Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Chapter 01 - Defining Racism (Can we talk?) -- Analysis, Paragraph 08

(8.) Missing information can have similar effects. For example, another young woman, preparing to be a high school English teacher, expressed her dismay that she had never learned about any Black authors in any of her English courses. How was she to teach about them to her future students when she hadn’t learned about them herself? A White male student in the class responded to this discussion with frustration in his journal, writing, “It’s not my fault that Blacks don’t write books.” Had one of his elementary, high school, or college teachers ever told him that there were no Black writers? Probably not. Yet because he had never been exposed to Black authors, he had drawn his own conclusion that there were none.



I took note of the journal entry the “White male student” had entered, “‘it’s not my fault that Blacks don’t write books’” and underlined the phrase “[…] Blacks don’t write books.” Tatum comments that because this student had not been exposed to Black authored literature, he has inductively reasoned there are none. Thus, the words “drawn,” “conclusion,” and “none” are underlined with arrow heads drawn toward an annotation ‘inductive reasoning.’ The student reasons the general statement “If a not b and b not c, then a not c” which is not necessarily true. Also I took note of how the English teacher had not been enforced to read Black-authored texts. Likely she was instructed to read White-author books in class, thus lack of experience in the subject (for example, analyzing writings about slave trade). Teaching a class when the instructor is inexperienced is sign of the impact of the previous segregated learning community.