In the documentary Skin Deep, an ethnically and culturally diverse group of college students come together to talk about race in America, and the problem of racism. Mark, a bright italian american student attending the University of Massachusetts Amherst, talks about his experiences growing up in an almost completely white neighborhood and thus his struggle with understanding and dealing with the issue of race and all that it ensues upon arriving at college.
In the book “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together In the Cafeteria?” author Beverly Tatum discusses situations like Mark’s and theorizes the different stages of racial development she believes most white people go through. Mark’s situation is a tricky one to place but I believe Tatum would place him as in the “Immersion/emersion” phase, which she describes as past the guilt phase and more into the phase of recognizing “the need to find a more positive self recognition” (Tatum, p. 107). While Mark does discuss the guilt he initially felt when he realized his white privilege, at the point the documentary was filmed he has decided not to see his everyday experiences in a light of “assumed superiority or inferiority” (Tatum) where he constantly feels white guilt. Instead it seems Mark has acknowledged his privilege and has moved on and is now in a stage of coming to terms with his own ethnic identity and not feeling guilt. When Mark joined a gospel choir that was predominately black, he talks about how he initially felt uncomfortable and starting feeling “white guilt” as Tatum would put it. However he shows that he has moved on into the immersion stage of racial development when he discusses how he got over these feelings and started to just see his experiences with race/ in the choir through a new light. “After a while I realized… Its just getting to sing, doing something i like to do with other people that are different then me but just like to do the same thing”(Skin Deep, Mark, 13:30).
Works Cited
Reid, Frances, Sharon Wood, Sarah Cahill, Michael Chin, Stephen McCarthy, Deborah Hoffmann, and Mary Watkins. Skin Deep. Berkeley, CA: Iris Films, 1995.
Tatum, Beverly D. “why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”: And Other Conversations About Race. New York: BasicBooks, 1999. Print.