Top Quotes: “How to Raise an Antiracist” — Ibram Kendi

Parenting

“In 2018, nearly 11 Black babies died per 1,000 live births, almost tripling the infant mortality rate for Latinx (4.86), White (4.63), and Asian (3.63) babies. Black infants account for 15 percent of the births in the United States, and 29 percent of the infant deaths.”

“One of the core findings of my historical research on racism is this idea: There is no such thing as a “not racist.” One is expressing either ideas of racial equality (as an antiracist) or ideas of racial hierarchy (as a racist). One is supporting either policies that lead to racial equity and justice (as an antiracist) or policies that lead to racial inequity and injustice (as a racist). There’s no in-between equality and hierarchy; equity and inequity; justice and injustice. The defining question for the individual in any given moment: Am I upholding the structure of racism through my action or inaction (as a racist) or challenging it (as an antiracist)?”

“We worry that racist ideas are too sophisticated for kids to understand. But the opposite is true: racist ideas have spread across humanity and history precisely because they are simple. Dark skin is bad and light skin is good. Strikingly simple. And dangerous.”

“Learning to be antiracist isn’t as complicated for children as it is for adults. Children don’t have the emotional and conceptual baggage that we do. It’s easier for children to learn the language of antiracism just as it’s easier for children to learn spoken language. Deconstructing an ingrained racist identity is much harder than constructing a fresh antiracist identity.”

“Racist and antiracist describe individuality — an individual idea or policy or institution or nation or person — while racism and antiracism describe connectivity or what’s systematic, structural, and institutional.”

“Caregivers deploy four predominant forms of racial socialization. Two of these forms are antiracist; two are racist. They are: promotion of mistrust, cultural socialization, preparation for bias, and color blindness. I suspect caregivers engage in different forms at different ages and times, slipping in and out of racist and antiracist modes.

The most well-known racist form of socialization is promotion of mistrust, which “may be communicated in parents’ cautions or warnings to children about other racial groups.”

“Caregivers can promote trust of humanity through perhaps the most popular form of antiracist socialization: cultural socialization, or “parental practices that teach children about their racial or ethnic heritage and history.””

“In order for cultural socialization to be antiracist, however, it has to unfold in three crucial steps. The first is to raise a child to comprehend and appreciate what is distinct about their own culture and history. Next, we have to raise a child to comprehend and appreciate what’s distinct about other cultures and histories. And finally, we must raise the child to comprehend and appreciate what’s the same about their own and the other cultural groups.”

“Cultural point of view is key, too. To raise an antiracist is to raise a child to gaze at their own culture from their own cultural point of view. A Native girl can learn the medicinal role of water in Native cultures in Carole Lindstrom’s picture book We Are Water Protectors. To raise an antiracist is to raise a child to gaze at other cultures from the point of view of other cultures. A Latinx evangelical can learn the dignity of wearing a hijab from the story of two Muslim sisters in The Proudest Blue, a picture book by Olympic medalist Ibtihaj Muhammad. A White child can be exposed to modern Native cooking in Fry Bread, a picture book by Kevin Noble Maillard. My daughter fell in love with the Hindu festival Holi through reading Festival of Colors, a picture book by Kabir Sehgal and Surishtha Sehgal. Caregivers must seek to expose their child to different cultures to open their horizons to different cultures.

Caregivers can open the child’s horizon to different cultures through books, and through bringing the child to cultural gatherings and spaces. Chinatowns, pow-wows, country music festivals, and Puerto Rican Day parades can be instructive. Cultural socialization – like learning a language – requires some level of immersion. But as children learn cultural conventions, they must have the freedom to defy those cultural conventions, too: Culture is a resource, not a trap. Consider the way gender conventions are defied in Jessica Love’s picture book Julián Is a Mermaid, about a boy who desires to dress like the fabulous ladies in a mermaid parade. (Mermaids have become symbolic to transgender people.)”

“The least commonly deployed form of antiracist socialization is the most protective: what scholars call preparation for bias, which I’ll slightly modify to preparation for racism.”

“If they’ve been left to believe that merit alone always explains the relative treatment — and the successes and failures — of all racialized individuals and groups, we are nurturing their individual vanity or insecurity. We are nurturing their racist ideas.

