 All right. Hello and welcome. Welcome Arlington. My name is Andrea Nikolai and I am director of libraries. And it's my honor to welcome you today to the marquee event of our month of Arlington reads together programs. First a land acknowledgement the town of Arlington is located on the ancestral lands of the Massachusetts tribe, the tribe of indigenous peoples from whom the colony province and Commonwealth have taken their names. We honor our respects to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historic Massachusetts territories today. Today we are hosting a conversation between assistant superintendent of Arlington public schools, Dr. Roderick McNeil and Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum the author of this year's community read why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria and other conversations about race. Before I tell you a little about their backgrounds and bring them up on screen I do want to tell you about the Arlington reads together program. The library's community read program launched in 2003 as a way to bring Arlington together around a shared reading experience and topic. The book was chosen by the committee last summer and the choice affirms the community and the library's commitment to normalizing and supporting conversations about race and our diverse human experience. We have some wonderful community partners and I want to mention them are Arlington reads together community partners include the diversity task group of Envision Arlington, the Arlington Human Rights Commission, the friends of the Robbins library, the Arlington libraries Foundation, the library Board of Trustees, and this year we are thrilled to be partnering with the Arlington Education Foundation. Today's program is in fact made possible by the Arlington libraries Foundation and the Arlington Education Foundation with technical assistance from our friends at ACMI. It takes a whole team of community partners and library staff to create an engaging community read program and our team has a great leader in library assistant director Anna Lytton who put abundant vision enthusiasm and care to coordinating this year's Arlington reads together month. Now I'd like to bring our speakers on screen beginning with Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. Dr. Tatum is president emerita of Spelman College is the author of our community read the best selling book why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria and other conversations about race. Now in its 20th anniversary edition. A thought leader in higher education. She was the 2013 recipient of the Carnegie academic leadership award and the 2014 recipient of the American Psychological Association Award for outstanding lifetime contributions to psychology. Dr Tatum holds a BA degree in psychology from Wesleyan University and MA and PhD in clinical psychology from University of Michigan and an MA in religious studies from Hartford Seminary. Welcome Dr Tatum. Dr. Roderick McNeil Jr. is currently the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the Arlington public school district. In each of his positions Dr. McNeil has worked to provide an equitable learning environment for all students. As principal of the John Elliott Elementary School in Needham. He led a staff that earned level one status and a commendation award for high progress and narrowing proficiency gaps. In his current role he has written a grant to conduct an audit of the current district curriculum and has planned multiple district wide professional development days that focused on equity and inclusion for all students. He has an undergrad degree in English literature from the University of Michigan, a master's in arts and teaching in elementary education with an emphasis in early childhood development and an educational specialist certificate and administration from Wayne State University and a master's in educational leadership from Boston College. His research for his dissertation focused on the recruitment retention and support for educators of color. Before I go I want to remind the audience that this program is being recorded. I want to remind you that closed captioning is available by clicking on the CC button at the bottom of the screen. And you can ask questions throughout the event by using the Q&A feature at the bottom of your screen. In a portion of today's program Gillian Harvey the town's director of diversity equity inclusion will moderate and that will take place at the end of today's program. So welcome all and I will now hand it over to Dr McNeil and Dr Tatum. Thank you. Thank you Andrea. I think I can speak on behalf of the whole Arlington community what a pleasure it is to have you here today and to engage you in this very important conversation about racial equity. And I know that you have a long distinguished career. And I don't think you know this because we never talked about it but I am an undergraduate alumni of the University of Michigan. So as we start the conversation off I just want to know what about your background and personal experience informed your decision to study race and education and what motivates you to continue this work. Sure. Well let me first say thank you for selecting my book for this Arlington community read and I'm delighted to be in this conversation with you Dr McNeil. I am from Massachusetts. So let me just start up by saying that I live today in Atlanta Georgia, but I grew up in Bridgewater Massachusetts, not that far from Arlington. And I, when people ask me like why do I study what I study I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that I indeed grew up in Bridgewater Massachusetts. I was born of a very few black families. My family was one of the few black families living in that town at the time. I like to start at the very beginning, which is 1954 the year that I was born, because 1954 was the year of Brown versus Board of Education. It seems to me symbolically important to have been born that year, but I wasn't born in Massachusetts I was actually born in Tallahassee, Florida. And at the time that I was born my parents, who were both educators college educated at Howard University a historically black university as probably everyone knows, and my father went on to earn a master's degree they were my father were art majors at Howard. And then my dad went on to earn a master's degree in an MFA in art at the University of Iowa in the early 50s, and then was teaching as an art professor at Florida A&M University, also in Tallahassee, also a historically black university. And in the 1950s 1954 the year I was born my father wanted to earn a doctorate, so he could advance academically in his career, and would have liked to be able to do that at Florida State University, which is also in Tallahassee, Florida. But unfortunately, in those years, Florida State was a whites only institution. And so my father African American man was not able to attend Florida State, even after the Brown versus Board of Education decision. It was still a segregated institution well into the 60s. So the state of Florida, however, was obligated because of this Supreme Court decision to do something to provide access for black graduate students in their state. And what they chose to do was to pay my father's transportation out of the state. So my dad actually attended Penn State, Pennsylvania State University, and earned his doctorate there, commuting back and forth between Florida and Pennsylvania, as opposed to just going across town to Florida State. When he finished his degree in 1957, my parents decided that they did not want to raise their children. I had an older brother at the time it was just two of us. Later, more kids came, but that was after we were in Massachusetts. My older brother was approaching school age he was almost six, and they decided that they didn't want to send him to school in a segregated system in Florida. So my dad started looking for a new job, and he found one in Massachusetts. He became the first African American professor at what is now known as Bridgewater State University, then called Bridgewater State College. And he