Growing up an Anti-Racist Baby

Children are not born racist. I am convinced about this, as I often watch my son playing together with children from all over the world and representing all possible religions. No skin colour or Gd is strong enough to convince a kid to give up of his/her friends. That´s only what adults do. Or rather they can try prevent. 

Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi, with illustrations by Ashley Lukashevsky, is a book worth including in a simple bibliography parents should start reading to their children as early as possible. No matter where you are living, there is always racism to fight against, which affects primarily children. Therefore, this book may help even when parents are trying to push their children into the dark kingdom of adult minds. 

Besides parents, educators should read this book too, as it is a very useful tool to educate children in the spirit of universality and open citizenship. Indeed, as the book says, ´antiracist baby is bred, not born´.

Talking to children abour racism must take place in a very clear environment and by using simple yet outstanding ways of talking. Racism should be pointed out and denounced where it occurs. There is not other way to recognize it. 

There are nine steps that one shall follow in order to ´make equality a reality´, but this is rather wishful thinking. For a start, it may work though. There are some of those steps that make a lot of sense like the fact that world and its humans come in different colours, that we are all humans and therefore we should celebrate differences, that children must remain curious and not-all knowing, and also that one should learn how to openly deal with racist language - by denouncing it. There are also a couple of things that in full honesty, you cannot make a child understand, no matter how progressist and intelligent he/she is: for instance, that it is the fault of policies for not having equal access. Keep this one maybe for a 4-5th grade maybe. 

I am not a fan of the illustrations though, as too grotesque for my artistic taste.

Anti-Racist Baby is a a good book for starting or further developing the open mind of children and help them refuse any kind of racist education, no matter from where it comes. 

Rating: 3 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review