Of Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria By Beverly Tatum

Beverly Tatum is an expert on minority social identity and the experiences of kids growing up searching for their identity. In Tatum’s work titled “Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” she breaks down the barriers and views of black kids growing up in a white dominated society. Tatum claims that black adolescents are labeled, grouped, and stereotyped because of their culture and race in society. She says that these kids grow up differently because of the barriers they face in schools as just young kids. Tatum’s expertise in the work is extremely powerful and she uses multiple strategies to magnify the social issues that black youth face. Tatum uses 4 main rhetoric strategies to push this claim including pathos, logos,

All throughout Tatum’s article she puts the emotional hardships for the kids in every argument she makes. Tatum uses a personal encounter from a young girl who said she always found it odd that she was the only black girl in her honors classes. (p13) This story particularly plays on the emotions because the girl adds that her school was 35 percent black. To the reader hearing that a girl is a standout in her classes is extremely sad because we all have memory of ourselves being alone and this story triggers those emotions. Knowing the girl is the only one of her racial identity in her class could be intimidating, and make her feel alone or as if she doesn’t belong, and that is what triggers the reader’s emotions. The significance of this excerpt is not to make the reader sappy, but rather create sympathy to support her thesis. However, Tatum’s rhetorical appeals don’t end there. Tatum also uses logos, her knowledge and profession, to push her thesis as well. Because of the experiences and research that Tatum has done she has the ability to put out a lot of factual info to support her thesis. Tatum does this in two ways. First the reader can notice that all of Tatum’s data and information is arranged in sections with headings that label what she will addressing. Subtitle “Understanding Racial Identity Development” (p9) heads her section all about how kids see their race in everyday life and how it transitions throughout their life. However, the organization itself is not an example of logos the titles are. The titles support her claim by labeling all the problems she addresses. By doing this she puts all the topics on the table and lets the reader know what she will use next to support her thesis. The second and more text based logos usage from Tatum is shown all throughout her work, but in from paragraph 9 to 28 we get a large amount of text based evidence. Tatum