started teaching our education at Bridgewater State, and that's why we lived in Bridgewater. So we moved there in 1958. I was four years old, and I grew up in this town, where I was often the only black kid in my class. And I'm sure that had something to do with my interest in the experiences of black families in predominantly white communities. That was the topic of my dissertation when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. And, you know, you don't have to look too hard to see the autobiographical roots of my interest in that subject. But what really got me going around teaching about racism and studying racism was when I was a graduate student. I got married while still a graduate student working on my PhD. My husband and I moved to California, where he had an opportunity at the University of California Santa Barbara. And while I was there working on my dissertation, trying to finish up my degree from Michigan, I was invited to teach some classes on a part-time basis at the university. The first class I taught was about black children and education. And while I, it was a new course for me, but it went pretty well, and I've been studying child development and writing about black children as part of my dissertation. But after that course, I was invited to teach a course called Group Exploration of Racism. That course, Group Exploration of Racism, was completely new for me, but I was confident enough to think I could do it. And so I was given the opportunity, and sure enough, at the end of the semester, my students wrote things on their evaluations about the course that really inspired me. They wrote things like, this is the best course I've taken at the university. Why did I have to wait until I was a senior in college to have conversations about racism? Everyone should be required to take this class. And I was so excited by the feedback I was getting and the powerful learning that I had observed taking place in this course on racism that I decided I really wanted to just keep teaching about racism. I did other things, of course, too. Over the course of my career, I taught other classes, but that was my personal, it became my personal signature to really focus on understanding racism as it plays itself out in school settings and particularly as a clinical psychologist wanting to understand racial identity development and how young people come to understand their identities as people of color or as white people in a multiracial society like the one we live in today. So you talk about, you were given that opportunity to teach those courses. What are some things that you learned, and why do you think some of the things that you did in those courses resonated so well with your students? I think one of the first things I learned was that students want to know. I mean, this is a conversation. People want to learn about racism and how it operates in our society because we are all impacted by it. People at some level know that racism is a problem, even if they're not talking about it, even if they're not having conversations with other people about it. At some level, we all know that this is a problem and has been in our society. And in a way, I like to say it's like the elephant in the room that we have been trying to avoid talking about. But it takes a lot. This is one of the things I observed in my students and have come to understand more deeply as time has gone by. If there's an important topic that you're not talking about, it's not as though it's not happening around you. You just are tuning it out. I'd like to use this analogy. If there is a big stinky elephant in the middle of your living room right now and somebody tells you to pretend it's not there, just ignore it, you would have to use a lot of your own psychological energy to try to tune that out. If someone then came in and said, oh, look at that elephant, you would feel like, oh, what a sense of relief. I can now talk about this elephant that I've been trying to ignore. And in some ways, that's how racism is in our society. We learn from an early age that we're not supposed to talk about it. In fact, if I'd like to just do a little experiment here over Zoom, it's a little more challenging because I can't see our audience. But I want everyone in the audience to just take a minute and think about your own earliest race-related memory. If we were all in an auditorium together, I would ask people to raise their hands and, you know, how many of you thought of something? And what I would find is that if it was like most audiences, almost everyone's hand would be up because most people can think of something from childhood that's connected to racism in some way. And if I were to then ask, as I often do, how old were you? Just, you know, this audience of people who are tuning in, if you've got a memory, how old were you at the time of the thing you're remembering? Many people, if we were all in a room together, would be holding up hands of maybe five fingers or, you know, seven or six or calling out numbers. In my experience, most people will have a memory that goes back to early elementary school. Not everyone. It depends on where you grew up. Some people will say high school or even college. But for a lot of people around the age of five or six or seven is pretty typical. And if you ask, well, how old, not how old were you, but what feeling is attached to this experience? You know, what emotion? You still remember it decades later. What feeling do you connect to this experience you're recalling? People will mention things like confusion, sadness, anger, embarrassment, shame, guilt, fear sometimes. Though, you know, people will also say things like friendship or love. It's not always an uncomfortable feeling. But for most people, it tends to be more like those early words I just mentioned, confusion, anxiety, fear, embarrassment, isolation as a word I recently heard someone say, sadness. And if you ask then, well, what did you do when that happened? When you had that feeling, did you talk to a teacher or a parent, a caring adult, a concerned adult about what you're feeling? Most people will say they did not. Most people will say, no, I didn't talk to my parents. No, I didn't talk to my teacher. I didn't talk to anyone. I've never talked to anyone about it. Sometimes people will say. And that is somewhat counterintuitive because if we think about the five and six and seven-year-olds we know, they tend to be pretty chatty. Children at that age tend to just, you know, they're chatterboxes. They tell you all kinds of things. They don't hold much back. So if we have an audience full of people who have an early memory that goes back to that time period, and it makes them feel uncomfortable, the thing they're recalling, and yet they didn't talk to anyone about it at that time, it sort of, as I said, it counter-contradicts what we know about young children, typically. So how do we explain that? One way to explain it is to say that we learn early, from a very early age, that the adults in our environment don't want us to talk about it. That they shh when you ask questions about race or racism. That there is a way in which children are encouraged not to speak about it, not to talk about it. Sometimes it's the adults that are the source of the confusion. Maybe the adult said or did something that has left the child confused. But even if it's not, it's often the case, people often say, I just knew I wasn't supposed to talk about it. And one of the things I learned teaching about racism was that students want to have these conversations, but they have to get past that early socialization. They have to get past that hesitation, that fear, that if I break this rule, if I break this taboo about this topic, maybe it'll cause conflict. Maybe people's feelings will get hurt. Maybe I'll embarrass myself. Maybe nothing good is going to come of it. That's the feeling that people have. But in fact, what we can say is with certainty, you can't solve a problem, you can't talk about. And if we know that this is a problem in our society, we have to get past our reluctance to engage in these conversations in order