Media Alert
DR. BEVERLY DANIEL TATUM RELEASES NEW BOOK ON RACE AND RESEGREGATION
ATLANTA (APRIL 20, 2007) “Dr. Tatum has dared to ask and examine the critical question of what is the impact of race on public policy. Her passion and lifetime commitment to education makes this book noteworthy and a must read. The dialogue on race in public education is a significant one and her book prominently positions that debate.”
—Shirley Franklin, Mayor of Atlanta
“If corporate executives in America want a deeper understanding of the complexity of creating an inclusive environment for African Americans, Dr. Tatum's book is a must read. It is time to build a foundation of trust which can only happen when education is a cross-cultural imperative.”
—Joseph Gregory, President , Lehman Brothers
Last spring, as the inaugural speaker in the Simmons College/Beacon Press Race, Education, and Democracy Lecture and Book Series, Beverly Daniel Tatum, the president of Spelman College, gave a series of public lectures about the challenges and conversations around race in American schools. In keeping with the ambitions of the series to start a wide, national conversation about race and education, Tatum reworked her lectures into a short, accessible book, Can We Talk About Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation.
In four chapters, Tatum—who is a widely read expert on racial identity and identity development—addresses some of the thorniest issues concerning education and race, including the return to school segregation and the implications for students of color, how conceptions of race, intelligence, testing, and expectations affect student performance, the promise and complicated dynamics of cross-racial friendships, and the role of higher education in bridging racial divides and cultivating leaders who will further the democratic goals of a multiracial society.
Referring to herself as an “integration baby” because she was born a few months after the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, Tatum traces the story of segregation during her lifetime, from the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which spurred wide spread school desegregation, to the legal cases, notably in the 1990s, that chipped away at the full implementation of Brown and led to the largely underreported resegregation of elementary and secondary schools—and the consequent unequal access to publicly funded educational resources.
Because teachers in resegregated schools, especially in urban school districts, are overwhelmingly White and female, notes Tatum, affirming identity of students of color is of critical importance for student success. Drawing on personal experience and on the work of other educators and psychologists, and reflecting on the distorted identity stories that both people of color and Whites must confront, she illustrates how teachers can help students develop identity affirmation. “Affirming identity is about asking who they are, and where they want to go, and conveying a fundamental belief that they can get there—through the development of their intellect and their critical capacity to think,” writes Tatum. “Any teacher—White or of color—willing to work at affirming identity will have engaged students.”
Tatum goes on to weave the foundational concept of affirming identity through a larger conversation about race in schools and antiracist professional development. Examining the history of testing and sorting in schools and how its practice negatively impacts Black and Latino children, she reviews the development of the widely used Stanford-Binet test, including how two prominent psychologists, Henry Herbert Goddard and Stanford's Lewis Terman, promoted the idea of intelligence as a fixed and inherited trait (as opposed to one that is environmentally influenced and malleable) while furthering the aims of the eugenics movement. Tatum looks at how this scientifically suspect notion of intelligence, embedded in racist ideology, disadvantages children of color, from the internalization of inferiority and lowered teacher expectations to the way “stereotype threat” (the threat of being judged on the basis of racial stereotypes) impedes student test taking and classroom participation.
Outlining specific, proven strategies that teachers and other adult mentors can adopt to increase trust in cross-racial interactions in school, Tatum also looks at the importance and complexities of cross-racial friendships among children, young people, and adults. She shares others' reflections on interracial friendships and discusses why her longtime friendship with a White woman has survived despite misunderstandings around racial issues and assumptions. “Relationships across lines of difference are essential for the possibility of social transformation,” she argues. “Change is needed. None of us can make that change alone. Genuine friendship leads to caring concern Caring concern leads to action. And we need to take our action form the position of strength that comes from self-knowledge and social awareness. Cross-racial friendships can be a source of both.”
Finally, Tatum challenges institutions of higher learning to foster cross-group interaction at the critical time of late adolescence and early adulthood. She discusses how current anti-affirmative action cases threaten the increased enrollment of students of color at predominantly White institutions and illustrates how colleges and universities can create opportunities for students to connect across racial and cultural differences. “As the door of school desegregation closes,” she writes, “perhaps a new door of dialogue-drive action can open, enabling us to build bridges across divided communities and meet the educational needs of all of our students. We owe it to ourselves and the generations that follow us to try. Can we talk about race?”
About the Author: Beverly Daniel Tatum is author of "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" and "Assimilation Blues." She is the president of Spelman College in Atlanta, where she lives with her husband.
Theresa Perry is a professor in the Departments of Africana Studies and Education at Simmons College in Boston. She is the director of the Simmons College/Beacon Press Race, Education, and Democracy Lecture and Book Series.
Price: $22.95, Cloth/ISBN: 13/EAN: 978-0-8070-3284-8
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Spelman College:
Founded in 1881, Spelman College is the only historically Black college in
the nation to be included on the U.S. News and World Report's list of top
75 "Best Liberal Arts Colleges — Undergraduate," 2005. Located in Atlanta,
Ga., this private, historically Black women's college boasts outstanding
alumnae, including Children's Defense Fund Founder Marian Wright Edelman;
U.S. Foreign Service Director General Ruth Davis; authors Tina McElroy Ansa and
Pearl Cleage and actress LaTanya Richardson. More than 83 percent of the
full-time faculty members have Ph.D.s or other terminal degrees and the
student-faculty ratio is 12:1. Annually, nearly one-third of Spelman
students receive degrees in the sciences. The students number more than
2,186 and represent 43 states and 34 foreign countries. For more
information regarding Spelman College, visit: www.spelman.edu.
