What prompted you to choose that subject, and why did you make a police killing the focus of the plot?Īnastasia Higginbotham: My children’s school was hosting workshops for families about how whiteness affects us-what we see, what we miss, and where we can go astray even when we care about undoing racism. What follows is an edited and condensed version of our discussion.Ĭonor Friedersdorf: Your series of children’s books, Ordinary Terrible Things, tackle divorce, death, and sex before your 2018 title, Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness, took on race. Regardless, her message that kids can choose to reject racism is laudable, and many school districts find it valuable. I think her account of what causes police killings is too monocausal and that her zeal for uprooting racism sometimes strays into overgeneralization based in racial stereotyping. She argues that, at the earliest possible age, white kids should be taught to identify whiteness as the root of racial injustice so that they can reject the pervasive racism that they would otherwise embody. Read: How to talk to kids about racism and police “I am asserting that indoctrination into whiteness and anti-Blackness is evident in your framing.”Ĭlearly we had deep disagreements over an issue families and educators all over America are grappling with: What exactly should we teach children about race, police killings, and the relationship between the two? I suggested to Higginbotham that we air our differences through an email exchange, and she agreed. “I am not saying this is indicative of your character or beliefs in any way-you clearly believe and affirm that Black lives matter,” she declared to me in an email. Higginbotham, to put it mildly, disagreed with my criticism.

At times, I thought that it crossed the line from education into indoctrination. Not My Idea begins with a white child seeing footage of a police officer murdering a Black man on television and the child’s mother trying to shield her from the images. (Readers curious about the book’s content can consult the actor John Jimerson’s reading on YouTube.)

In a recent article, I questioned whether her book Not My Idea-which is now being used in public-school curricula for young children-was appropriate for kindergartners. A nastasia Higginbotham is the author of Ordinary Terrible Things, a widely praised children’s-book series that aims to address difficult subjects head on.

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