“Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” Chapter 1: Defining Racism “Can we talk?” By BEVERLY DANIEL TATUM, Ph.D.

These are the paragraphs that stood out to me.

(10.) Prejudice is one of the inescapable consequences of living in a racist society. Cultural racism—the cultural images and messages that affirm the assumed superiority of Whites and the assumed inferiority of people of color—is like smog in the air. Sometimes it is so thick it is visible, other times it is less apparent,[9] but always, day in and day out, we are breathing it in. None of us would introduce ourselves as “smog-breathers” (and most of us don’t want to be described as prejudiced), but if we live in a smoggy place, how can we avoid breathing the air? If we live in an environment in which we are bombarded with stereotypical images in the media, are frequently exposed to the ethnic jokes of friends and family members, and are rarely informed of the accomplishments of oppressed groups, we will develop the negative ideas about those groups that form the basis of prejudice.



(13.) To say that it is not our fault does not relieve us of responsibility, however. We may not have polluted the air, but we need to take responsibility for cleaning it up. Each of us needs to look at our own behavior. Am i perpetuating the negative messages in our culture, or am I seeking to challenge them? If I have not been exposed to positive images of oppressed groups, am I seeking them out, expanding my own knowledge base? Am I acknowledging my own prejudices, thereby minimizing the impact they might have on my interactions with others? Unless we engage in these and other acts of reflection and reeducation, we easily repeat the process with our children. We teach what we were taught. The unexamined prejudices of the parents are passed on to the children. It is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to interrupt this cycle.



The way i annotated these paragraphs was by underlining and circling key words and key sentences and phrases. i also made every day life comparisons. I made little side notes to my self to help me understand the text better. Chunking also helps a lot because your not worrying about getting the whole article done your just focused on one section and annotating it as much as you can. If there is something at the end of the article that ties into the beginning of the article then i will just draw an arrow to the beginning an write down a little note about how it ties together. Everything that goes on my paper is coming from my head and my thoughts.Just like how Mr.Sutherland says to listen to the little voice in your head,if you listen closely you'll hear it. For paragraph #10 i basically just wrote little side note were it says "but if we live in a smoggy place"which can mean a racist place and where it says "how can we avoid breathing the air?" i think that means that we can't live without it because we all need the air to survive unless your a freak.so i think its trying to say that we will have to live with the concept about our world being racist.
For paragraph #13 were it says "we teach what we are taught" that is totally true because children reflect their parents you internalize what your parents are like and what they do.For example if they are neat freaks then there is a good probability that you will become a neat freak because you grew up and lived in that environment. So if like your parents are black and they are always saying things like stay away form white people because they did a lot of things to us then that little kid will most likely grow up and be prejudice or racist. The reason why i annotate is because it helps me understand the purpose of what im reading. No one can tell you how to annotate,there is no specific way. So what i annotated was what i thought was important to me or what i thought was good valid information.