Teaching Anti-Racism with Ibram X. Kendi

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Back with us now, Ibram X. Kendi, professor in the humanities and the founding director of the Boston University Center for Anti-racist Research. He's maybe best known for his book, How to Be an Antiracist, and he's the author of a new book now called How to Raise an Antiracist. Professor Kendi, it's always great to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Ibram X. Kendi: Thank you for having me on.

Brian Lehrer: We've had you on the show a few times before to speak about other books. It's probably worth asking you though to remind us what you mean when you say antiracist. For some reason, that's become a hot-button term in politics, with some people shooting arrows at it. Is it different from simply being non-racist?

Ibram X. Kendi: Well, to be antiracist is to recognize the racial groups as equals despite differences in colors and cultures. Then to be antiracist, since you recognize the racial groups as equals, it's to recognize that the source of racial disparities in our society is not what's superior or inferior about a particular racial group. It's the result of racist policies. Then to be antiracist is to figure out a way in your own life to challenge those policies, to challenge even the ideas that suggest the cause of these disparities in our society, the result of bad people as opposed to bad policy.

Unfortunately, the reason why this has become a hot-button topic, particularly within far-right circles, is because for really a decade one of the primary white supremacist talking points has been this idea that antiracist is code for anti-white. I'm quoting a white supremacist by the name of Bob Whitaker, and that idea has basically gone mainstream.

Brian Lehrer: To be antiracist, it almost sounds like is to be politically active, to change policy, not just to treat people equally as individuals?

Ibram X. Kendi: Well, yes, because if we think about it, if racial inequality is the norm. In other words, we look at our society, and let's say we see Black people who are disproportionately impoverished, disproportionately incarcerated, disproportionately dying of COVID when you control for age. If we do nothing, that's only going to persist. We have to actively transform the conditions and the policies that led to those disparities.

Brian Lehrer: How to Raise an Antiracist, the title of the new book. Your wife is a physician, I know, and you opened the book with her experiences with the medical system while she was pregnant, including that she was brushed off after reporting a symptom that worried her to two separate nurses. A kind of experience that so many Black people can relate to. We've had calls on this show about things like that. Why did you choose to begin the book there?

Ibram X. Kendi: Well, I think her story was the story of her as a Black pregnant woman being neglected when she expressed that something was off. Unfortunately, that's one of the reasons why Black women are three times more likely to die of pregnancy related causes than white women. That routine, regular neglect, this crisis that people are ignoring, both the crisis itself and then the ignoring and neglecting of Black pregnant women, to me it serves as a metaphor for the book. That is that the people who are the most vulnerable to racist messages like the idea that there's something inferior or superior or wrong or right about a particular racial group or the idea that people have more because they are more.

The group that is most vulnerable to these racist messages are young people, but you know who were the least likely to engage about it? It's young people. We're neglecting them and leaving them vulnerable to this harm.

Brian Lehrer: You write, surprisingly to me, "The thought of nurturing my child to be antiracist did not sit well with me. It was uncomfortable even to think about." Why?

Ibram X. Kendi: As a parent I know that one of the things we want to do is protect our children. We don't want to engage them on what will be an uncomfortable and difficult conversation. If anything, we'd hope to free them of discomfort, to ensure that they're joyous and joyful, but the more I studied this and the more I experienced fatherhood I realized that not talking to her about the messages that she could end up hearing that could end up harming her, is equivalent to like not taking her to the doctor to get a procedure because that procedure will be uncomfortable.

There's a difference between destructive discomfort and what we're talking about, which is constructive discomfort that will protect her and allow her to be healthy and whole. Engaging with our children about racism will allow that.

Brian Lehrer: You write, "Raising our children to be antiracist is like dressing their minds in armor before we send them out into the world." What messages in practice make up that armor? I guess that relates to your last answer. If people think, "Well, teaching somebody to be antiracist, that's not a burden." It's a burden if you think your child is likely to encounter racism frequently along the way of their lives.

