Spellbound (2002) by Director Jeffrey Blitz
Beverly Daniel Tatum’s (1997) “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”
One major emphasis of the article is that white friends cannot offer support to Black friends in the same way that other Black kids can. Tatum claims that they are not “prepared” to be supportive in the same way, and are even sometimes dismissive of the racist experiences that Black kids share with them.
Is there a way to make interracial support structures in high school more supportive? Or does same-race support offer a unique community that cannot be emulated by other races, and that cannot even be offered by other students of color? Would it make sense to create a specific curriculum that can help white kids relate to their Black peers more effectively, since the Black kids are seeking out their identity at an earlier stage in life than their white friends? If yes, how race-specific should this curriculum be? Is something like SET, which the article describes as counter intuitively segregated, a good (or even necessary) option? Does a program like SET go far enough (i.e., maybe one period of the day isn’t enough)?
- by Rachel/Yaa/Henry