to get to a place where we're able to take effective action. And you touch on something that always comes up in conversations, especially within the school district, and has, with parents as well, is at what is the proper age in order to have conversations about not only racism, but sexual orientation, gender identity, and you touch upon that. But you also write about this in your book when you had your own conversation with your own son. Can you talk about that, please? Sure, yeah. So one of the things we know, let me just pause and say, a lot of times parents, particularly white parents, will say, my child is colorblind. What they mean is that their child doesn't mention somebody else's race or ethnicity, doesn't talk about it, doesn't seem to notice or care. And it's important to be welcoming of everyone. We want children to be welcoming of everyone and inclusive in their play and in their circle of friends. But it is inaccurate. It's inaccurate to say that children don't notice difference. They do. What they sometimes learn is not to mention the difference they notice. And that comes back to being socialized to not be colorblind, but what I call in my book color silent. There are kids who are color silent who have learned they're not supposed to talk about somebody's physical difference. They're not supposed to point out skin color or hair texture or eye shape or whatever it might be. But we do know that children as young as six months old notice these differences. And when kids are as old as two or three, they start asking questions. You made reference to the story I tell in my book about a conversation my, I'm the mother of two sons, my youngest oldest son when he was just three. Of course, my kids are grown up now, but when he was three and attending a daycare center while I was working, he came home. I picked him up and he said, Mom, Tommy says my skin is brown because I drank chocolate milk. Is that true? Now, of course, it was easy for me to say, No, that's not true. Your skin is brown because there's something in your skin called melanin. Everybody has some. The more you have in your skin, it helps protect your skin from the sun. And the more you have in your skin, the browner your skin is. At your school, he happened to be the only black child in his class. I said at your school, you are the kid with the most. But even Tommy has melanin in his skin. When he went to visit his grandmother in Florida and he came back and was showing everybody his tan. It was the melanin in his skin that turned it brown in the sun. So, you know, that's a conversation that you can have with the three year old. But the fact of the matter is Tommy, the white child who made the observation. He wasn't trying to be mean. He wasn't being, you know, wasn't trying to offend. He was trying to make sense of a physical difference he observed. His skin was light. Jonathan's skin was browner than his. He had seen Jonathan drink chocolate milk. So it wasn't like there wasn't, you know, a data point there. He'd seen that. So he was trying to figure it out. But because the question, so what was really relevant in this part of our conversation is the next day. What happened the next day? I went to school and I spoke to the teacher. And I raised the question with the teacher as to how she was talking to children about their physical differences. Clearly the kids were noticing and talking to each other. How was she facilitating those conversations? And what she said to me was, you know, it hasn't come up. Well, actually it had come up. I knew from this conversation that it had come up, but she had not been tuned into those conversations. Maybe they were out of her earshot. Maybe she just hadn't noticed. But there are lots of ways for educators, even early childhood educators to engage with children around questions of physical difference that are part of the human experience. And also questions of fairness, which have to do with the isms. Right. Is it fair for people with darker skin to be treated differently than people with lighter skin? Is it fair for boys to be treated differently than girls? Is it fair for a family with two moms to be seen differently as a family with a mom and a dad? These are the kinds of questions that kids ask. You know, if two moms are picking up a child, a kid will ask, why are there two moms? Where's the dad? You know, that's a question that a three-year-old might ask. He was picking up my younger son from school one day. He was about three years old. And he asked me why the mom and the child down the corridor from us didn't match. He said, why don't they match? What did he mean by that? Well, this was a multiracial family. It was a white mom and a child of color. And he said to me, they're supposed to match. Why don't they match? And I said, they don't have to match. Sometimes moms and kids match. Sometimes they don't. But this just goes to say that children are noticing difference and they have questions. And adults should feel comfortable responding to those questions. And if they don't, the good news is there are lots of resources to help. Whether that's watching a video like my TEDx talk, which you can find on YouTube, about talking to young children about race, or reading a book together about skin color difference and other kinds of physical difference. There are lots of resources that help introduce the conversation to young children. And of course, as they get older, the conversations can get more sophisticated. But even two and three-year-olds can have conversations about these issues, and they do have questions. And how does that play into, like, so, you know, of course, your book is about the development of racial identity. So how does that play into in helping our students to be more secure in their racial identity, you know, as we try to be proactive and we talk about these things that may resonate in kids' mind, but they may not say anything about it. Yes. Well, one of the things we know, let's talk about identity for a moment, right? So when we talk about identity development, we're talking about a process that really becomes very visible in adolescence. That doesn't mean it starts in adolescence, but because how we define ourselves, what we say about ourselves to our, you know, how I describe myself is shaped by what others have said to me about me in my social interactions. That's true for all of us, right? I do an exercise sometimes where I ask people to fill in a sentence. It's a simple sentence. I am fill in the blank. And if you ask people to do that, give them 60 seconds. How many different ways can you complete that sentence? You could say I am tall. You could say I am short. You could say I am African American. You could say I am a woman. You could say I am a mom. I am a dad. I am a professor. There are all kinds of ways to answer that question. But what's interesting is that if you ask people to do it quickly within that 60-second time period, they tend to list the things that are most important to them. You know, the identities that have most meaning for them or the characteristics that they are most comfortable or familiar with. You know, if you are a very tall person and people are always telling you, gosh, you're so tall. One of the words you're going to write down on that sentence is going to be tall, right? If you have been academically successful and grown up with people telling you how smart you are, one of the words you might write down is I am smart. I am intelligent. You know, the how you think about yourself has everything to do with what has been reflected back to you in your social interactions. When you get to be a teenager, or maybe I should say it differently, as you're approaching adolescence, right, your body is changing, but it's not just your body. Your brain is changing. Your brain is getting more sophisticated in its development. Your brain continues to develop into your 20s. We know that. But as you're approaching adolescence, your brain is getting more sophisticated and you start thinking in more sophisticated ways. So to ask a question, who am I? Where do I belong in the world? How do people see me? These