WAATBKSATSTITC's Purpose And Arguments (particularly, as they relate to affirmative action)

    Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting At The Same Table In The Cafeteria was written to answer many questions about the modern psychology of race, including the titular question, and how racism negatively affects the way that people think today; what people of all races can do to change how they think and improve racial relations and social conditions. Tatum makes several arguments as to what she thinks would be helpful, such as raising Black and mixed-race children with positive racial role models and to be unashamed of who they are, educating White people on racism and privilege, teaching everyone to be cognizant of implicit bias, and emphasizing the importance of goal-oriented affirmative action. These arguments are made by primarily by appeals to logic through facts and studies, as well as more emotional appeals that walk the reader through various mindsets and emotions which back up and explain the facts and studies.

 

    For example, on page 229, Tatum writes: "Though the research on evaluator bias is dismaying, it also points us in the direction of an effective response. Again recall that when expectations for appropriate behavior are clearly defined and a biased response can be recognized, most egalitarian Whites are consistently as positive in their behavior toward Blacks as toward other Whites." The research mentioned is an example of her starting with stating facts or describing studies and their results, before explaining their meaning and walking the reader through certain states of mind to back up and explain them. 

 

Image credit: http://gregburdine.com/steps-of-reconciliation/ (found via google images)

 

  I agree with Tatum's belief that the most effective form of affirmative action is one in which the interviewers are trained on implicit bias and how to cognitively counteract it by questioning one's thoughts, and then told which answers, behaviors, and skills are to be marked positively or negatively in making decisions, all the while casting the "help wanted" net far and wide so as to attract applicants that constitute a representative sample in terms of gender and racial/cultural makeup.This method ensures both that there will be minimal racial/gender bias in deciding which applicants to accept, and that the most qualified applicants will be picked. Prior to reading this part of the book, I did not agree with affirmative action as I thought that it consisted of imposing quotas and having different goalposts for different races, which would be both damaging to employers having to hire underqualified people and to employees of color often having the insulting position of "hired only because we had to". I knew that there was more to affirmative action than I thought, but not the details. Knowing that it can mean to reduce/prevent bias in hiring with no quotas, I fully agree.