Ibram X. Kendi: I think it's so important for us to first realize that we as parents and teachers and educators and grandparents and everyone who's caring for children, when our children are young we teach them to look both ways before they cross the street. We allow them to understand that if they don't, those cars could hit them and harm them. I think it's important for us to know that if you are raising a white child, that white child is going to be told directly and indirectly that there's something right about them because of the color of their skin.

To teach that child, "You're special when you're nice. You're special when you share. You're special when you are empathetic, but you're not special because of the color of your skin," even though white people predominate in your curriculum, in your media. Even though people are saying that white people have more because they are more. There's nothing superior about white people to teach that child that is protective. Just as to teach a Black child or a native child or a Latinx child or an Asian child, "There's nothing wrong with you because of the color of your skin or because of your country of origin, or because the way your eyes are shaped." They're going to hear different messages and we need to protect them by telling them that those dangerous messages are wrong.

Brian Lehrer: You write, with reference to what you just said, two pieces of that armor. "There's nothing right about me because of the color of my skin. There's nothing wrong with me because of the color of my skin." I think I hear you saying that for white kids they don't have to have parents who are saying explicitly, "You are better because you're white." There aren't that many parents anymore, I think, who say that. It's all these messages that come to the kid through all kinds of channels, who's portrayed in the reading texts and through media and all kinds of things, that just give them this sense of comfort that they're normal, that they belong in their society that non-white children don't have. Is that where you're going?

Ibram X. Kendi: Exactly, because let's say if you are a parent of a white child and you don't necessarily talk about race, or you don't explicitly say white people are superior, but you've chosen to live in a predominantly almost all white neighborhood. You send them to a school in which almost all the kids are white, almost all the characters in the book that you read to them are white, almost all the friends that you bring to your home are white. Almost when you're walking down the street and you encounter a Black person who's coming across your child sees that you're scared.

All these things are what's called nonverbal messages. They send messages to the child about who you value. That's why in the book I talk a lot about the environment we're raising our children in because it says to our children who we value. If we raise them in a diverse environment, we're saying to the children "We value all these different people being in your life."

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls for Professor Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Boston University Center for anti-racist research, author of books, including How to Be an Antiracist and now How to Raise an Antiracist. Let's put the question out to you all in that context, how do you raise your children to be anti-racists? Who has a story? Who has a piece of armor? Who has a technique? Interested to hear from parents of different racial backgrounds, 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. If you just have a question for Dr. Kendi, you can call too, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Who wants to talk about as a parent trying to raise an anti-racist child to be an anti-racist adult?

In fact, Dr. Kendi, do you think raising a white anti-racist involves different messages or skills than raising a Black or other person of color anti-racist? White kids maybe, as we discussed, don't need that armor in this country, for example. Do you get into in the book different kinds of skills, different kinds of messages, different kinds of commitments?

Ibram X. Kendi: I think certainly there are differences in the sense that if you're a parent of a white child, you just have to assume that the messages that they're going to see and hear in their society is that they are special because they're white. You then have to counteract those messages by talking about the equality of skin colors, the equality of the racial groups, that people don't have more because they are more, by exposing them to the cultures of other people, by expressing respect for those other cultures and colors. Then there are similarities.

No matter the racial identity of your child, to raise a child to be empathetic for people who don't look like them, who don't live near them, who don't love like them, and who don't worship like them, is going to raise someone who's going to be less likely to grow into an adult that hates someone because of the color of their skin. If you raise a critical thinker, someone who is about investigating and discovering and standing on facts, and who has the capacity to self-reflect and self-critique and change their mind. That critical thought, according to scholars, is the opposite of prejudicial thinking, which is based on belief, which is based on confirming what we already believe, which is based on making mass generalizations based on individual examples, as opposed to facts.

