Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? w/ Dr. Beverly Tatum
Episode Summary: In this episode of The Diversity Gap Podcast, Bethaney sits down with Dr. Beverly Tatum at a live event to discuss a variety of topics such her National Bestselling book, "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" Dr. Tatum discusses the active nature of antiracism work and four steps on how to build a diverse community.
Episode Notes: Dr. Beverly Tatum is the National Bestselling author of "Why Are All the Blacks Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" Dr. Beverly Tatum is a clinical psychologist and President emerita of Spelman College and in 2014 received the Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, community, neighborhoods, book, westside, tatum, students, question, fund, spelman, mayor reed, hear, picture, fast, racist, rents, racism, practices, silent retreat, school districts
SPEAKERS
Bethaney Wilkinson, Dr. Beverly Tatum
Bethaney Wilkinson 00:00
Okay, so imagine that it is 2005. So good 15 years ago, and imagine that you are in a small Georgia town, and that you are trying to figure out a really big life question. You're trying to understand why racism is real. And you literally want to know, why do all the black kids sit on this side of the cafeteria and all the white kids sit on this side of the cafeteria? I don't make that dichotomy lightly. I'm in when I think about the context I grew up in. There were a couple of Asian American families, a couple of Latino families. And then the majority of everyone else was either black or white. And so I don't know I was there. I was confused about my identity. I wasn't I've spoken about some of this, these parts of my story before in this podcast, and maybe will in the future a little bit more. But yeah, I really wanted to know, hey, why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the cafeteria? Welcome to the diversity gap podcast where we are exploring the gap between good intentions and good impact as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion. My name is Bethaney Wilkinson and I am your host. Hi! Welcome to Episode 15 of The Diversity Gap podcast. I am super pumped today to share with you an interview I had with Dr. Beverly Tatum. Now I alluded to the some in the opening story. But Dr. Tatum not only is she one of my just personal heroes, but I read her book when I was in high school. Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the cafeteria and it was so helpful, honestly, to 15 year old me and my small town China to understand race. But beyond that this book, it's a national bestseller. I mean, it's helped so many schools and companies and leaders around the globe, probably. And this is a really remarkable book that I would highly, highly recommend if you haven't read it before. Um, in addition to being an author, Dr. Tatum is also a clinical psychologist. She's a community leader, incredibly engaged here in the city of Atlanta. And she was also president of Spelman College for many, many years. And so she's just, I mean, she's, she's incredibly wise and someone I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to learn from. So this interview, it's a live recording from an events that my organization Plywood People puts on every year, Plywood Presents ATL ideas. And so I think I do some sort of introduction of her also in that video. But yeah, we're pulling it from that live event. If you're curious about Plywood, which has been the sponsor of this entire podcast season, um, you can learn more about Plywood at plywoodpeople.com And if you're interested in this particular event, you can learn more at ATLideas.com And so without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Dr. Beverly Tatum. Hi, I'm
Dr. Beverly Tatum 03:14
Bethaney, I appreciate your warm welcome. Thank you. Thank you do all of you.
Bethaney Wilkinson 03:20
Awesome. Oh, thank you for being here. This is a huge honor, as I've said multiple times, because that's how I feel very honored. Yeah. So let's see where to begin. We're just gonna dive in, because I have so many questions for you. So your book, Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the cafeteria has been a foundational text to not only me, but of course, just so many people across the country around the world. I'm really curious, did you know that that's what was gonna happen when you wrote that book?
