Can We Talk about Race?

Major reflections on race and schools-by the best-selling author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Beverly Daniel Tatum emerged as a major commentator on race in America in 1997 with "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?," a book that changed the way many people think about racial identity and about the conversation about race in schools. Can We Talk about Race?, Tatum's first book in a decade, argues that that conversation is even more urgent today. Tatum, now president of Spelman College, begins with a warning call. A self-described "integration baby"-she was born in 1954-Tatum takes stock of the evidence of the increasing and underreported resegregation of American schools, even over the past decade.

Beverly Daniel Tatum is author of "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" and Assimilation Blues. She is currently president of Spelman College in Atlanta, where she lives with her husband.