Brian Lehrer: This relates, I think, to some of what's going on politically around education right now, some of the backlash against what we might call antiracist teaching, around the claim that the way it's done can make white kids feel guilty just for being white. The two pieces of armor from your book that we mentioned before, there's nothing right about me because of the color of my skin, there's nothing wrong with me because of the color of my skin. Can you address this thing, which was one of the reasons why the current governor of Virginia, Republican Glenn Younkin, got elected last year and it's popping up in many other states in discussions about teaching history and sociology, and all kinds of things.

Can you do this without making white kids feel guilty for existing, and if so, how?

Ibram X. Kendi: With How to Raise an Antiracist, I thought it was critically important to ensure that this book was based on a backbone of research. Scholars have been studying the racial attitudes of children of all different backgrounds, multiple ages. The book is actually organized based on developmental level so it starts in pregnancy then goes to infant, then toddler then school child, and all the way up to a teenager. One study actually found that when students, and I think this study looked at Black and white students, are taught about white racism, that it doesn't change the attitudes of either group of students towards white people, but it does change their attitudes towards race.

Scholars have already proven that teaching about white racism doesn't affect the racial attitudes of white children towards white people. One of the reasons why it doesn't is because to teach, for instance, about slavery, or about Jim Crow even about racism today is to teach about the resistance to it, the antiracist resistance. To teach about the antiracist resistance is to teach about white people who fought against slavery and Jim Crow and racism today. White children who are learning about that can see themselves in those white people who fought against racism. They don't have to see themselves in the white people who sought to reinforce it.

Brian Lehrer: Biba in Bloomfield, you're on WNYC with Ibram X. Kendi. Hi, Biba.

Biba: Hi, good. Good morning. I guess you guys got the background, I really appreciate your taking a call. Dr. Kendi, I wanted to ask something around the question of education, because in my family's case, I'm a white European American and my husband is an immigrant from Tunisia. Our children grew up with Muslim names in the post-September 11th world. We made a decision around the time of middle school, they were in public schools in New York City and we made a decision to move to the suburbs for the sake of diversity, which wasn't really available in New York City in the public school system as much anymore.

What I found was that we had to make a conscious choice in favor of the human education, I would say, as opposed to what would be considered a very high academic education. I have no regrets but I wanted to know what your thoughts were on that. Oftentimes, you might have a private school that has some diversity, but not the diversity of different educational backgrounds. I come from a family of professors and my husband comes from a family of small business owners in Tunisia.

Brian Lehrer: Biba, did you say that you moved out of New York City to the suburbs because you were going to find more diversity there?

Biba: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: In what way? Because that's counter to what people might assume.

Biba: I think by the time my son, he's going to be 27 this year, by the time he was in third grade in a public school on the Upper West Side parents were worried about middle school, and were sending their kids to tutors so that they would test into the better middle schools.

Brian Lehrer: Right, so it's the school segregation within the system, even though there's more diversity in the overall city population. Dr. Kendi, do you want to respond to her question?

Ibram X. Kendi: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: It's really what kinds of criteria parents need to look for in choosing schools for their kids?

Ibram X. Kendi: I'm so glad this question was asked because this is a challenge that many parents, particularly parents of color, but even parents of white children who recognize and have seen the recent data that actually finds that white children in diverse schools outperform white children in predominantly white schools. This is a challenge, and I would only say that education teaches not only skills, but it teaches culture. It teaches how to relate to people, it teaches sociality and it teaches a young person about themselves, about who they are in the world.

I can only say from personal experience that I went to a college, a historically Black institution that valued me, that allowed me to thrive as a Black person. It wasn't the most highly ranked institution but if I didn't go there, I don't know where I would be. I do think parents should take the racial makeup of the school, the culture that it's expressing, how their child will feel there socially and culturally, into account as much as the academic prowess or the projected prowess of the school, which is oftentimes based on standardized test scores, which we can't necessarily always think are reliable.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call, Maria and Jersey City you are on WNYC. Hi, Maria.