Dr. Beverly Tatum 03:50
The short answer is I did. Now I'm going to tell you why I thought that. So I wrote my book. Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the cafeteria and other conversations about race in 1996? It was published in 97. The first time and as you know, I've updated it, and there's a new version out that came out in 2017. But if we go back to the mid 90s. At that time, I was a professor of psychology, I was teaching at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. I'm from Massachusetts originally. And one of the things that I'd been doing really since 1980, was teaching a course on the psychology of racism. So I've been teaching this course a long time. And I was doing a lot of consulting and workshops and being invited to speak a lot of places. And when I would go a lot of school districts when I'd speak at those school districts, people would ask me that question. Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together? Often those were school districts where there was a process of school desegregation taking place? And so this question came up a lot, but I was doing so much speaking I was wearing myself out. And I had been speaking at a school district in the Chicago, suburbs of Chicago in the fall of 1995. I went there, and I was, I had a cold, bad cold. And I talked all day. And by the end of the day, I was voiceless, I literally had laryngitis. So I came home and I was feeling pretty tired. And there was a message on my voicemail from another school district asking me to come and speak. And I'm like, I just can't do another one of these, at least not anytime soon. So I took the opportunity of being voiceless literally, to go on a silent retreat. Now, you might ask, like, why would you go on a silent retreat. One of the things that I was doing at that time was I was a student, in addition to you know, being a professor and all of that. I was a student at Hartford seminary, I was working on a master's degree in religious studies. And I had heard about this retreat center where they did these silent retreats. And I always wondered what that would be like. And so I decided, you can't talk go to Silent Retreat. So I did that. And while I was on the retreat, it was a weekend, I spent a lot of time just meditating and journaling. And while I was in that process, the idea of writing this book came to me. And the title, people often ask me, where did the title come from? It just came to me. And in my journal, I wrote, This is the title. These are like, what the chapters should be the whole outline for the book just came to me while I was on this retreat. So that was in the fall of 95. Fast forward is the spring of 1996. And I was having what faculty members long for, which is a sabbatical. So I'm on sabbatical in the spring of 96. And I decided to work on the book, that was my plan. But you know, one thing leads to another, I had two kids, I was doing a lot of different things. I hadn't really focused on the book project. But I was planning to take a trip, actually, to the Middle East, I was planning to go on a multi an interfaith trip to Israel and Palestine, and you know, that area. And in 1996, there was a lot, there been a lot of bus bombings, this is a long story, but I'm going to get to the point. There have been all these bus bombings in Israel, and my kids, my children were eight and 12. At the time, were very concerned about my travel. And they said, you know, we really don't think you should go and I really wanted to go anyway, in the end, I didn't go. But I had these two weeks that were completely unscheduled. So I decided I would go on another retreat, I would go on a writing retreat. So I went to this retreat center. And again, working in silence. And I spent a week there, and I worked on my book. And when I came back, I'd written 80 pages, which was a lot actually is a lot to have written knowledge into sort of one sitting and it just kind of pull it out. And so I contacted a literary agent, and I said, I've got these 80 pages. And I, you know, really need a publisher. She said, send them to me, I sent them to me a week later, I had a book contract. I mean, it was really amazing how quickly that happened. And I really felt like there was something important that was coming through me not so much that it was of me. I mean, it was rooted in my experience, my knowledge and all of that, but just the way it came to me in silence made me feel like it was going to be powerful.
Bethaney Wilkinson 09:01
Wow. Oh, gosh, yeah. Wow. That's, I have a lot of questions. I'm trying to streamline like, Okay, what's the one that everyone needs the answer to? Um, okay. So one of the metaphors in your book that has, I've seen multiple people refer to over the years, is this idea of racism as a moving sidewalk? Yes. And you can, of course, rework this if I butcher it. As I do that, right. Like everything's moving in a racist direction. So you can either stay on it and follow that direction, or you can resist it and become anti racist. Can you share with us how your thinking around that metaphor has changed or evolved since the first time you shared it?
Dr. Beverly Tatum 09:45
Sure. Well, one of the things as I mentioned, you know, before I wrote the book, I've been doing all these workshops. And one of the things that I learned in the workshops were what were the metaphors, the images that really helped people get my points So this was a metaphor that I'd used a lot in my workshops. And so I put it in the book. So for people who are wondering like, what exactly are they talking about? You know, a lot of people think about racism as individual acts of meanness, right? You know, so somebody does something that's racist, somebody says something that's racist. But many people are confused about racism, or don't understand racism, as really systemic, as a system of advantage based on race that informs policies and practices. And so it's not just one person's thought or action. It's a whole interlocking set of policies and practices that are woven into the fabric of our society. So if you understand that, then you can think of it as kind of like a moving walkway, this is the analogy I use a system that's moving like the like the Earth is revolving, we don't always feel it, we don't, you know, we can't see it. But it is happening nonetheless. So if you imagine yourself at the airport, you know, at Hartsfield Jackson, and you're taking one of those moving walkways from Terminal A, Terminal B, whatever it is, you can just step onto that walkway, and stand still, you don't have to do anything, but it carries you along. And you end up at a racist destination, you end up in a place where you may not have wanted to go. But there you are. Right now there are some people who get on that walkway, and they're walking fast, I tend to be one of these people, you know, I don't want to just stand still, I'm moving fast. And if we think about racism as a conveyor belt like that, that's carrying us all along. There are some people we might call them white supremacist, white nationalist in the context of our US society that say, yes, that's where we want to be, and we should get there as fast as possible. Let's reinforce those ideas. Let's move there quickly. Other people will say no, that's not where I want to head. I'm just gonna stand still here. But guess what you're carried along. If you don't want to go where that conveyor belt is taking you, you might try another strategy. You might say, You know what, I'm not going to look at that. I'm going to turn around. Now you're facing backwards, but you're still traveling, right? The only way to interrupt that cycle is to walk fast in the opposite direction. You know, someone said, Put down your bags and jump over the side, you need to do something active to interrupt it. One of the things that we hear a lot in the news about you know, do you think so and so's racist? I'm not mentioned any, so and so's here. Do you think so? And so's racist? You know, was that racist? Was this racist? I think we spend way too much time trying to label people. The question is, is it actively anti racist? That's the only question that really matters. Is this actively working against that system? If it is, then we should do more of it? If it's not, then we're doing the wrong thing?