Preparing children in this way influences the kind of adults they become. In one study, about three out of four White respondents whose caregivers instructed them as children about racism grow up to recognize the unequal opportunities between people of color and White Americans. By contrast, among White respondents who reported their parents “never” or “rarely” talked to them about racism as children, fewer than half see unequal opportunity.”

“Color-blind caregivers think they can stop their kids — or themselves — from seeing race. But they are only stopping their kids from seeing racism.

Color-blind caregiving is in many ways the most dangerous form of racial socialization. How can a society ever abolish racism if caregivers deny its existence and indoctrinate their kids into denying its existence? If we pretend that race — and therefore racism — doesn’t exist, how will we be able to name and quantify its effects and find ways to dismantle it? We will be in the midst of a problem that no one will be able to identify and quantify, even as the problem festers and worsens.”

“In December 2021, Republican state representative Jim Olsen introduced a bill that would prohibit Oklahoma state agencies and public school districts from teaching “that one race is the unique oppressor” during American slavery or “another race is the unique victim in the institution of slavery.””

“Skin colors are like book covers; they don’t tell us what’s inside the body of the book. But some people think they do. Some people think darker people have less because they don’t work as hard. But that’s not true. What’s true is our leaders don’t work hard enough at instituting rules that are fair. Our rules are the problem, not darker people.”

“Every parent and teacher should think their child is gifted and beautiful. Beauty and giftedness are considered relative and relational. But they don’t have to be for our kids. We can convey to our child that she is beautiful in her own right — not in comparison with other children. We can convey to our child that he has gifts — because every human being has gifts for the world if only the world is fortunate enough to open them.”

“Unintentional injuries — not the flu or gun violence — are the number one cause of death in children, from drownings to window falls to poisonings to motor vehicle crashes. It gnaws at her that societal caregivers accept all these injuries, all this death, as normal, when waging a war against childhood injury, through changes in policy, education, our built environment, and the affordability and accessibility of safety products could dramatically reduce the number of children dying from unintentional injuries. Those kinds of changes have already done wonders in other countries, like Sweden.”

“Sadiga tutored all Imani’s potential caregivers — from her grandparents to her uncles to me — on CPR and reminded us to never leave buckets of water sitting around the house or to put anything in Imani’s crib with her as she slept. No pillow. No blanket or bedsheet covering her. No stuffed animals. Not even crib bumpers. Just Imani, swaddled on her back on top of a sheet firmly tucked under the mattress. Sadiga said having things in the crib increased the likelihood of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), or as it’s being called now, SUID (sudden unexpected infant death).”

“Researchers have found that White students in diverse schools score higher on standardized tests than their counterparts in predominantly White schools.”

“When Black and White parents of young children read a picture book with Black and White characters, the parents often channel their child’s attention to the characters of their own race.”

“Regular time spent taking care of grandkids — one study found once a week to be ideal — boosts the health, cognitive performance, and life spans of grandparents. But too much time, like a full-time parental role, can be mentally and physically harmful for grandparents.”

“Barbie introduced a gender-neutral doll in 2019, the same year it produced a lime of dolls with wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs. In 2019, 55 percent of all dolls sold were underrepresented in some way, either by race, ethnicity, religion, gender expression, or body variance, compared with 36 percent in 2016.”

“To raise an antracist child is to reflect on the positions our child assumes in games, particularly with children of other races (and classes and genders and sexual orientations). Is the White male child routinely assuming the position of leader during imaginative play with his Black female friend? Is the Native child routinely assuming the position of follower in the game with her Asian friend? We should encourage all children to play the follower as much as the leader. I want my daughter to learn how to lead and to follow people of all races and backgrounds. But a democratic leader and an authoritarian ruler are different. To raise an antiracist child is to discourage tyrannical games with rulers and servants, good cops and bad robbers, bad people and good people. Which is hard. But it’s vital that we teach our kids, even in play, that there aren’t bad or good people; just people who do bad or good things.”

