My First Race Blog Post!

  Hello Readers! This is my first of a series of five blog entries focusing on topics such as bias, racism, microaggressions and many more things to come. My blog posts will be focusing around Dr. Becerly Daniel Tatum’s bestseller Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race. In our small reading group, we have split up the book into five different reading chunks, which coincide with the five blog posts that I will be writing.

My first impressions of this book are a bit mixed. To begin, we start by reading pages one to page seventy-two. This section in the book is the prologue which discusses “‘Why Are All the Black Kids Still Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?’ and Other Conversations About Race in the Twenty-First Century.” The prologue was loaded with facts and statistics from the early civil rights movement, to current events up to late 2016. It seemed a bit fact dense, and was a bit difficult to read fluidly, though many of the statistics were very important and laid the groundwork for what's to come.

Reading through the years of systemic racism, from the start of the civil rights movement, to know something that I noticed was the change of how information was passed along. Originally in newspapers, and now on a small computer we carry around in our pockets. Dr. Tatum explains the impact of technology and social media has impacted not only the civil rights movement, but human rights, women's rights, LGTBQ+’s rights, and how everyone has a voice. 

There has been more traction throughout the years as social media has grown to be a bigger part of our lives. “As the details of Trayvon Martin’s murder became known through social media it became a national news story,” (pg 26). With all of the coverage, many demonstrations and protests began after Zimmerman, the man who shot Martin dead, was not charged. The social media coverage brought many people together in a short period of time. The outrage lead to the arrest of Zimmerman, who was also charged with second degree murder. After the trial, the jury ruled that Zimmerman was “not guilty,”  though the protesters and demonstrators didn’t get the outcome that they had hoped for, without social media, and the public demand, it was unlikely that Zimmerman would have had to come face to face with a jury to begin with. 

Courtesy of Nicholas Kamm (Boghani)

    

    Trayvon Martin’s story would not have been told had it not been for the technology we have today. The power of social media gave Trayvon’s family and friends a chance to gain some sense of closure. Many families have been able to gain public awareness and support through social media, and different organizations such as Black Lives Matter, which was created on Twitter. “#BLM describes itself as a ‘decentralized network aiming to build the leadership and power of black people,’” (Pg 37).

    While the first section of Dr. Tatum’s book is a bit dense with facts, I can really appreciate the time and effort put into setting a foundation for the rest of the book. While it wasn’t focused on too heavily, I enjoyed reading through the years of statistics and reading how technology and social media have impacted the civil rights movement for the better.

Social media has also helped college demonstrations go from just a small gathering of a few people, to a crowd large enough to make some real change happen. Schools as big as “Harvard, Yale… Dartmouth, University of California, Berkeley, Wisconsin, Michigan and Alabama,” (pg 43) have all used a social media platform under the website TheDemands.org. TheDemands.org is for students to create a conversation with their school administrators and demand for policies to be changed.

Boghani, Priyanka “Trayvon Martin Case: A Timeline.” The World from PRX, The World from

    PRX, 27 Mar. 2012, 9:51, www.pri.org/stories/2012-03-27/trayvon-martin-case-timeline.