are typically adolescent questions. And when we talk about racial identity, we are talking about an awareness that a young person has that their racial assignment, the way people have labeled them, is going to influence how people see them and perceive them. The young African American boy who at the age of six, everybody thought was cute and maybe engaged him, you know, in conversation at school or in the grocery store or wherever adults and children come into contact with each other, may have a very different response when he's 14 and now six feet tall and people see him maybe as potentially threatening. Now they're not engaging him in conversation. Now maybe they're crossing the street to avoid him. And he's going to notice that. It's not that he doesn't notice those things. And so that's going to start to get him thinking about how is he perceived in the world? And what does this mean for who he should be hanging out with? Who should he be talking to? Who are his friends? What's his future? All of those identity questions are going to be influenced by the feedback he's getting from the wider environment. That's true for everyone, but if you are a young white kid growing up in a largely white community, perhaps attending a largely white school in terms of the student population, you may be thinking about your identity, but not so much about being white per se, because people aren't responding to your whiteness. You know, people are talking about you because you're an athlete, or maybe they're talking about you because you are particularly good in a subject. But if everybody around you was white, that's not what they're pointing out because, you know, it's like, if everybody around you has two legs and you do two, people aren't commenting on the fact that you have two legs, right? It's not something that is going to be part of your conscious awareness. But if you're in that environment and you only have one leg or you're confined to a wheelchair, that's going to be part of your identity because that's what people respond to when they engage with you. So I hope that's been clear in terms of thinking about how racial identity develops. But one of the things that's important to say, because of racism in our society, racial identity is going to be much more pronounced, a process for kids of color than it is for white youth, typically. Now, if you're the only white kid in a black neighborhood, you're going to be aware of your whiteness. And if you are a white student living in a largely white community, you're probably not thinking that much about being white. But the kids of color in that community are certainly thinking about what it means to be a young person of color in that context. You're kind of touching upon that other difficult topic to talk about is the impact of white privilege. So I've had conversations when that has come up. There's a lot of parent groups and things that we've tried to do in the curriculum has sparked these type of conversations, but it always seems as like it's something negative. When I have a conversation with a roomful of parents and we talk about white privilege, it's really hard to have that conversation. What do you think that is, because you touch upon in your prior comments. Yeah, well the idea. So let's use the language. So what does white privilege refer to white privilege refers to basically the benefits that come to white people without they're even asking for them. You don't. And somebody might say, Well, what do you mean by benefits benefit might be not being followed around in the store when you are out shopping because people aren't instantly suspicious of you. It might be not being pulled over while you're driving because police officers aren't suspicious of you. A benefit might be having greater access to economic opportunity because of where you live and the segregation, the patterns of segregation that have helped shape the fact that you're in a mostly white community. That might not have anything that pattern might have been well established before you showed up, but the fact that you live there is a benefit to you. There. Here's an example that this is a real life example that I'm recalling now I'm thinking about a case of housing discrimination. Here in my career I was invited to be to give expert testimony in a case of housing discrimination. In this particular case, the person who was discriminated against was a Puerto Rican woman who was trying to rent an apartment. She needed a three bedroom apartment and those were not easy to find in the community where she lived. Because of her family size and her mother was coming to help her take care of her kids and she needed a three bedroom apartment. So she found one and was going to rent it. But when she showed up, the landlord refused to rent it to her basically told her he didn't say I'm discriminating against you he told her so sorry it's already rented. Well, she was pretty sure that he was not being honest about that she felt that because he'd been quite encouraging of her on the phone. She didn't have an accent. There wasn't anything about that conversation that would have suggested her ethnicity on the phone. But when she turned up in person, the landlord told her so sorry it's not available anymore. Well, she had a friend investigate. So she had a white friend seek out the apartment just to see. And sure enough, when the white friend inquired, the apartment was still available. So she knew she had a case of discrimination and she brought that case forward. But here's the thing. Here's a scarce resource this three bedroom apartment in a community where there's not very many of them. And let's imagine a family, a white family shows up after she has been turned down. A white family shows up and is rented to that white family has benefited from her discrimination. They don't know it. It's not their fault, but they are still the beneficiaries of it. That's what privilege is like you get it whether you want it or not. And sometimes you're not even aware that you're getting it. But there are lots of opportunities that come your way because they are being in some ways reserved for white people. And as a consequence, those benefits add up to make your life a little easier than it might otherwise be. In my experience, people don't like the term privilege because they think it makes it sound like they didn't work hard for the things they've earned. It makes it sound like they didn't, that somehow they've had an easy life. And it's not about that at all. It's simply about the fact that there are benefits that come to being white that you don't get if you're a person of color. I have a colleague who wrote a book about white, the title of the book is white men on campus. It's about the experience of young white men on college campuses as it relates to this issue of understanding privilege. And the term he likes to use rather than white privilege is white immunity. And he says that his students find this term easier to understand because in some ways the privilege might be about the things you get, but it's also about the things that don't happen to you. It's about not having your neck nailed on by a police officer, right? I have never seen white offenders treated in the way that black people are treated. And we've all seen those videos, right? I've never seen white people sitting in Starbucks having police called on them because they're waiting for someone. That's an example of all those people sitting in the Starbucks waiting for their friends may not feel like they're experiencing privilege, but compared to what happened to the young black men who were there and then had the police called, they had some immunity. Those experiences were not happening to them. That's what privilege is about. And so that kind of begs the next question I have in mind as I listen to you talk is, you know, can, because you're talking right about this in your book as well. So when you have conversations about racism, can people of color be racist? And that's all with that also comes up as we start to get into the conversations about white privilege. So is it sure for people of color