. Help me understand that. Why did you think that? What was it that I said or did that gave you that impression? You're asking for more information, and usually the person on the other end responds with surprise because they're expecting the defensive response. But if you say that was not my intention. Can you help me understand what I did that left you with that impression, that's the opening for a dialogue, which can then be very productive.
Justin Reich: And there may be ways that teachers can even practice some of those hard moments and say, well, what could I do more? I mean it's probably somewhat challenging to ask that question to a parent. What do you feel like I did that was racist? It's probably even more challenging to ask that to a 16 year old or 17 year old and say, no, no, no. Really, honestly, I just want to hear from you. I'm not trying to ask this in an accusatory way. Just what was it that I did that made you feel like I was racist? Because I want to know.
Dr. Tatum: Well, and I found that when working with teachers, when they did ask that question, and they asked it sincerely, they often learn things that they weren't even aware of. I'll give a common example in a high school situation where one kid has raised his hand and asked for the pass to go to the restroom and gets the pass and goes and comes back. And another kid asked for that pass and either be told to wait or takes the pass and is criticized for being gone too long. And someone in that room is timing.
Justin Reich: Yeah. Probably not the teacher.
Dr. Tatum: Yes. Someone in that room can come back and say, well, you know when John went, I was looking at my watch. He was gone two minutes. When Jamal went, he wasn't gone more than two minutes either. But you said something to Jamal. You didn't say anything to John. Jamal's absence was noticed more than John's absence was. So that is part of the conversation. But being open to the conversation, getting over the fear of even having it is really important.
Dr. Tatum: One of the things that I did a research project a long time ago, which turned into a book of a different title. That book is called Assimilation Blues, Black Families in a White Community. And I was interviewing parents about their experiences in their children's schools. Black parents were living in a predominantly white community where their kids were often, sometimes the only black kid in the class, one of few. And one father said it really bothered him when teachers said they treated all the kids the same. And his response to that was, always the same as what? The same as though they're all white? They're not all white. My kid is having a different experience in this school than the white kids are having, if for no other reason than he's not seeing himself represented in the curriculum. And so being willing to acknowledge that not all the kids are having the same experience, and that there is a context in which we're all operating, a context which reinforces messages about what I'm going to call a hierarchy of human value, where some groups are valued more highly than other groups. And if we don't acknowledge that, we can't fix it.
Justin Reich: If we can't talk about it, we can't fix it.
Dr. Tatum: Yes. And so that, I think, is something that teachers can practice with each other in a supportive way.
Justin Reich: Some of the organizations that I've worked with are, for instance, facing history in ourselves. An amazing organization-
Dr. Tatum: I know all about it.
Justin Reich: That works with teachers around identity. And there is a sort of background, constant fear talking about the Holocaust, talking about Reconstruction, that teachers are going to talk about this in ways that are harmful to students that they're going to, everyone's, I mean the classic sort of Holocaust example is like when people do simulations of just things that make you go, oh my gosh, I can't believe that you would think that would be okay. As you encourage teachers to have more conversations about race, are there any things that particularly worry you of like have more conversations about race, but not like that. That's not what I meant.
Dr. Tatum: Yeah. Well, I think it is really important to create a community of practice so that you can get feedback. We all make mistakes. And I started teaching my first class on racism, I taught that class for the first time when I was 26 years old in 1980, and I certainly made mistakes. So I always like to say, if we wait for perfection, we will never get started. So we know mistakes are going to happen. But if you have a community of peers that you're regularly talking to, you can get feedback. You can get better. If you make a mistake in class, you can come back next week and say, class, we were doing this thing, and I said something I wish I hadn't said, or I did something that I'm not sure was that helpful. And so I really want to see if we can revisit that today because I've been thinking about it. There are ways to kind of correct one's errors that students appreciate.
Dr. Tatum: That said, there's nothing better than being able to have realtime feedback from peers who are also working with these issues. And there are schools that create those learning groups that read things together, that talk to each other about these issues, and I think that helps.
Justin Reich: I mean, that's such great concrete, actionable advice. Sort of have conversations about race, be ready to have those conversations about race. Do it with a community of peers so that there are people checking about the things that you're trying to do, that you're bouncing ideas off each other. This is what I'm going to do for the next couple of weeks, and it's going to be new. How does this sound? And then being willing to recognize that you'll make some mistakes, to acknowledge those mistakes, and to go back to your students and say, I don't think that was what I meant to do. I think I did that wrong. Can we have a do over? Can we talk about why I don't think that was right, or you're already telling me why I don't think that's right, and I want you to know that I heard it. Those sound like great actionable things to be able to do.
Justin Reich: Well, Dr. Tatum, this has been an incredibly productive and rewarding conversation.
Dr. Tatum: Well, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for having me.
Justin Reich: That was Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. Dr. Tatum is president emerita of Spelman College and the author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and Other Conversations About Race?
Justin Reich: I'm Justin Reich. You've been listening to TeachLab from the teaching systems lab at MIT. You can find more resources from Dr. Tatum at our website, teachlabpodcast.com. That's teachlabpodcast.com.
Justin Reich: Next week we'll be talking to Jose Luis Vilson. Vilson is a full time math teacher, writer and activist in New York City. He's the author of, This is Not a Test, a New Narrative on Race, Class, and the Future of Education. We'll join Vilson in his classroom where he describes what he does to ensure that all of his students feel visible and valued.
Justin Reich: When you visit us at teachlabpodcast.com, there's lots of other stuff that you can find there. You'll get links to our upcoming free online course on edX called becoming a more equitable educator, and you can also check out our YouTube channel for the teaching systems lab where you'll find the full video interview from this episode and even more video content from our online courses.
Justin Reich: This episode was produced by Jesse Dukes and Garrett Beazley, edited by Aimee Corrigan, recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley, and filmed by Denez McAdoo. Everything we produce at the teaching systems lab is licensed under a creative commons license, and we encourage you to share it and use it. Thanks, and we'll see you then.