Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness
Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness is picture book released in 2008, written and illustrated by Anastasia HIgginbotham. The book is about racism and racial justice, inviting white children and parents to become curious about racism, accept that it’s real, and cultivate justice.
Plot
Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness follows an elementary-age kid as she asks her mom questions about the recent murder of an unarmed black man by a white police officer. But in this book, the white mom offers false platitudes (“Our family is kind to everyone. We don’t see color”), refuses to engage in real dialogue with her daughter, and even locks the car door when they drive through a predominantly black neighborhood.
At this point, the book’s narrator steps in to explain that “skin color makes a difference in how the world sees you and in how you see the world.” As the pages turn, we watch the white girl begin to see her world anew: the way the store security guard keeps his eye on the black kid and barely notices the white kid, the way her aunt turns away from racial injustice on the television, the way history is filled with white people “who have committed outrageous crimes against black people for four hundred years” and also with “people who love justice” and “have been fighting back.”[1]
Anti-racism value
This book takes on the subject of white privilege in a way that makes the subject accessible to children. The book tells the story of a white child seeing news about a police shooting on the television while their mother tries to distract them and tells them that they are safe. But that is not what the child is concerned with, they want to know why they are treated differently in stores than black children and how this happened. The book grapples with what white children and adults can do to combat racism and get involved in social justice. It pushes children to speak out, even to their own family who are expressing racist ideas. It talks about the concept of “not seeing race” and then clearly explains why that is not true.[2]
In the back of the book are several activity pages that explain to the reader how we can be white without signing onto Whiteness, and how to begin engaging in anti-racist work ourselves. Not My Idea is an incredibly important book, one that we should all be using as a catalyst for our anti-racist education.[3]
References
- ↑ Schwehn, Kaethe (2020). Talking to white kids about what whiteness means. Retrieved on December 31, 2020.
- ↑ Tasha (2020). REVIEW: NOT MY IDEA: A BOOK ABOUT WHITENESS BY ANASTASIA HIGGINBOTHAM. Retrieved on December 31, 2020.
- ↑ NOT MY IDEA: A BOOK ABOUT WHITENESS. Retrieved on December 31, 2020.