or BIPOC people to have, you know, rate, have racist actions against other people who will not like them. So the short answer, I'm not sure there is a short answer, but the short answer. I'm going to try to be short. Sure. That I write about in my book has everything to do with how you define racism. Right. The answer to the question will vary depending on how you've defined racism. So I define racism, the definition that I use in my book, which comes from the work of a sociologist named David Wellman is racism as a system of advantage based on race. But a lot of people use racism and racial prejudice interchangeably. If if that is how you think about it, then the answer is yes, everybody can have racial prejudice. It doesn't matter who you are. We all have been exposed to misinformation about people different from ourselves, and sometimes misinformation about people like ourselves. And I talk about that misinformation that comes to us in the form of stereotypes, distorted information as being like smog in the air. You know, nobody wants to be a smog breather. But if you live in a smoggy place, you are whether you like it or not. And all of us are breathing the smog of race racial attitudes. We all are breathing the smog of white supremacy. I recently heard Cornell West professor that many people will be familiar with African American professor talking about the fact that he too has the seed of white supremacy within him. Right. And what he's talking about is that smog. Those attitudes those assumptions you know we've all been watching the grown up watching the same television shows the stereotypes the way black people are over represented as criminals the way indigenous people are over represented as only having a history in the past, not an existence in the present. The exoticism or stereotypes about Asian Americans, you know there are lots of examples that we've all been exposed to. And so do we all have bias that is racially connected or racially defined. Absolutely. We all benefit from the systems of advantage based on race, we don't all benefit. And so if we understand racism as, or, or racist behavior as behavior that is connected to that system of advantage, then I preserve that word, when I'm talking about the experiences of white people this is ones were systematically advantaged. But when I say that I'm not saying that only white people are prejudiced, or only white people can discriminate, or only white people can be bigoted, anybody can be any of those things. But we don't all benefit. We don't all have access to that immunity that we were talking about earlier. Thank you for that. And so just to, I want to bring up something that we're actually working on in Arlington public schools right now that has, you know, sparked some, I don't want to say controversy but a healthy debate. So in Arlington public schools at the high school because of the pandemic we've had to make some adjustments to our schedule. And so we created our high school principal and staff have, you know, created heterogeneous classes and that's where we have combined our curriculum a which is open to everyone with honors track courses, and we've conflated those two into one course. And so it was giving access to students who may not have had it in the past to honors instruction and being exposed to that type of curriculum. And so it has sparked some, some response from the community, but in. So, I guess from one perspective you can look at we're trying to dismantle some of the institutional racism that has, you know, been added to how we've constructed. So what are your thoughts about that in, you know, from an educational standpoint and how should we structure those conversations with our community members so they can end up with us being in a, in a very, you know, productive conversation where we don't, there's no, we don't have one side, taking a defensive stance. I'm not sure you're going to avoid that because people do take defensive stances sometimes, even if you are being as intentional as you can in terms of being clear. But from an educational point of view, what we know from a research point of view is that heterogeneous classrooms are advantageous for lots of reasons certainly from an equity point of view. One of the things we know is that tracking, which is what we, you know, you know, when we have honors and standard or, you know, there's different names for these different levels. But when we have these different levels, what we see is that typically, white students are overrepresented at the top, and students of color are overrepresented at the bottom. And that is not accidental. And someone might say, well, that's just because, you know, the white students are, you know, they scored higher on the tests that we use to determine who's going to be in the honors track or, you know, teachers refer and that's how they, there are lots of different ways that the tracking system is put into place. What we know is that it's not as straightforward as it appears. So, for example, there's research that suggests that white children who have not scored particularly well still sometimes get placed in honors classes because their parents advocate for that. So the school says, okay. At the same time, we know that kids of color who are capable of doing honors work are often not placed in those classes because someone thinks they don't belong there. And that is a perception that is not always supported by academic data. Right. There's a lot of bias that comes in to these assignments. And historically, what we can say is that the use of tracks, or what I'm going to call ability grouping, the use of those that are often associated with school desegregation in a way that essentially leads to resegregation within a school. So a school may desegregate in terms of its student body, but resegregate by concentrating the kids of color in one set of classes and concentrating white kids in another set. The decision making around who's being put where is not always defensible in terms of student capacity for success. And what you've just seen in your heterogeneous grouping is that when you provide the opportunity for accelerated curriculum to all students, you find that there are students who might not otherwise have had the opportunity who are quite capable of doing the work and who rise to that level of expectation. So overall, the conclusion over many years, this is not new information, is that it's actually better for all students because of the diversity of perspectives, you know, different learning styles, but still that there is benefit to every student to be in more heterogeneously mixed classes. But I know and I know you are experiencing the fact that parents, particularly those parents whose children have been advantaged by the tracking system are often reluctant to see it change because they worry it's somehow going to disadvantage or reduce the advantage that their children have had to date. And I think we have to just acknowledge it as a defensive privilege. You know, people may not want to see it described in that way. But I think there's a lot of evidence to suggest that people will hold on to that which they think is beneficial to them, even if it is inequitable. And that that has been the part of the sentiment that I've received through emails is that parents feel like they've they don't want their children to be robbed of the opportunity to be so they can be exposed to that type of instruction that matches their ability. And that's definitely has been the sentiment or the common theme in the emails that I've received. And I will say at the high school level, there's like anybody can take any course at any time, but I still think that there are certain challenges that students of color may have when they try to reach out and take those higher level courses. So I want to I know we're running out of time I just want to very quickly, in light of the, you know, and talk about a topic that has come up based upon recent events, in light of the recent escalation and violence against Asian Americans. What is your recommendation for parents and school districts and how to speak to