“I can bring Imani to large and diverse crowds and adoringly point out to her all the skin colors and eye colors and hair textures and body frames that all have places here on earth. I can use dolls. Dolls are one of the ultimate nurturing instruments. We can use dolls to circumvent racist notions of the lighter, the better. We can use dolls to discuss the racist experiences faced by different groups. A diverse assortment of toys in general “open[s] dialogue around prejudice and enable(s] discussion and empathy,” explained psychologist Sian Jones. “If such toys are not there, the opportunity for this discussion is lost.” It wasn’t enough that we put Imani in diverse environments and modeled antiracist behavior. Just like we taught her to use her words when confronted with difficult situations, we as caregivers needed to learn to use our words, and make our antiracist beliefs explicit.”

“I walked around the daycare and found the large toy chests. I rummaged through the toys and did not come across a single Asian doll, Native doll, Latinx doll, Middle Eastern doll, or Black doll. Every single doll I saw looked White!

Rage overtook me. Not at the daycare owner. At myself. Imani had been going here for several weeks, and not once did I examine the toy chests. Not once.

We had Imani all wrong all week long. Imani did not choose to play with the White doll over dolls of color. Imani did not have another option.

We told the owner about the dolls before leaving. Changes came. But I had failed the doll test.”

“Preschoolers begin understanding someone’s else perspective and experience and take action accordingly. Which is to say preschoolers have the foundation to begin to understand the perspectives and experiences of Asian Americans facing heightened racist violence during the COVID-19 pandemic and take antiracist action.”

“We should avoid dismissing our children’s questions or feelings or issuing judgments. “Don’t ask that. That’s wrong. That’s bad to feel that way.” Because when we dismiss their feelings, judge their feelings, or are hostile to their feelings, we are hardly raising them to be empathetic. When our child seems afraid of an animal, let’s not say, “Don’t worry. She won’t bite you.” Let’s ask, “Are you afraid? Why are you afraid?” When the child says, ‘I don’t like Richard. I don’t want to play with him,” instead of declaring it’s wrong to not like Richard and ordering our child to play with Richard, we can ask, “Why do you feel that way?” In that way both the caregiver and the child will learn something: The caregiver will learn how the child feels; the child will learn to respond to others with similar curiosity, wonder, and empathy.

One of the most important jobs of caregivers is to teach and model empathetic action and invite children to participate. But that hasn’t been happening of late. Over the last forty years, studies show, young people have been leaving high schools and homes for college with markedly less empathy, with the most significant drop occurring after 2000.”

“As an alternative, caregivers can practice “inductive discipline.” When kids misbehave, we prompt the child to consider how their action impacted another and what they can do for redress. Not: “Don’t do that. That was bad. Now take a time-out.” Instead: “How does Jeff feel right now? What can we do to make him feel better?”

Inductive questions unlock the child’s mind to empathy, which can allow her to think twice before hitting someone else again — and make Jeff feel better, too. Restorative justice for children and adults is based in empathy, and it is radically different from our criminal punishment system, which is based in bullying. The empathy of inductive discipline isn’t just more humane, it is more effective at preventing harm and building community.

Yearlong suspension rates were cut in half when middle school teachers practiced inductive discipline as opposed to punitive discipline. Their inductive discipline involved speaking privately with the student and assessing whether the student’s needs were being met rather than threatening the student with punishment or involving school administrators.”

“But is our empathy absolute or is it conditional? For some people, empathy motivates charitable giving, but only if the recipients are not perceived as “responsible” for their condition. In these kinds of situations — when we put conditions on our empathy — the principle of care is trumped by the undeserving principle: People who are responsible for their plight are undeserving of care. Empathy, thereby, becomes transactional and conditional, like a tip we give someone for good service, or a favorable court ruling for seeming “respectable.” We are the jury and those seeking our empathy must prove they are worthy of our assistance. This idea can bleed into how we view antiracism.”

“Within days, she’d be running up the ramp when we arrived for school and racing me down it whenever I picked her up. She always, of course, won. She hated to lose, like her mom, and beat me repeatedly, like her mom.

Thinking back, I never took the time to tell Imani why the ramp was there. I never took the time to say: “Do you remember the other day when we saw that person in a wheelchair? She may not be able to walk up the steps like you. But she is just like you because she loves using the ramp, too. The ramp makes her experience better and yours, too! The ramp is called an accommodation. Say ac-com-mo-da-tion.

