The Lunchroom is a place where children of all ages join together and pair off into groups in order to eat lunch together; such a simple concept, but yet it introduces an array of questions, a large one being "Why are all the black kids sitting together in the Cafeteria?" an analysis written by clinical psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum addressing this question so many ask. In the article, Tatum tackles this controversial topic and aims to find a "solution" for the said self-segregation and proposes an alternative action for the school systems. Tatum explains a possible reason for the self-segregation as the way the children were raised, stating that many children today are raised by "race-conscious parents that are actively seeking to encourage positive racial identity into their children's lives and mindsets" (Tatum). This style of parenting is believed by Tatum to make the children want to be around other children with a similar culture to their own due to the fact that they have more topics in common and can converse with one another far easier than other children outside of their culture. The views of Tatum are not the only ones out there about race, both authors Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Augustn Fuentes have shared their own unique views on race, and each one complements and contradicts Tatum's point of view.
Augustin Fuentes shares his stance on race in his article entitled "The Myth of Race," where he talks about and argues how societies ideology of race is a barbaric and outdated way of thinking. Fuentes mentions how "Blacks, Whites, and Orientals" are not actual biological groups but they are groups created "from social statistics on crime, income, and mortality to make spurious analogies and then leaps to connect these to the different evolutionary history of human races" (Fuentes). Further on in the article, Fuentes attacks the claim of race groups based on blood once again, saying that "in the context of evolutionary processes" blood groups "demonstrates unequivocally that there is no way to divide humanity into biological units that correspond to the categories black, white, or Asian, or any other categories" (Fuentes). These claims that racial groups based on blood are just myths compliments Tatum's stand on the topic, where she speaks on how the students should focus more on their achievement and their personality over the color of their skin (Tatum). These two views go hand in hand because they are both speaking about avoiding what their blood says and focusing more on who they are as a person instead of what society tells them they are. But Fuentes and Tatum also butt heads in their papers because Tatum believes that people should also embrace where they have come from and slowly, throughout the next generations, reach a state where race is not a factor in society anymore, while Fuentes believes that race should not be a based off of blood and that people should change their views on race immediately instead...
