Part II, Understanding Blackness in a White Context, Chapter 4, Identity Development in Adolescence Summary and Analysis

Chapter 4 begins with a discussion of why black children seem to regularly sit together at lunch. They don't start school self-segregating. The main source of self-segregation seems to arise during puberty as children are developing their own identities. They discover lots of new divisions among types of persons and explore them and they can react in different ways (Tatum explores the strategies of diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and achievement). Black children inevitably explore their racial identity more, because they have no control over whether they are black and will be treated as such.

Tatum finds some analysis by psychologist William Cross helpful. He describes the process of "nigrescence" or the process of racial identity formation. It contains five...