We could have talked about accommodations. But I did not. Going and coming, I needed to remember to slow down my life when I was with Imani to really see what she was liking and seeing. Because the things she was liking were the things she was probably open to learning about, like the ramp. The things she was seeing were the things she was probably trying to understand. “Why do people have different skin colors? Why are there steps AND a ramp? Why doesn’t this building have a ramp, too?””

“An incredible 91 percent of these law enforcement officers are armed as they patrol hallways with children. In more racially diverse schools, school resource officers are more likely to see students as a threat. And Black students tend to feel less safe around school resource officers. “People who often know little to nothing about child or adolescent development, and who often lack the appropriate awareness and training for the school environments they patrol, are responding to behaviors that were previously managed by skilled teachers, counselors, principals, and other professionals.””

“Some skilled teachers aren’t much better. Among Black and White preschool teachers, one study found that teachers of both races, but more often Black teachers, are primed to expect “challenging behavior” from Black preschool children, particularly Black boys. In 2020, Black girls comprised 19 percent of the female preschool enrollment, but accounted for 53 percent of female suspensions. Black boys made up 18 percent of the male preschool enrollment but 41 percent of the male suspensions. The school-to-prison pipeline begins in preschool. I feared dropping my daughter into this pipeline.

This punitive and punishing state of American schools collaterally damages White schoolchildren, too. Suspensions and expulsions lead to lost learning time and deprive preschoolers of the opportunity to overcome early academic and social challenges, particularly those children with disabilities. In 2014, the Obama administration issued a policy statement that called for an end to preschool exclusionary punishment. Since that year, at least nineteen states have limited exclusionary punishments in preschools and almost every state has seen at least modest executive action to remedy the issue in childcare settings. The overall rate of suspension and expulsions fell sharply thereafter — but the racial disparities remained stark.”

“She saw a three- or four-year-old White boy standing alone on a second-floor balcony, glaring at her.

“N*g-ger!” the boy shouted.”

“Do preschool teachers have similar views? Because every preschool teacher should also be offering the antibodies of antiracist education. Every preschool teacher should be actively teaching students that skin color is as irrelevant as eye and hair color; and the colors of our bodies don’t mean anything more than the colors kids are learning like orange, brown, and white. They should be teaching kids not to judge a human being by their skin covers; that below the covers we all look the same. When kids point out differences in skin color and hair texture and culture, teachers and parents and caregivers should not silence them. Those moments are opportunities to teach, to acknowledge the differences, to appreciate the differences, to convey that though people may be different, they are equals.

But we should take the conversation a step further and talk about bad rules making life harder for dark-skinned people — and how those rules are wrong.”

“Sometimes we won’t be able to teach. But we should admit to our child when we don’t know. We can research the answers with children and discover them together and apply them together. We can model the genius of recognizing when we don’t know and then aggressively striving to know.

We must also show preschoolers our outrage with the unfairness of racism. We must show them it is outrageous to mistreat someone because of their skin color. Or, just as powerfully, to be antiracist is to admit the times we are being racist. This admission of the teacher or parent is profoundly instructive for our kids. They learn how they could be wrong for mistreating a person because of their skin color — just as we were wrong. They can make amends as they see us make amends.

Many Black and White preschoolers, ages three to five, said they’d like to have interracial friendships, but they thought their mothers would be sad or angry, a research team found. White three-year-olds (86 percent) are far more likely than Black three-year-olds (32 percent) to select same-race friends. Maybe not because their mothers directly told them to stay away from interracial friendships. But perhaps because their mothers did not model interracial friendships. The “racial attitudes” of White four- and five-year-olds are more closely related to the number of interracial friendships of their mothers than the racial attitudes of their mothers.”

“Perhaps the best way to develop critical-thinking skills with preschoolers and kindergarteners is with the question. Kids are asking their caregivers tons of questions. Why can’t caregivers return the favor with questions when opportunities arise? We are walking to the store and see a Latinx homeless man: “Why do you think he’s homeless?” We are watching coverage of police violence: “Why do you think that cop kept his knee on that man’s neck for so long?” We are at the library: “Why do you think there aren’t more picture books with dark people on the covers?” We are headed to see an incarcerated relative: “Why do you think they keep caging so many Black and Brown people?””

