Once, many years ago, I brought a book about race to a family gathering.
I was making lunch, talking to a stranger — an older friend of a relative — and the book was sitting nearby. We were talking about my job teaching public high school when he interrupted to read the title out loud: Why Are All the Black Children Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Tatum. "What's this about?" he asked.
I was brand new to reading about race in the public schools and excited about the book, and so I went on for a minute about how racism affects children in the classroom and about Tatum's desire to foster racial identity while also combatting stereotypes and prejudice. When I finished, he crossed the kitchen to square up in front of me and said, "I'm over racism. People just use it as an excuse for why they can't succeed."
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