Beverly Tatum's "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" report on racism

When my friend saw me reading Beverly Tatum's book, "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" she clearly made it known to me that she was color-blind and treated everyone the same. I laughed. I explained to her that racism still happens, and how I thought I too was color-blind until I read this book. The simple statement at the beginning of this book "Is there still racism?"(page3) started me thinking as to what racism truly meant. When a person poses this question or when they state that they are color-blind, you have to question if they even know what exactly it is to be prejudice or racist. I thought that I knew the answer until I started to read Tatum's book.

I explained to my friend that prejudice is a preconceived judgment or opinion usually based on limited information, not because we want them, but simply because we are so continually exposed to misinformation about them.

To help the color blind

To help the color blind

Illustration of normal and various colorblind visi...

(page5) I explained to her that without even knowing it, or realizing what we are saying, that we judge people and categorize them because of their religion or their culture. An example of this would be Native Americans. When you think of Indians, you think of hostile behavior. This point was brought to my attention while reading Tatum's book. It never dawned on me that I would associate the two until I was faced with this stereotype. This act of prejudice is something that I am not alone in thinking. I could easily blow it off as saying that that's the way I was raised or that was what I was taught through the history books in school. Unfortunately this way of thinking is something that we are taught and will continue to be taught until society as...