37 Quotes by Beverly Daniel Tatum

Learning to spot “that stuff ” – whether it is racist, or sexist, or classist – is an important skill for children to develop.

Regardless of your subject matter, there are ways to engage students in critical thinking about racism which are relevant to your discipline.

I wrote the first version of this book in 1996, in the closing years of the twentieth century. Now, almost two decades into the twenty-first, it seems we are still struggling with what W. E. B. Du Bois identified in 1906 as the “problem of the color line,” even though the demographic composition of that color line has changed quite a bit since then.

Children who have been silenced often enough learn not to talk about race publicly. Their questions don’t go away, they just go unasked.

Not noticing requires energy.

In terms of intergroup relations, the myth of the model minority has served to pit Asian Americans against other groups targeted by racism. the accusing message of the dominant society to Blacks, Latinxs, and Native Americans is, ‘They overcame discrimination – why can’t you?’ Of course... any group comparisons that don’t take into account differential starting points are inherently flawed.

What we do know is that more than fifty years after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the struggle for the right to vote continues.

What if I make a mistake?′ you may be thinking. ‘Racism is a volatile issue, and I don’t want to say or do the wrong thing.’ In almost forty years of teaching and leading workshops about racism, I have made many mistakes. I have found that a sincere apology and a genuine desire to learn from one’s mistakes is usually rewarded with forgiveness. If we wait for perfection, we will never break the silence. The cycle of racism will continue uninterrupted.

The task of resisting our own oppression does not relieve us of the responsibility of acknowledging our complicity in the oppression of others. Our ongoing examination of who we are in our full humanity, embracing all of our identities, create the possibility of building alliances that may ultimately free us all.