THERE IS NO NEUTRALITY
Talking about race, religion and parenting with Ibram X. Kendi
Between right and wrong, there can be no indifference, no fence-sitting, no neutrality. Anyone who tries to disagree has never been responsible for a child.
No parent — no competent parent, at least — refuses to discipline for violence or theft or lying because they are paralyzed by moral nuance. No parent thinks all the moral and spiritual values their children might imbibe are equal. No parent is indifferent to the kind of adult their child becomes.
This simple truth is the basis for the children’s books by Ibram X. Kendi, author of the runaway bestseller “How to be an Antiracist” and one of the country’s most prominent and prolific proponents of a radical approach to racial justice. It is also foundational to the way I—a white man whose politics few would describe as progressive — organize my own life and thought. It was a unique pleasure to explore with him the similarities be-tween people and worldviews so apparently different.
Either racism or antiracism
For Mr. Kendi, racism — and specifically anti-Blackness — is the defining feature of American society. About this, we disagree. I would say rather that it is an undeniable and enduring aspect of American life, but not the primary or most important one.
Still I would agree that, despite decades of efforts to promote racial equality, a core notion of racial hierarchy, imprinted on institutions and individual consciousnesses over the centuries, exerts a gravitational pull toward treating Black people as inferior. People of goodwill might disagree about the extent of this force, and how it intersects with other issues such as classism, but it requires willful ignorance not to see the enduring effects of centuries of oppression.
In our conversation, Mr. Kendi argued that a hands-off approach to race is not the way to raise a child who is not racist, any more than a hands-off approach to other bad influences or tendencies will result in a child magically choosing the better part. Quite the opposite: Without a firm grounding in the truth of racial equality, a young person is far more likely to conform, even if unknowingly, to prevailing sentiments and behaviors.
In his previous children’s book, “Antiracist Baby,” Mr. Kendi wrote, “Babies are taught to be racist or antiracist — there’s no neutrality.” There is either conforming to the status quo, or combattingit. Neutrality is capitulation.
Raising contrary children
If this is true about raising an antiracist child in a racist society, I wondered, wouldn’t it also be true of raising a religious child in a secular society? Both involve raising children to live in ways contrary to prevailing norms. Both involve questions of great importance on which there can be no neutrality: racism or antiracism, God or nothing.
I can understand why Mr. Kendi does not see this comparison to be as
compelling as I do. Critics capitalize on modern suspicion of “religious indoctrination” to paint his work, especially his children’s books, as insidious progressive catechesis. For many reasons race and religion do not map neatly onto one another.
And yet when I hear his principles of parenting and education, I can’t help but see my own family in them. My wife and I also believe it’s impossible to be indifferent between right and wrong, between truth and falsehood. We also believe we have a duty to form
our children in what is true and good and beautiful, so they can be prepared for a society that values only what is respectable and profitable. We also believe there is no neutrality.
The difference is that Mr. Kendi believes antiracism is the most important value to pass down to children. And we believe it is Catholicism.
Now, the two are not mutually exclusive. We believe that our faith is the
to place other moral and political values, antiracism among them. The first principle of justice is that all people are made in the image and likeness of God.
But it does mean that our emphasis is different. For instance, when we present our children with stories that connect them to a distinctive heritage and that teach true lessons, we’re likely to grab a book of saint stories.
As for Mr. Kendi, he has begun adapting folktales collected by the great Black woman writer Zora Neale Hurston, including “The Making of Butterflies,” in order to provide children’s literature that centers Black people not just in the here and now, but in the land of imagination. These stories establish a link to a culture and storytelling heritage that is deeply American, while belonging in a particular way to Black people. They are meant to help families of all colors bring authentic, beautiful expressions of Blackness into their homes, and in so doing to introduce — by showing, not just telling — the principle of racial equality.
The book is lovely and would easily, and will soon, find a home on our shelves — right alongside St. Clare and St. Martin de Porres.
Everyone indoctrinates
In our conversation, Mr. Kendi and I agreed that the charge of “indoctrination” is wielded against parents who try to pass down ways of being that run contrary to prevailing norms. He then said that charge was false. I’d like to make a different move.
Every parent, inasmuch as they teach their children what they believe to be true, engages in indoctrination. It would be a dereliction of duty not to. After all, “to indoctrinate” originally meant simply “to instruct.”
Through his children’s books, Ibram X. Kendi is asking that we indoctrinate with true principles — antiracist principles — as opposed to false ones. Even those who disagree with his broader assessments of American society, and especially people of faith, should see in this work the same motivation shared by all responsible parents: to raise their children to be good, and to be signs of contradiction to what is wrong in our society.
It’s either that, or the opposite. There’s no neutrality.