young people about anti Asian racism. Well, I think it's important to acknowledge that it exists. First of all, right, you know, again, you can't solve a problem without talking about it. And so I think that's really important. I live in the city of Atlanta. And of course, if you've been watching the news, you know that the horrible shooting that took place just a few days ago happened in the city of Atlanta, where eight people were killed six of those eight people were Asian American women. And as horrible as that situation was on the surface. It is even more so when we understand it to be part of a trend of rising violence being directed toward Asian Americans, which has been going on for some time, not just, you know, this week or last week, it's been going on for some time. And some of it certainly linked to the coronavirus and the way in which the former president talked about it as the quote China virus or, you know, talking about it in ways that scapegoated members of the Chinese community. But even as I say the Chinese community, part of the challenge in the United States is that when we talk about Asian Americans, we lump a lot of people together. Right. So first of all, whether you're from China or your family is from China or you are Chinese American, you know, the virus doesn't have anything to do with you. Right. But you could be Chinese, you could be Japanese, you could be Korean, you could be Vietnamese, and everyone is called Asian American. So there's a kind of lumping together of all groups, which is part of the stereotyping process that we see. But to come back to your question, which is that, you know, how do we talk to our children about it? I think anytime we see racially motivated, we anytime we see violence, let's just talk about violence. And when we see that someone is engaging in violence against a particular group of people, we need to name that and say that this is the result of stereotyping. It's the result of, I mean, of course, at the individual person has who knows, you know, it remains to be seen what the motivation of that particular actor was that criminal, you know, the criminal behavior. And so there's an investigation still going on. I don't want to assume that I know all about that. But what I do want to say is that when we see racially motivated violence, we should name it for what it is. And we should talk about the ways in which people of color are depersonalized. Right. When we stereotype when we use language that is offensive when we talk about groups in a depersonalizing way, it makes it more likely that someone will feel like it is justified to take violent action against, you know, we don't see the humanity in the other person when we depersonalize them through that kind of racist behavior. So being able to talk about it, and also being able to talk about what it means to be an upstander, someone who is standing up and support of a community that is under attack, someone who is able to speak up against the injustice or the unfairness that you're witnessing, you know, are people being targeted at school is there bullying going on, you know, what kind of quote jokes are people telling what kind of harassment are people experiencing. These are questions that parents can talk to their kids about and ask questions. You know, what do you see how our kids being treated. Right. And I think that also. So when I read the book you added that prologue where you've actually, you know, included a lot of the events that have taken place over the last, you know, years, you know, especially since President Obama. What prompted you to write that prologue and what do you what do you want readers to take away from reading that and how that tide and everything as you just spoken about. Sure. Well, let me start out by just telling our audience that my book, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and Other Conversations About Race was originally written in the 1990s. Right. The first version of the book was published in 1997. If we fast forward to 2017, when the 20th anniversary edition came out, I will actually the publisher asked me in 2015, if I would consider updating the book for the 20th anniversary release. And at that time, I was just retiring from my job as president of Spelman College, and I knew I would have time to work on it and I said yes, I would. But one of the things I was thinking about was the fact that the college students I was teaching and writing about in 1997 are now in their 40s, maybe pushing 50, right, and that the young people who were coming of age in 2017 had had very different life experiences. They'd been shaped by different social environments. Social media, for example, that were not part of the socialization experience of the first generation of students I was writing about. So I really wanted to reflect on what the world looked like through the lens of somebody who was turning 20 in 2017. And one of the things that happened a lot when I was, when I told people what I was doing, people would say, you know, what are you doing now? And I'd say, well, I'm updating my book where all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria. And then someone would say, oh, well, one, are they still sitting together in the cafeteria? The answer is yes. And two, haven't things gotten better? That question came up so often I wanted to reflect, okay, have things gotten better over the last 20 years? And how you answer that question will depend on your generational position, right? But if you were born in 1997, you were four years old in 2001, which is the year of 9-11. You might not remember 9-11 as a four-year-old, but certainly your growing up years would be shaped by the anti-Muslim rhetoric that followed, right? And your sense of being in a nation under attack would be part of your growing up experience in a way that it wouldn't have been if you were born in the 90s. If you were born in 1997, you were 11 years old in 2008 when President Barack Obama was elected president. But something that happened before he was elected was the crash, the great recession, right? So when you were 11 years old, the economy tanks and maybe that impacted your family's financial status, maybe that created a sense of financial insecurity for you. But as I said a few months later, President Obama was elected and you would have spent your entire adolescence from 11 to almost to 19 with the black president and his family in the White House. And hearing people say that we were living in a post-racial society. And you might think, well, that's an improvement, except that when you were 15, 2012, Trayvon Martin was murdered. And we saw his killer go away without punishment. And then a year or two later, Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri, and Ferguson is erupting and Black Lives Matter becomes part of our daily conversation. And at the same time, in response perhaps to President Obama's election, there's a growing presence of white supremacist activity that we're seeing about in the news. And now maybe you're 17 years old and, you know, soon to be an election and president, now president, then candidate Trump, you know, kicks off his campaign talking about Mexicans and using a lot of stereotypical language and all of that. So this is to say, if you ask me, has things gotten better over my lifetime? Well, since 1954, when my father had to travel to Pennsylvania to get his education instead of being able to go across town, yes, that's better. But if you were born in 1997, and what you've seen is more and more racial polarization as a consequence of political changes and a sense of threat in terms of the global situation and other things, you might not say it's gotten better. You might feel a frustration that, you know, the generation before you has not fixed it. Right. So I have one final question for you, because we are coming to the close of our conversation. First, let me just say it's just been an honor to have this conversation. That's definitely a highlight of my career. But as you look forward, what gives you hope? What is something we can take away that you feel like is removing in the right