Bethaney Wilkinson 13:16
Wow. Yes. So this is a room with a lot of people who are entrepreneurs, or they're thinking about starting something, or they're involved in some sort of social good thing, or they're interested in it. When it comes to being actively anti racist? What are some of the practices or habits you've seen or learned about that people who aspire to be more actively anti racist? What are some things that we can do differently?
Dr. Beverly Tatum 13:50
One of the things that I talk about in the world of higher ed, and I'm going to use the high read as an example. Right, right, because that's the space I have lived in. I often talk about what I call the ABCs. Right? So you what are those? So the A stands for affirming identity. And for me, that is like a fundamental step, and sort of the place where people ought to start, right? It's just kind of one on one, right? So what do I mean by that affirming identity? Let's imagine there's a photographer up here on the stage with us, and is taking a picture of everyone here, right group photo, and at the end of the day, everyone's going to get a copy of that picture. What's the first thing you all are going to do when you get your copy of the photo? Well for yourself, look for yourself. That's the only honest answer to that question, right? You are going to look for yourself and let's imagine your look for yourself and then you're going to check to see how you look. Right. You know, you're going to evaluate Am I looking good in this picture? But let's imagine that the have just been taken. And you know, every sixth person has been digitally removed from the picture that could happen. And so you get that photo and you look for yourself, but you can't find yourself in it, because somehow you've been removed from it. You would wonder what's wrong with this picture? Over time, let's imagine you have this experience repeatedly. Everyone says, Don't go, don't go to lunch. Now stay here, we're going to take a group photo. But when you get your photo, you're not in it. Sooner or later, you're going to stop posing for the picture, you're going to disengage, you don't want to participate, because you're not included. So the first question that any leader needs to ask I think, is who's missing from this picture? Who is not in the room whose voice is missing. And if we develop that habit of mind, we are much more likely to include people than to leave them out. That's the A, the B is building community. We want to bring people together toward a shared vision, try to accomplish something together, we need that shared collectivity. In this educational context. It's always about, you know, we're a shared school community, we want people to feel a part. But often people try to do the B build community without the A. And if you try to do the B without the A, you just do what you've always done, which is lead people out. So thinking about how do we include? How do we affirm the identities of all the people who are there, that's particularly important to those who are historically marginalized, and build community so that everyone feels a part, I want to give a very simple example. This is a really simple example. You know, Spelman is just up the street, I was president there for 13 years, when I first arrived, students are, you know, schools about to open orientations about to start, there would be a big banner that would say, Welcome class of, I started in Oh, two. So let's say Welcome class of 2006. And incoming students, you know, they're in that class, except the ones who aren't, right, because let's imagine you've got a big sign that says, Welcome class of fill in the right year, some of the students who are arriving are not in that class, some of you are gonna know who those students are, who are they transfers, they're the transfers. So if you did a first year someplace else, and now you're coming as a sophomore, you're not in that class year, you're going to graduate a year earlier. And nobody means to leave you out. But if you've got that big sign that says Welcome class of there are a category of students who the first thing they see is a sign a picture of which they are not apart. It's not a hard fix, make the sign say, welcome, new students, right? Everybody's included now, right? So when we think about the B without the A, we make those kinds of mistakes. The C is cultivating leadership, which is to say, particularly when we're thinking about diversity around racial and ethnic inclusion, or sexual orientation or other kinds of marginalized groups. What we know particularly around race is that most people have grown up in a community where they have not had much opportunity to practice, because there is still a lot of racial segregation in our society. 75% of white adults have social networks that don't include anybody other than white people. If you are an adult with that kind of social network, it's a good guess that your kids have that kind of social network. Fast forward. They're coming into a diverse community, whether that's a college community or university or some other the armed services, some other universities have diverse community. And they've had very little opportunity to practice engaging in the kind of practices that allow for creating a truly inclusive, truly equitable community. People don't have practice, they make mistakes. So how do we cultivate leadership for the next generation so that they know how to do it? If you're not an effective leader and a multiracial, multi ethnic community? You are essentially a social dinosaur in the 21st century. So how do we help people become leaders in that dinosaurs? That's what we need to work on?