“White teachers disproportionately target and discipline Black male students for minor infractions. This targeting has a teaching effect, nurturing the racist perceptions of the children who witness this disparate treatment. By age six, most White children “show significant degrees of pro-White, anti-Black bias,” psychologists Phyllis A. Katz and Jennifer A. Kofkin found. One study of White kindergarteners found 85 percent held racist ideas about Black people. Another examination found at least two-thirds of White children between the ages of five and seven described Asian, Black, or Native people as “bad” or disliked.””

“It’s a sad fact, but having a same-race teacher “significantly increased the math and reading achievement of both black and white students.” The effects of same-race teachers on student achievement are most significant among “lower-performing black and white students.” Assigning a Black teacher to a Black male student, especially to the most economically deprived Black male students, in third, fourth, and fifth grades significantly reduces the likelihood he drops out of high school.”

“Low-clearance bridges blocked public buses from the city. Public buses were the way to get around Queens. Not the way to get to Long Island.”

“Ma could have answered:

“What she’s doing is called racial profiling. That is when people follow Black people around because they think Black people are criminals. Do you think Black people should be followed like we are criminals? Do you think what she’s doing is wrong?”

Not explaining racism to children in their moments of recognition leaves children having to explain it to themselves. So how did I explain what I saw to myself? Did I think there was something wrong with my family? With Black people? Did I think she followed Black people more because Black people stole more? Did I explain it to myself with racist ideas?”

“Blackmon asked 104 Black parents how they described the murder to their children aged six to eighteen. Nearly 30 percent provided “behavioral guidelines” for children, “including what to wear, the need to walk with others, and how to respond to authority figures and strangers.” In addition, 14.7 percent of Black parents explained Zimmerman’s act as a “reflection of racist beliefs and atti-tudes”; 13.1 percent described the death as “an individual act of violence”; and about 10 percent did not discuss Martin’s death with their children.”

“Therein lies the tragedy. As six- and seven- and especially eight-year-olds become more racially aware, they start observing more about race and racism. But the more they try to talk about it, the more their caregivers shut down that talk. The first lesson American children usually receive on racism is that it is unmentionable.”

“What if kids were instead more systematically taught about racism at the moment they are starting to see it themselves? What if we started by teaching third-graders about the racial inequities that they are already starting to notice — or that affect their lives? What if we taught these racial inequities as the problems that society needs to fix?

Kids can learn that it is a problem that the average non-White school district receives $2,226 less per student than the average White school district. They can be taught the problem of poor White school districts receiving about $1,500 more per student than poor non-White school districts. Kids can discover that it is a problem that Black families are up to 4.6 times more likely than White and Latinx families to live in areas of concentrated poverty.

In 2010, an estimated five thousand people of color died prematurely from exposure to polluting cars, trucks, and power plants. This is a problem kids can learn. They can also be taught that Puerto Rican children (17 percent) and Black children (14.3 percent) are much more likely to be diagnosed with asthma than White children (5.6 percent). Pediatricians and pediatric nurses can discuss with children the problem of how the high cost of healthy food in Black and Latinx communities contributes to chronic diseases among children.

By age seven, White children associate White people with superiority and wealth. Seven-year-olds can be living in an area where White people predominate on the wealthier side of town, and people of color predominate on the poorer side of town. Kids can see White people usually in leadership positions, like doctor and principal, while seeing people of color usually in service positions, like maid or waitress. If no one is telling our kids otherwise, then they will think this is normal; that White people have more because they are more; because they are superior. But seven-year-olds can learn that these disparities are a problem. They can learn the basic elements of the racial wealth gap. They can learn about inheritance: When people die they leave their money to their loved ones. They can learn that Black families are much less likely than White families to receive an inheritance, and when they do it is about a third of the value of White inheritances. And when they ask why — because we know they are going to ask why — we can then teach an age-appropriate history of structural racism. We can strive to teach the basic elements of slavery, of sharecropping, of Jim Crow segregation, of redlining, of standardized testing, of mass incarceration, of tax laws, of predatory lending — and how these structures have contributed to the racial wealth gap.

