Raising Antiracist Children

March 21, 2022
Anti-bias consultant Hawthorne and editor Yglesias (Wild Witchcraft) offer a graceful guide to creating an environment in which children can “naturally take to anti-biased and antiracist ideals.” Focusing on five aspects—getting on the same page, healthy bodies, radical minds, conscious consumption, and thriving communities—the authors encourage parents to “model the attitudes, language, and actions” they’d like their kids to show, and to start by teaching kids how to set and enforce boundaries. Parents can start young with such prompts as, “We’re all unique. Do you know what that means?”—and with age, they can focus on analyzing media (watch out for inspiration porn, she warns, a “genre of media depictions of disabled people” which “assumes that disability is always a tragedy”). Hawthorne enriches her own point of view with those of outside experts: author Aja Barber, for example, writes about raising her kids to be conscious consumers, and educator Tiffany Jewel explains how her family ditched their white-centric Montessori school for a more diverse education at a public school. Hawthorne’s emphasis on “self-love” for parents makes this a resource worth returning to. Parents looking to “reimagine how homes will become liberated spaces” need look no further.