Bethaney Wilkinson 19:24
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I want to switch gears a little bit. Sure. You because You spoke to your time at Spelman, I would love to hear a little bit more about the West Side future fighter. Have you share? Yeah, what is the West Side Future Fund? What's your role and what do you hope it will accomplish? Sure.
Dr. Beverly Tatum 19:45
Well, the West Side Future Fund actually grew out of a decisions made during Mayor Reid's administration. Right. So fast forward, back, rewind, let's rewind to 2014 So in 2014, I was president of Spelman and I was a member of something known as the Atlanta committee for progress, which is kind of like an advisory board to the mayor originally created by Shirley Franklin, and continued by Mayor Reed and now mayor bottoms, but it's made up of it's probably a group of about 20 people 20 or so people, civic leaders and CEOs, leat, you know, business leaders and civic leaders. And so I'm sitting in the ACP on the ACP committee as the president of Spelman and Mayor Reed and the stadium is getting ready, the new stadium is getting ready to be built. And Arthur Blank has made a commitment to invest on the west side, and the city's going to match his investment. And there's all this money that's coming together to revitalize the communities, the four neighborhoods immediately surrounding the stadium. And the idea was that there needed to be a organization whose purpose was to shepherd those resources wisely, in a way that would lead to development without displacement. I think this is a really I want to underscore development without displacement. Right? So so that's how the Westside Future Fund was born. Originally, I was appointed to the board by Mayor Reed. Most of the members of the original members of the board, seven or eight of us, were appointed by the mayor. But the Westside Future Fund has evolved and intended was intended to evolve and is today, a separate 501 C three, not a city organization, separate 501 C three now with a board of about 20 people. I am the incoming chair, the board I have served since 2014, as vice chair soon to be in January chair of the board. And today the Westside Future Fund is focused on four areas, again, for communities, I should say, you know, we talked about the west side, it's a big geographic area, the four neighborhoods that the Westside Future Fund is focused on our vine city, English Avenue, the Atlanta University Center neighborhood and Asheville heights. So the other side of 20 from where we are today, right now. But those neighborhoods were once populated in the 60s 50,000 people. Today, more like 12,000 People really under populated plenty of room for new neighbors. But the current residents, while they are certainly welcoming of new neighbors don't want to be driven out by that process of repopulate repopulation. So that was that Future Fund is focused on four things that are important to any healthy community safety and security, affordable housing, career, cradle to career, high quality education, and community health and wellness. What we're really pushing on hard is the affordable housing, because great things are coming to the community. But it won't matter if the community has been displaced. Right? You know, it's wonderful of house Innovation Academy is a great school. But if the kids who are attending there now can't stay, because rents are rising, their families are being displaced. That's obviously a problem. So the Westside Future Fund is really leaning with the help of a lot of philanthropy, leaning into the development of really focused on community retention. So I'm going to give two examples. One example of community retention is the anti displacement tax fund. Only about 16% of the residents on these four neighborhoods I described are homeowners, but those who are a lot of them are elderly, and many of them are concerned about the fact that as property values go up, their tax base is going to go up, they're going to have to pay taxes they can afford on a fixed income, and that will drive them out. Well, the good news is, again, through philanthropy, we've been able to create a tax an anti displacement tax fund, which means any legacy homeowner below a certain income level can know that her or his tax increase will be paid for by that fund for as long as they live there. So that is a wonderful thing. So wonderful. So that solves the problem of the homeowner and there are other programs like brush with kindness, repair with kindness. These are programs to help people fix up their houses and maintain safe and affordable housing if you're a homeowner. But what about if you are one of the majority renters you're living there your rents are going up as we speak. So what we are doing You know, in an ideal world, you could just say, Well, you know, private landlord, don't raise your rent, private landlords do what they want to do, and they're raising their rents. But what we can do is purchase properties. And if we buy those properties with philanthropy, or through ground leases from invest in Atlanta, if we can take control of properties, we can fix up those properties and maintain deep affordability. So I just came here this morning from the transform Westside Summit, which happens on the first and third Fridays of every month. And the presentation today was about what will be 200 units that are already purchased and are being rehabbed and will be made available with priority to current residents, that will be permanently affordable. So the goal on the part of the Westside Future Fund is to between now and the next five years, put 800 deeply affordable units into the market in a way that preserves the current population of the community, even as we are also engaged in a program that will soon be fully launched called home on the west side, which is a single family purchase opportunity for legacy residents and others as well.