What if our elementary schools began teaching the elements of racism? What if the instruction became more advanced as students progressed to middle school and high school?”

“Take a recent study of public school teachers in the U.S. Southwest, where about 40 percent of the teachers and 80 percent of their students were people of color. When asked to explain the academic struggles of their students, the teachers blamed the students: attendance and participation (81 percent), student motivation (66 percent), families and communities (52 percent), and home language (30 percent). Teachers were less likely to blame structural factors like inadequate resources.”

Ableism

“Researchers found that Black boys who attended school districts with houses valued in the ninetieth percentile ($192,027) were “dramatically” being overdiagnosed with a learning disability. On the other hand, poverty could be a factor, but it is not the factor. White students who lived in poverty were less likely to be labeled with a learning disability, with deeper poverty correlating to fewer diagnoses.”

“When White students attend diverse schools, they are more likely to receive disability diagnoses.

The ableist ideas of there being something wrong with kids with disabilities intersecting with the racist ideas of there being nothing wrong with White kids can prevent teachers, particularly White teachers, from referring a White child for testing. White kids with disabilities end up suffering from White ableist racism by not receiving the services and accommodations they need.

What’s more, Asian kids with learning disabilities suffer from the racist stereotype of Asian students as high-achieving “model minorities.” Asian kids have the lowest odds overall of being diagnosed with a learning disability, possibly a collateral effect of high academic expectations.”

“Stereotyping Black kids as intellectually inferior can cause some adults to not suspect a learning disability. The Black girl is not learning as efficiently as other kids not because she has a learning disability, but because she’s Black. That’s the irony: Black kids end up being overdiagnosed in certain circumstances and underdiagnosed in other circumstances. Overdiagnosing and underdiagnosing are both problematic; if inequity in one direction is bad, then inequity in both directions is doubly bad.

One proven remedy for students: teachers of color. “White students experience the most consistent increases in special education receipt from increases in proportion of teachers of color,” sociologist Rachel Fish found. Black and Asian children, too.”

“79 percent of teachers are White, compared with 47 percent of students.

This is not essentially about the race of the teachers. This is about ableist racism — the intersection of racism and ableism. Researchers find that White middle-class women — who make up the bulk of the teaching force — especially struggle with recognizing structural bigotry, like racism and ableism.”

“Ableism is 83 percent of polling places not being fully accessible, suppressing the votes of people with disabilities. It is people who receive Supplemental Security Income being effectively barred from marriage in order to maintain access to income and health insurance. Ableism is reflected in people with disabilities facing unemployment rates nearly double the rate of people without disabilities. Ableism contributes to the high school graduation rate for people with disabilities being nearly 20 percentage points lower than the rate for all students (67 compared with 85 percent) — and the intersection of ableism and racism leads to Black students with disabilities being 1.5 times more likely to drop out than their White peers. Ableism is why at least 38 percent of the people populating American prisons — compared with 26 percent of the U.S. general population — have some type of disability. Ableist racism is why between one-third and one-half of the people being killed by police have a disability — with Black disabled people dying at high rates. More than half (55 percent) of all Black Americans with disabilities have been arrested by their twenty-eighth birthday.”

“I had just turned eight years old when my brother’s teacher called home. Kids as young as one and a half or two start asking questions about physical disabilities. Did I? Did my caregivers help me make sense of the one in four people around me with disabilities? Did they teach me that just as people look different and talk differently, people have different ways of moving, learning, and experiencing the world? Did they share with me the importance of accommodations; that “as long as the tools are in place that they need, people with disabilities “lead ordinary lives,” as explained by disability and media expert Kristen Parisi?”

“White children are overrepresented in the receipt of services for speech or language impairments (SLIs) by the time they reach kindergarten (a critical developmental window when children most need these services), possibly because SLIs are not among the most clearly stigmatized forms of disability. In 1986, three years after my parents’ search, White students accounted for 87 percent of students enrolled in New York’s speech enrichment programs (even as they accounted for 68 percent of the total school enrollment and likely a smaller percentage of students with disabilities).”