direction? First of all, I think it's important to say that I work at staying hopeful. And what do I mean by that? I look for positive signs, right? The last chapter in my book is titled, Signs of Hope, Sites of Progress. I'm always looking for positive signs because if you only see problems, you get discouraged, right? And, you know, I'm a big admirer of Brian Stevenson, the author of the book, Just Mercy, who is associated with that founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. And one of the things that he says is that hopelessness is the enemy of justice. I'm paraphrasing here, because if you feel hopeless, you give up. You won't work for justice, right? So in order to maintain progress, we have to maintain hope. And so I'm not hopeful every day, but I want to say that I work hard to find signs of progress. And I see some. I see signs of progress in communities like Arlington choosing to read my book. You know, there are lots of books you could have chosen. And the fact that a community is saying we need to talk about this issue and we're all going to read this book together is a sign of hope. When we see young people who are committed to taking actions, speaking up about the injustice that they see, and lots of different communities, lots of different places, that is a sign of hope. When we elect the first black woman, Asian American woman as vice president, and as we did when we elected Kamala Harris, that is a sign of hope. It's, you know, that's a sign of progress. So there are shoots, you know, spring is coming in Massachusetts and I bet people in their yards are seeing daffodils poking up or things like that. You know, and I think we all have to look for those shoots to say, you know, is racism a problem in our society? Absolutely it is. Is it possible to bring about change? Absolutely change is possible. Will it happen by itself? It will not. We all have to take some responsibility for taking action. And sometimes that action may mean some discomfort. I think what you're doing with your heterogeneous curriculum is taking positive action. It may cause some discomfort. We should expect that. But we should also expect that if we want, if we want to see progress, we all need to lean in and act together as a community to advance it. Well, thank you very much for those words of encouragement. We are doing things within the public school system and also in the Arlington community in order to raise awareness and have more discussions as it relates to racial racial equity. And I will say that we have purchased your book for every member of our Arlington public school staff. So it was about 800 copies and we've disseminated them and we're going to have continue to have conversations and so we appreciate you being here. And this does close out the conversation between you and I, and I'm going to bring back Jillian Harvey. We have been collecting questions through the Q&A as part of this Zoom call. And Jillian is going to identify some of those questions and see if we can get some responses from you. So thank you very much. Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure having a conversation with you, Dr. McNeil. So thank you. Absolutely. And I'm going to hand it over to Jillian. Thank you both, Dr. McNeil and Dr. Tatum for the riveting conversation. Very enlightening. And so we did have some questions submitted beforehand, but a few intertwined with some that were submitted live. So I'm just going to kick it off. So one of the questions is around your book and how it was written. And with your 20 year update that within the last four years, if there was anything that you would add to it. But in addition to that, where do you also see your book fitting in with the most recent writings on race and racism and anti racism, like Dr. Kendi's How to Be an Anti-Racist and D'Angelo's White Fragility? Yeah. Well, I think, so first of all, let me just say I really like both of those books, Robin D'Angelo's Book, White Fragility, and also Ibram Kendi's book, How to Be an Anti-Racist. There are some differences. One of the differences that people would find immediately is the way that I define racism is a little different than the way Dr. Kendi does. But what I would say is the same and perhaps what is most important is that we agree completely about what anti-racism is. And that is working against racism, right? So he defines racism, as I said, slightly differently. He would talk about it as really anything that leads to inequity, that leads to disproportionate, disproportionate outcomes as supporting racism and that which interrupts that is anti-racism. I think it's worth telling this example here, which is in my book I use the analogy of a moving walkway. And I want to talk a little bit about that moving walkway, because I think this is where Dr. Kendi and I would agree. The moving walkway is like, if we think about the policies and practices that reinforce that system of advantage. You know, the policies that disproportionately benefit white families or white adults. The housing policies, education policies, criminal justice policies, healthcare, you know, all the different things that over history, over time have systematically benefited white families, systematically disadvantaged families of color or people of color. Those policies and practices, some of them were in place well before any of us were even born, but have been reinforced by just doing business as usual. You know, if you do what you always did, you'll get what you always got. And so if it started out in an unfair way, and it keeps being done in that way, it continues to be unfair, even if that's not the current intent. So if we think of it as being like a moving walkway that's moving at the airport, like that moving sidewalk at the airport, you step onto it. You didn't start it, but you just step onto it and now you're being carried along by it. And when you are being carried along by it, you may notice, if you're sticking with my analogy here, you may notice that there's some people on that moving walkway who are walking fast past you. They're walking with purpose, they intend to go where that moving walkway is carrying them. But there are other people who are just standing still. And if we think of this as the moving walkway of racism, we might say that the people who are walking fast on that moving walkway are like maybe active white supremacists, you know, people who embrace racism and want to see it continue. But there are other people who are just standing still, not particularly interested in the destination, they are not interested in that racist destination, they're just standing there. But even in their passivity, they're being carried along because the system is so well oiled that moving sidewalk is moving them along, even if they don't do anything. Now there are going to be some people who are going to say, I don't want to go where this is headed. I don't like that vision of the future. I don't want to participate in a racist system. I would like to turn around. Imagine that you're turning around on that moving walkway. Now, if you're still standing still, you are just traveling backwards. You're still going where it's headed, but you just don't see where you're going. You don't know where you're going, but you're still headed there. The only way to interrupt this process is to be active, to take action, to walk quickly in the opposite direction. If you don't want to go where the moving walkway is carrying you, you better be walking faster in the opposite direction to interrupt this process. I think Dr. Kendi and I would agree that anti-racism is about taking action to interrupt racism. And if you understand what racism is, the actions you're taking have to be intentional. You don't accidentally interrupt it. You have to be focused and decide, I don't want to go there. I'm going to walk in a different direction. I'm going to do some things differently so I can get a different result. And that I think we're quite aligned in that regard. And as it relates to, let me just say a word about, as it relates to Robin D'Angelo's book in terms of white fragility, I think one