How To Raise an Antiracist

How do we talk to our children about racism? How do we teach children to be antiracist? How are kids at different ages experiencing race? How are racist structures impacting children? How can we inspire our children to avoid our mistakes, to be better, to make the world better?

These are the questions Ibram X. Kendi found himself avoiding as he anticipated the birth of his first child. Like most parents or parents-to-be, he felt the reflex to not talk to his child about racism, which he feared would stain her innocence and steal away her joy. But research into the scientific literature, his experiences as a father and reflections on his own difficult experiences as a student ultimately changed his mind.

In the deeply accessible mode of his international bestseller How To Be an Antiracist, Kendi combines a century of scientific research with a vulnerable and compelling personal narrative to argue that it is only by teaching our children about the reality of racism and the myth of race from the earliest age that we can actually protect them and preserve their innocence and joy. Along the way, he shows that an antiracist society is one that safeguards all children. And building that society means all of us participating in the effort to raise young people as antiracists.