I have been reading this book for
about a week an a half and it is quite interesting and I can relate to most of
what Dr. Tatum comments on. So far she has defined racism, discussed the
complexity of defining your identity and gave her view on being black on a
white canvas. It’s a great read but if I talked about every topic she touches
on I would be writing my own book. The single topic so far that caught my
attention is in the chapter on identity development in adolescence where she
defines an emissary.
This chapter has the subtle of
the title of the book and for good reason. She describes how as a child we
learn to associate certain things with being White and other things with being
Black. Unfortunately most of the Black images are negative: in a stereotypical working
class urban sitting one may see the school drop out, teenage welfare mother,
drug addict, etc while in an upper class sitting we may not see those things,
but what is seen is that the majority of those who are “making it” are not like
us.
Then there are the teachers and
classmates who make the subtle comments that they may not realize are offensive
yet subconsciously mis-define race
roles (there shouldn’t be any definition). Like when I was little
and the teacher asked how come I wanted to read instead of play basketball, or
when non-Blacks refer to everything low class as ghetto, or when my boss this
summer asked me if I had rims on my car. Just today there was a group of us working on
a cross word and one of the clues was “an equal opportunity agency” and one of
the girls looked at me and said “come on, you should know this.” I remember
when I was in middle school I thought I was darker than I am because this girl
used to always compare my skin tone to the black strap on her lunch box (but
now I proudly wear a black wrist band on either arm). All of these things
mis-educate the black youth on their place and perception in society.
I also remember other things
being associated with being Black: being late, broke, loud, and stupid, but of
course we could dance, play sports, and steal. Unfortunately these stereotypes
of Black Americans do not include academic achievement. In fact I know that as
a child it was not “cool” to be smart. Coming from a majority black elementary
school to a middle and high school were “magnet” students and “traditional”
students often crossed paths, I soon came to think that intelligence was a
curse, and others looked down upon it because “we thought we were better than
them.” Most times the tension between the two groups was not caused by the
students, but by the pure fact we were purposely divided. And even within my
own class I learned to keep my grades low key for fear of social backlash. Everyone
hated the kid that ruined the curve or did better than average on the test.
Dr. Tatum offers two general
responses that the intelligent Black does to cope with his academic success in
a white sitting: either he becomes “raceless” where he downplays being Black in
order to be accepted by his White peers or he embraces his culture and becomes
an emissary, “someone who sees his own achievements as advancing the cause of a
racial group.”
Even though I learned to downplay
my academic achievements, I felt, and still feel, like the latter. From
elementary school where I was one of the few blacks on the mental math team, to
Jr High where I was one of the few in the advanced math classes, to high school
graduation where I was the salutatorian I felt that my success was the success
of my race. I felt that I was not only representing myself, but all Blacks. In
turn, my failure would mean letting a lot of people down and I’d just be
another Black that didn’t measure up. Sitting side-by-side with my White peers
I always thought it was important that they saw that Blacks were just as cable
as anyone else to do the same work and succeed at the same tasks. Sitting with my Black peers I felt it was
important to see that someone like them could do the things I’d done…..
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