In his new book, professor Ibram X. Kendi gives advice on how to raise anti-racist kids, and on how talking about race helps us all.
I spoke with him two days after the Buffalo shooting, and he told me that he wished he “did not feel so compelled” to write this book — “that it was unnecessary.”
One of the most basic — yet important— pieces of wisdom in the book is simply to create space not just to talk about race, but to process its experience as it happens. That’s where teachers and caretakers come in. When we are walking down the street and cross to avoid a Black person that may be perceived as dangerous. When you have no Asian or Latinx friends.
according to a 2019 study by Rutgers University researchers. Five times a day, a child of color receives messages of fear, belittlement or hate. And what about that so-called patriotic argument that all this talk of race makes white kids feel guilty?