Part II, Understanding Blackness in a White Context, Chapter 3, The Early Years Summary and Analysis

Tatum often opens race seminars with adults by asking them about their first race-related memory. Rather than asking people to share the memories (which often makes them uncomfortable), she asks them to describe their emotional reactions. The answers range from curiosity to fear. These memories lead us to ask how kids make sense of these experiences when they occur. Black children typically have many such race-related memories, many associated with their skin tone, perhaps even its variation among blacks. We know that children can notice race as young as three years old. Tatum's own son David commented when he was three that a white mother and her black child "didn't match" and Tatum told him that they didn't have...