“During the 2005–2006 school year, White students with disabilities (59.1 percent) were the most likely and Black students with disabilities (43.9 percent) were the least likely to be placed in general education classrooms for at least 80 percent of the time. A decade later, the proportion of students with disabilities of all races in general education classrooms has grown, but White students (65.5 percent) remained the most likely to be integrated.”

“The majority of Black preteens between ten and twelve years old report experiencing racist discrimination, and that their close friends have endured the same. Black and Latinx fifth-graders who reported experiencing racist discrimination were more likely to have symptoms of depression. Children who face racist discrimination sometimes become withdrawn and struggle to pay attention, which likely brings on more racist bigotry and more depression.”

“Recently, the U.S. Department of Education found that Black students ages six through twenty-one are twice as likely as non-Black students to be assigned to the category of intellectual disability. White students are more likely than Black students to be diagnosed with autism. The suspension risk of students with emotional, learning, and intellectual disabilities is much higher than the suspension risk of students with autism. Black students with disabilities, on average, lose seventy-seven more days of instruction from suspensions than White students with disabilities.”

Conclusion

“In one study, White Americans “prematurely” perceived Black boys aged ten to thirteen as equally or less innocent than White boys aged fourteen to seventeen, while perceiving Black boys aged fourteen to seventeen to be as innocent as White boys aged eighteen to twenty-one. Respondents rated Black boys as less in need of protection and care, and more likely to be a danger to themselves and to others. When psychologists repeated the study with police officers, they found that officers overestimated the ages of Black felony suspects by an average of about 4.6 years. The more officers dehumanized Black children by implicitly associating them with apes and overestimating their ages, the more often they used force on Black children.”

“Black youth report more than five incidences of racist discrimination per day. Some call these microaggressions. I call it all racist abuse.”

“If caregivers of White teens are not talking to them about race, then how will caregivers discover the red flags? How will they know if their teenagers are internalizing racist ideas — or worse, if extremists are recruiting them to join White supremacist organizations? White supremacist recruitment on college campuses is increasing. But the typical age range of most extremist recruits is eleven to fifteen years old, a critical stage of development when adolescents are seeking belonging and purpose. In 1987, Christian Picciolini was fourteen years old and smoking a joint in an alley when a bald man in a muscle car pulled up to him to begin his recruitment. Two years later, Picciolini became the leader of the Chicago Area Skinheads. Picciolini has since left the movement and now supports parents of teens and young adults who need help breaking their child free of White supremacy.

These days, the recruitment is more likely to happen online, particularly on platforms popular with kids like You Tube, iFunny, Instagram, Reddit, and multiplayer video games. Ten percent of the teens between the ages of thirteen and seventeen who play popular online multiplayer games — an estimated 2.3 million children — recently reported that they had been exposed to the racist idea that “white people are superior to people of other races and that white people should be in charge.” But the most common threat (17 percent) of exposure to racist ideas among thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds occurs on social media.

The founder and editor of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer has stated his site targets White children beginning at age eleven. Editor and parenting writer Joanna Schroeder watched her boys’ online behavior and noticed how racist propagandists strive to turn impressionable White teens into White supremacists. Schroeder observed that the White teens, often from progressive or centrist families, are “inundated by memes featuring subtly racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic jokes.” According to the Western States Center’s Lindsay Schubiner, who co-authored a tool kit for caregivers facing online recruitment: “White-nationalist and alt-right groups use jokes and memes as a way to normalize bigotry while still maintaining plausible deniability, and it works very well as a recruitment strategy for young people.” Not seeing the nuance, young people share and repeat the jokes. But then get in trouble for doing so at school and online and feel ashamed. Meanwhile, they’re consuming propaganda that “people are too sensitive” and “you can’t say anything anymore,” causing them to believe they are “getting in trouble for nothing,” Schroeder added. Their shame is replaced with White male supremacist anger and hate toward women, people of color, Jews, and queer folks. “These boys are being set up,” Schroeder said. “They’re placed like baseballs on a tee and hit right out of the park. And NOBODY seems to notice this happening.” When Schroeder noticed, she intervened. She showed her boys how “these people are trying to pull the wool over your eyes — they’re trying to trick you” and “get you to believe something that, if you think about it, you really don’t believe.” That discussion really connected.