Bethaney Wilkinson 26:28
Wonderful. Thanks. that's great. Thanks for explaining all the different options that are being created. I wonder, I'm curious to know. So whether we're talking about race, racism, organizational change, or neighborhoods and redevelopment, without design or development without displacement, those are both big system, multi stakeholder aspirational changes, we hope to see so can you share with us? How do you balance the tension between incremental progress? And the big picture? Hope?
Dr. Beverly Tatum 27:05
That's a great question. And that, you know, and it's a question that I've thought about a long time. And I'll tell you why. Because when I was teaching my course, on the psychology of racism, the course was organized around a basic structure. What so what and now what? What is it? So what does it matter in terms of our psychology, our identities? Now? What can we do about it? And in the now what section of the course, my students will often say, you know, it's such a big problem, how can I make a difference? And I used to say, to them, and to myself, think about what's your sphere of influence? What can you do within your sphere of influence? It's true, you know, it's a big problem. You can't fix everything, but everyone controls something. Everyone influences somebody. And if you think about what your own particular sphere of influence is, and use that to its max, you can have an impact, not unlike what we were hearing about peanut allergies, you know, what can you do? What's your impact? And so for me, my impact then was teaching and then it was writing and then it was leading, and you know, it expands. So in the context of a big problem like gentrification, or neighborhood revitalization, you can't boil the ocean. But where do you sit right now, when I was sitting in the president's house at Spelman, one of my goals as President was to help revitalize the neighborhood. I was naive in terms of how complicated that was, you know, and so didn't make as big an impact in that part of my job as I might have liked. But now post that role in my position as Incoming Chair of the Westside Future Fund, I can say, here's, here's some geography where we can make an impact. People will say, Well, what about this other neighborhood? Or what about over here in the West End? You can't boil the ocean. Let's start here and show what's possible in this in these poor neighborhoods, and then take that model and apply it someplace else, you know, so it is. There's lots to do. And fortunately, lots of people to do it. So if we're all doing our part, we make a difference. Can I say something else about that? Yes. Yeah. So. So when I was president, one of my biggest concerns was the fact that so many of our students didn't have the dollars they needed to complete their education. Financial aid was critical. Right. And that was especially true in 2008. When the economy tanked, a lot of families were losing their jobs, losing value in their homes couldn't get, you know, the equity they hope to use to pay for education. And I was really concerned about what was going to happen to all of our students who were so financially dependent on those resources that were now just evaporating. And I started talking about what I call the starfish story. Some of you I'm sure probably know this story, it's you know, about the, all the starfish washed up on the beach, and there's a young girl throwing the starfish back in the water. And someone comes along and says, you know, you can't save all these staffers. There's too many of them. And she's discouraged momentarily, but then she says, she throws one back in the water. And she says, Well, I can save that one. And, and I think that's for me how I tend to think about these issues, you know, we might not be able to raise all the financial aid we need, but we can raise this much. And we can help that many students. And the same thing can be applied to really any problem you're thinking about, maybe you can't fix all of it, but you can fix this piece of it. And that's going to have a ripple that you can't imagine in terms of the impact for that person and what that person's going to do.
Bethaney Wilkinson 31:12
So encouraging. Time is short to Sure. And so I want to close with one last question. Okay, you've done so many things, lead people of all the things so I would love to hear, what do you hope your legacy will be?
Dr. Beverly Tatum 31:28
You know, people asked me that when I was leaving my position as the president of Spelman people said, What do you think your legacy is? And that's not a question that I really have spent much time thinking about. But what I said then, and what I will say now, is that, you know, your hope is that it is better because you were there, you know that you left it a little better than you found it. My mother used to say, you know, leave this room better than you found. I think we all want to leave our communities better than we found them. And if someone says that about me, I will be happy. Thank you.
Bethaney Wilkinson 32:07
Thank you. Thank you for listening to The Diversity Gap podcast. If you've been challenged or inspired by what you've heard, please rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode. If you have thoughts or questions I'd love to hear from you connect with me at thediversitygap.com or on Instagram at The Diversity Gap. This episode was produced by DJ opdiggy for Soul Graffiti Productions.