The Black Table is Still There Summary B.B.S/B.A First Year(Patterns for College Writing)

The Black Table is Still There

-Lawrence Otis Graham

Brief Summary:

Lawrence Otis Graham's story "The Black Table is Still There” is about his experience of a junior high school student when he did not choose to sit at the black table. Like the black table, there were other isolated tables: a table of Italian, two tables of athletes, a Jewish girl’s table, a Jewish’s boy table, a table of kids who liked heavy metal music and smoking and a table of middle class Irish kids.

When he was at his school, he used to run quickly to get a seat at the lunch table along with other white boys. He would not like to sit on the black table. He used to think that he had made the valiant decision to support his community’s theory of integration. At that time, he would avoid the black table just to be anti-white or a racist. He used to believe that the black children had kept themselves separate, so the white people became racists. He remembers his white friend told him not to come to his party because other whites would feel uncomfortable seeing only a black person there. When some white parents pulled their children in rage seeing him swimming in a private pool, he believed that black children were responsible for segregation. Even after seeing such anti-black behaviours, he blamed black children for segregation.

After fourteen years, when he visits his school in Westchester Country, he finds the black table still there along with other segregated tables. Now, the black table does not mean the same. After so many years, he has understood that by rejecting his company of black friends in the school table he was making self-segregation. He feared that he would lose his white friends. In fact, he had become the victim of segregation due to his own behaviour. His black friends would call him ‘Oreo’ and ‘White boy’ from the black table. He also dodged questions from white classmates like “Why do all those black kids sit together?” or “Why don’t you ever sit with other blacks?” But now, he understands that the black lunch table like other segregated tables is a comment on racism or superficial integration, and he feels that the existence of the 27th table as the “black table” in the school is a serious problem and cannot be overcome easily.