The Black Table is Still There _Lawrence Otis Graham

The Black Table is Still There

 

Lawrence Otis Graham asks rhetorical questions in an essay “The Black Table is Still There” like Is that what the all-black table means? Is it a rejection of white people? Why did black kids segregate themselves?" 

These questions project the segregated life of black people in America. Despite mandated integration people if given a choice, they choose the self-segregation that has become the norm in public schools. When Graham visited his middle school, there was not a black table but also an Italian, Jewish girls table and pothead, middle-class Irish kids table.

The black table is a segregated lunch table of junior high school of Westchester Country. It reminds him of his early adolescence, it was a source of fear and dread. According to Lawrance, it is a symbol of segregation 

Graham has seen black integration in the colleges, institutions, high school tennis team, summer music camps, white suburban neighborhood, eating club at Princeton, and social club at Harvard Law School. Even though the act of segregation was declared unconstitutional by the US government, Lawrence didn’t find it being practiced in his old junior high school that was a surprise to him.

The factor that determined where students sat was who were they walking along with. The other factor is the theory they are endorsing like theories of integration and solidarity.

Graham didn’t consider sitting at the black table because he was afraid of losing his white friends and being misunderstood as anti-white making a racist statement. 

He used to think that the black kids were to blame for the reason other kids didn’t mix more. And their self-segregation was the cause of white bigotry. The cause of the table’s existence is the segregated nature of individuals.

The thesis statement of Graham is people and the group will segregate themselves on the basis of their nature and interests despite the provision of integration. For instance, in Graham’s middle school not only was there a “black table” but there was also an Italian table, a Jewish girls table, a Jewish boys' table, heavy metal and pothead table, and a middle-class Irish kids table. While integration demands the minority and white students attend the same schools and go to the same classes, it does little to penetrate the segregationist tendencies that teenagers and young adults have.

Graham’s experiences and observations are enough to substantiate his thesis, but only in the realm of his own junior high school. Without further research and evidence, his thesis is only applicable to his own life. I think the essay and its thesis serve more as an internal realization than as a definitive explanation for nationwide self-segregation.

The background information that Graham provides gives a helpful perspective on a few different levels. Firstly, the information about the types of activities that Graham was involved with during his youth shows that he had a relatively privileged upbringing for an African American boy from his generation. He mentions that he was often "the first and only black person" in many of the activities he was involved with. (pg 349) This helps explain why he might have felt reluctant to join the "black table" and resentful of those who did. Graham had been integrating himself into non-black spaces for most of his life, so it felt more natural for him to continue doing so in the cafeteria; he had difficulty understanding why the other kids couldn't do the same.

The information in paragraph 12 shows that despite his frequent involvement in "integrated" spaces, he still faced prejudice, even when he didn't notice it. This information shows what a difference perspective makes when analyzing the types of self-segregation Graham discusses.

It seems that Graham is aiming to change his audience's views about segregated lunch tables. He notes that all-black tables receive more scrutiny than other similarly segregated tables and believes that this is unfair. By pointing out how widespread self-segregation is among different groups, as well as how constant the phenomenon has remained over time, he is helping the reader understand that it is not exclusive to black students.

These facts are important to understanding the context of the story. Knowing that his circle of friends was primarily white makes Graham's choice not to sit at the "black table" make sense; he just wanted to sit with his friends.

Graham's closeness with a white friend circle caused conflict for him, both internally and externally, as alluded to in the article. On the surface, it would seem like wanting to sit with your closest friends would be an obvious, unquestioned choice, but this decision was questioned both by his white and black classmates. His black classmates saw Graham's decision as a form of betrayal, and his white students wondered why he wasn't sitting with the other black students. Graham himself felt like if he did choose to sit at the black table, he would upset his white friends.

Paragraphs 3 and 7 are comprised entirely of rhetorical questions.

Paragraph 10 contains two: "Is that what the all-black table means? Is it a rejection of white people?"

Paragraph 13 contains one: "What was I thinking?"

Paragraph 14 contains one: "Weren't these tables just as segregationist as the black table?"

Since Graham's essay is quite self-reflective, the rhetorical questions fit well into the essay. He includes them to show the types of questions he was struggling with himself each day in middle school; he still struggles with many of them. These rhetorical questions help the reader to understand what Graham was going through and also prompt the reader to think about these questions themself.

Graham says in paragraph 1 that "the black table" was a "source of fear and dread" for him all throughout junior high school. The quotes he includes in paragraph 16 help to explain where this fear and dread came from. No matter where Graham sat, he felt that he couldn't win; he was criticized either way. If he sat at the black table, he felt like he would be rejecting his white friends, who didn't understand "why all those black kids sit together". On the other hand, not sitting at the black table resulted in scrutiny from his black classmates and more questions from white students.

These quotations reveal that Graham's anxiety about these segregated tables was not simply internal conflict. His choices were being analyzed by his peers. Including more quotations would have helped to make this clearer, but the essay works just fine as it is.

This essay is primarily about finding causes.

Graham first discusses the causes that contributed to his choice not to sit at the black table. These causes included his desire to sit with his white friends, fear of losing his white friends, and his belief that the black students' self-segregation was contributing to bigotry.

Graham also discusses possible causes for the existence of the black table; he talks about how he once attributed it to the black students, but later attributes it to peoples' natural tendency to self-segregate.

Graham's essay is a very personal one in which he draws upon his own experiences to back up his thesis. His informal writing style is well-suited to the content of his essay.