of the things that I like about the way she describes white fragility, which is a pattern of behaviors I have witnessed, I have seen in action, having led lots of workshops, I've seen what she's describing. But she talks about white fragility as a kind of, a lack of stamina. If we think about running a marathon, if you asked me to run a marathon today, I could not because I don't have enough stamina. But if I wanted to run a marathon, what would I need to do? I would need to train. I would need to practice. There are a lot of white people in particular who don't have much practice talking about racism. And when you ask them to talk about it, they get nervous, anxious, sometimes defensive, easily upset, because they don't have enough stamina. So what do you need to do if you don't have enough stamina? You have to practice. And if you practice, you will build up your capacity to have these conversations. You will build up your strength to be able to engage not only in the conversation, but in the action that is needed to interrupt racism in our society. Thank you. And that I think that actually touched upon some of the other questions that were submitted that died together well. And another question you had is, if you could speak to racial trauma experienced by children and youth of color and how schools and parents can work together to address this. And this is especially in light of the recent rising hate crimes directed towards Asian Americans. Sure. Well, whether we're talking about the hate crimes toward Asian Americans or the witnessing of the murder of George Floyd earlier this year. You know, when these things happen, it's frightening to children who are of the targeted group, you know, to use the George Floyd example. You know, a child might wonder, could this happen to me? Could it happen to my dad? Could it happen to my mom? You know, could something like this happen to me? If you are Asian American and you are hearing or witnessing violence that is being directed, you might wonder, could this happen to me or someone I care about? And those fears are real. And so what can adults do to reassure children? We can certainly talk about the fact. And again, what you say is going to depend on the age of the child. But if you are, let's imagine you're talking to a young child, a four or five year old. You can talk about the fact that I'm here to protect you. You don't have to worry about those things. I'm here to protect you. But if you're talking to a 12 year old, maybe you're not there to protect the child. Not because you don't want to be, but 12 year olds are out in the world riding their bikes or, you know, hanging out with their friends or doing things that don't always involve parental supervision. And you don't always have control. So then some parents of color, particularly black parents will be talking to their children about what they need to do to avoid negative encounters with police, for example. Talking about what behaviors are likely to trigger a negative response, you know, make sure your hands are visible all the time, no sudden moves, be respectful. You know, all the things that hopefully will minimize the dangers of a George Floyd-like experience. In the case of Asian Americans who are worried about safety, of course there's going to be perhaps a sense that, you know, travel with others, don't go off by yourself. You know, I mean, all the things that parents might say, but fundamentally what we want to say to children is that we adults are working to change things. We adults are working to ensure that everyone is treated fairly, that everyone feels safe in their community. This is where it's important for allies to speak up. The term I used earlier was upstanders for people to stand up in opposition to the targeting of communities of color. Whether that's targeting of Asian American communities, over the last several years we've seen targeting of Muslim communities. We've seen hate crimes against Jewish communities. You know, there are lots of isms operating in our society that have been highly visible, whether we're talking about racism or anti-Semitism, and racism meaning lots of different groups under that umbrella of racism. Heterosexism, homophobia, the attack on transgender people, and we know that there have been a lot of, unfortunately, murders of transgender people across the nation. So this is the consequence of hate, and we have to name it and speak out against it. And when we do that, we're modeling for our children what it means to stand up for justice. Great. Thank you. I'm looking at the time. The final question we did have was, if you had any final thoughts or if you had one thing you really wanted folks to take away from this conversation in session with you, what would that be? Keep the conversation going. I think it's really important to say that these conversations aren't always easy. In fact, a lot of times they're not easy at all. And when they feel uncomfortable, there is sometimes a tendency to say, well, I'm just not going to participate. I felt uncomfortable. I'm not going to participate. But what I want to tell you is that there is what I call an arc of discomfort, which is to say, when you first get started, it may feel like this is really uncomfortable. But if you stay at it, it actually gets easier, and it actually starts to feel pretty good. It actually starts to feel like, wow, I'm making progress. It actually starts to feel like I can see change in my community. My friendship groups are increasingly diverse because people want to hang out with me, because they are interested in engaging in dialogue and working together to bring about change. And that starts to feel great. One of the things I learned when I was working with teachers in the greater Boston area doing anti-racist professional development is that at the start the teachers were sometimes uncomfortable, maybe nervous. But at the end, they were like, how can we do more of this? This is so important, and it has energized me. Why does it energize us? Because we use a lot of energy pretending that elephants not in the room. We have to really acknowledge and be ready to engage with one another in order for us to make progress. So don't give up. Persist. Thank you. Well, we'll definitely keep the conversation going. That's a fact. And I want to thank you again so much for joining us today. And I'm just going to ask Andrea to join us again to close us out. Thank you so, so much, Dr. Tatum, Dr. McNeil. Thank you, Jillian, for conducting the Q&A today. We absolutely pledge to keep the conversation going. I think I speak on behalf of the audience when I say we just are so honored to have you with us today, Dr. Tatum. And it's just been a really powerful discussion. I think a lot of people will go away inspired, and I really want to thank you. And speaking of keeping the conversation going, I do want to take a quick moment to plug our next event, which is next Sunday, March 28th at 3pm. It's with performance poet Tim Hall, and it's Trust the Process, and it's being presented by the Friends of the Robbins Library. Tim Hall is an award-winning musician and performance poet from Detroit, and he now lives in Boston, teaches at Berkeley, and he's going to be drawing inspiration from his lived experiences, and the nuances of blackness, masculinity, and the beauties of life. So please join us for that. Again, thanks to our audience. I also want to thank our audience for joining us on what is one of the most beautiful days we've had so far. Happy spring to everyone. We at the library really look forward to continuing to support your conversations in your personal and professional lives on the topic of race and other challenging issues that you face in your lives and providing you with excellent reading material and engaging cultural and educational events. And we also look forward to opening the library for appointment browsing in early April, so stay tuned for that official announcement. Again, happy spring. Thank you, Dr. Tatum. Thank you, Dr. McNeil. Thank you, Jillian. And please, everyone, enjoy the rest of your day and keep the conversation going. Thanks.