Among all of the White students, Dane is one intriguing factor. He makes a quite significant jump in his developmental stages. Before coming to the event, he is in the disintegration stage. The evidence is that he admits he and his friends used the word “nigger” at a little name calling event, but “nobody openly admits it. No body” (Reid et al, 22:21). Thus, he is well aware of racism and he knows that he benefits from it because he knows he will never be called “nigger”. This is paired with the disintegration stage in Tatum’s book, which is “marked by a growing awareness of racism and white privilege as a result of personal encounters in which the social significance of race is made visible”(Tatum, 96).
On the first day of the camp, after listening to many opinions from other students from different racial backgrounds, Dane states that “I’m responsible for my action. Ok?” (Reid et al, 24.53), but he claims that “there is no way I can step back and correct that” (Reid et al, 25.14). His voice sounds discomfort and angry. His statement and his voice suggest that he wants the students of color to view him as an individual and not to judge him just because he is White. Tatum would interpret this as reintegration stage, as one source of the discomfort that Whites have in this stage is “from the frustration of being seen as a group member, rather than as an individual”, (Tatum, 102).
In the end of the camp, Dane appears to be at pseudo-independent stage. He talks to one black girl and really listens to her story about her dad watching his friend dying on Christmas. He also expresses his guilty feeling toward one of his friend, Carlos, “I would never take my friend Carlos to my grandparents’ house, and you know it’s difficult, because I go over to his grandparents’ house all the time” (Reid et al, 45:17). This demonstrates that he recognizes the problem of racism and he attempts to associate with the people of color. However, he does not seem like he know what what to do to improve racial problems. Therefore, it is undoubted that he is at pseudo-independent stage.
Work Cited:
1) Reid, Frances, Sharon Wood, Sarah Cahill, Michael Chin, Stephen McCarthy, Deborah Hoffmann, and Mary Watkins. Skin Deep. Berkeley, CA: Iris Films, 1995.
2) Beverly Daniel Tatum. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?Basic Books, 2003.