Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Gangsteria Analysis

Being who you are, and how others view you, plays a huge role in how your life may turn out. One’s race, identity, culture, and more determines whether or not he or she would be on superior to society, and if he or she should receive that best in life. If one is Black, Latino, Asian, or Hispanic, he or she has to be twice as good in order to be accepted by those on top of the food chain. This is also true with one’s class. If one is poor working class or middle working class, he or she has to strive and fight his or her way to the top in any possible way he or she knows how. Beverly D. Tatum, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race, and Patrick J. Finn, author of Literacy with …show more content…
However, these relationships can be difficult to build if an individual does not behave the same one as his or her peers. Finn and Tatum both agree on the idea of young people giving up characteristics or denying aspects of who they are, so they can be accepted by their peers, even by the school system. Finn speaks about “black behavior,” a style of sulking, where students would act out in a face-to-face altercation with their teacher. He also adds doin’ steps as black behavior, where students would chant, outside of the classroom, chants that were sexual and unacceptable imitation of people of things. Students who have “black behaviors,” possibly not be accepted into the Academic Plus program, a program that assisted on improving student’s academic performance. He goes on to state in the “Oppositional Identity” chapter that, “generations of blacks who have ‘acted white’ have not been fully accepted into mainstream society, and have found themselves alienated from their own communities as well” (Finn 45). One will avoid racial behaviors, off the opposite race, to be accepted by their peers. Or he/she will accept the racial behavior to be accepted by society, therefore he or she will not feel betrayed or abandoned. Tatum also speaks about the idea of individuals not accepting outside characteristics of who they truly are, so they can be …show more content…
Schools have a tracking system where they are able to categorize where each child stand within his or her education. This can be a low, middle, or high rating. But these ratings can have their negative connotations. If an individual falls under the poor or middle working class, his or her level of education is less vigorous, than those of a high working class. Finn states middle and working class students get left out of expressing creativity and attend a drill-based school. In the section “Harsh Schools, Big Boys, and the Progressive Solution,” Finn states “I would describe her [Anyon] middle-class and working-class school as traditional school with a ‘softened pedagogy,’ ones where lessons are a little less rigid, but not much, and the brutal assaults [physical abuse by schoolmasters] have all but disappeared” (Finn 37). Middle-class and poor working-class students still will be attending schools where school work has no relation to their lives, and the work comes straight from the textbook and teachers. This opposed to the rich working class, who receive better resources for classroom learning and have more of a creative learning experience. Back in “A Distinctly Un-American Idea,” Finn talks about the working class student received social studies textbooks that were “intended for ‘low ability students’” and lacked creativity in their curriculum (Finn 10), as opposed to