Maria: Yes. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my phone call. I have a question for the doctor. I have 11 grandkids. I raised three daughters and I never spoke to them about differences outside of my house. I just spoke about religion and about education and responsibility. They grew up without any racism problems against others. Now I have 11 grandkids and since two years to 18 years old. For me, the key is to teach them at home, religion and education. Now, according to what I heard about in regards of antiracism, this is a good idea to speak to our children in regards of having respect and give to the people all the respect that the people can give them because it's very important to have respect for other people.

Now I believe the key for me, for myself, and I have doubts, that's why I'm asking the doctor. It is correct if I speak to my grandkids, you have to respect others. According to our religion, nobody is different because everybody's got the assurance of that. The humanity that we need, that everybody is the same.

Brian Lehrer: Maria, I'm going to leave it there just for time because we're running out of time. I want to get at least one more caller in, but thank you very much. That's a challenge actually, as beautiful in expression as Maria just gave us. I think for antiracist philosophy that it's not enough to just accept everybody's common humanity.

Ibram X. Kendi: I think that it is important for us to realize, according to studies, by three years old our kids have what one scholar called an adult-like concept of race. Not only race, they have a concept of racial difference, racial difference meaning they're attaching skin color to specific qualities like smartness, like intelligence, like cleanliness. If we don't talk to them that those other people who are Black or Asian or Latinx, that they are equal. If we don't use the terminology of race and skin color, which is what they're understanding, if we don't explicitly say that those brown people are equal to us and that they are just as smart as us, they're just as clean as us, they are just as honest as us, then we're actually not talking. We're not disrupting those early ideas that they're learning from the world.

At the same time, we talk about those different colors and cultures are equals, as the caller stated, we have to talk about them as being the same. There's an old Sesame Street book called We're Different and We're the Same. We have to talk about both.

Brian Lehrer: One more. Yael in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Ibram X. Kendi with his new book How to Raise an Antiracist. Hi, Yael.

Yael: Hi. I'm so happy to be on and especially in such an important topic. I have a daughter Maya, and when she was just getting into COVID and sick at first grade we were talking about race and that we're not better or nobody's better. How you said it? It was so perfect now I can't remember because I'm so excited that I'm talking with you. Not better or worse because of the color of our skin. Maya was starting to feel guilty that she's white. We were really lucky that we got a recommendation from school for a book called Not my Idea. Even though it was a little hard for her to read because she was still young, we read it and it really helped her because she could understand that she is white and she will be seen white but she can choose how to behave.

It's not her idea, racism, she can choose not to adhere to it and she can be pathetic to other people from different cultures, from different backgrounds, from different color of skin. Saying it as it is, I think, is the most easy way. There's no easy way talking about it. I so connected with you doctor, when you said it didn't sit with you well to actually talk about this because we really do want to protect our kids from dealing with this, but we have to deal with it as early as we can so that it's less of a problem later in so many ways. Thank you so much for writing another book that can be helpful for parents like me that really want to make a change in the world through the new generation.

Brian Lehrer: Yael, thank you so much. Dr. Kendi, your last thought to Yael and to everybody?

Ibram X. Kendi: Well thank you Yael for that. Indeed, thank you for your courage to talk to your child and not only to talk to your child, to get resources to support you. Indeed, in many ways I wrote How to Raise an Antiracist because I felt I needed a resource as a parent to support me in my journey to engage with my daughter so child will feel guilty or bad about the color of their skin, that there's nothing wrong with them because of the color of their skin. That even if people are saying that there's something wrong with Black people, that doesn't mean you have to believe it.

Even though white people have engaged in racism, you can be different and you can be one of those who are challenging racism. I'm just excited and just happy that she shared that because I think it's a model for what we as parents and teachers can do and should do.

Brian Lehrer: Ibram X. Kendi, professor in the humanities and founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, his new book, How to Raise an Antiracist. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. We always appreciate when you come on.

Ibram X. Kendi: You're welcome. Thank you as always.

 

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