Caregivers must initiate these discussions to protect White teenagers. Discussions, not lectures. Discussions, not accusations and judgments. Open discussions, so the child feels valued and taken seriously, which is the best approach in these situations, according to Harvard psychologist Gil Noam. When White teenagers do embark on discussions on race with antiracist caregivers, they become more tolerant and willing to interrogate internalized racist ideas. From infants to teenagers, the research on White youth remains the same: The more caregivers engage them about racism, the more they’re able to protect themselves from racist messages; the more likely they’ll enter adulthood being antiracist.

Because at around “age thirteen, kids have a big developmental shift, cognitively,” says Alice LoCicero, a clinical psychologist and cofounder of the Society for Terrorism Research. “There’s a sense of idealism and altruism and wanting to make a difference in the world. It’s an age where a sense of justice becomes really important, and that can be misconstrued and manipulated.” What is the sense of justice for our teens? Is making a difference to them stopping the supposed scourge of Jews, Muslims, women, and people of color, like many mass shooters? Is their altruism ridding the discourse of discussion of race and racism, since they’ve been led to believe talking about race and racism is unjust and racist? Or is their sense of idealism about ridding their world of the longstanding injustice of racial disparities? For me: I strove to help Black people by encouraging Black people to be better and do better (as if Black people were the problem).

I did think racism existed, but primarily at an interpersonal level. I wasn’t alone then or now. In a recent study of African American, Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islander, multiracial, Native, and White teens, researchers found that 78.9 percent of them consider racism to be an interpersonal rather than a structural phenomenon.”

“In 2018, Native (9.5 percent), Pacific Islander (8.1 percent), Latinx (8 percent), and Black (6.4 percent) high school students had the highest dropout rates. These rates were an improvement from 2006, when the dropout rates of Latinx (21 percent), Native (15.1 percent), and Black (11.5 percent) students doubled or tripled the White (6.4 percent) rate, which was twice as high as the Asian (3.1 percent) rate. Pacific Islander high school students were the exception to the declining dropout rate; their dropout rate increased between 2006 (7.4 percent) and 2018 (8.1 percent).”

“Students between the ages of fourteen and seventeen who were suspended or expelled were twice as likely to be arrested that same month.”

“For the class of 2011, the College Board found that 79.7 percent of Black high school students who would have done well on an AP course did not take one. Qualified Native (73.7 percent) and Latinx (70.4 percent) high school students were also far more likely to be left out of these courses than White students — even as the number of White students left out of these courses is also incredibly high (61.6 percent).”

“How is the SAT exam a “race neutral” admissions factor when the scores don’t necessarily correlate with success in college but do correlate with the wealth of the parents of the test takers — and White people have nearly ten times more wealth than Black people?”

““There’s no such thing as a kid who hates reading, author James Patterson once wrote. “There are kids who love reading, and kids who are reading the wrong books.””

“A cellphone video by seventeen-year-old Darnella Frazier captured George Floyd handcuffed, facedown, and Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck for nearly ten minutes as Floyd cried out “I can’t breathe,” cried out for his mother, and eventually lost consciousness. Frazier’s video was uploaded to Facebook. In three weeks, nearly eight out of ten Americans had seen some or all of the recording. By the summer’s end, between 15 and 26 million Americans in all fifty states took to the streets in the largest series of demonstrations in American history.”

“Fishbein thought what was helpful for her child was harmful. She launched a campaign against a barely budding antiracist education movement and named her group No Left Turn in Education. In no time, Fishbein’s group was also advocating against teaching about sex and climate change in schools.

By the summer’s end, Fishbein’s group had organized a handful of chapters and fewer than two hundred Facebook followers. But in September 2020, she appeared on Tucker Carlson’s primetime Fox News show.”

“One of these Moms for Liberty identified as Asian American. She has a multiracial son (her husband is White). Her son had read a story about Black high school students being attacked while trying to integrate a lunch counter. “This story is so sad,” her son said. The mom took her son’s compassionate reaction to injustice to mean her son is now “ashamed of his white half.”