Not long after How to Be an Antiracist was published in August 2019, the book’s author, the historian and National Book Award winner Ibram X. Kendi, found his work an unexpected touch point in the conversation about the persistence of racism in American society. Initially I was wary: The title had the ring of self-help, the ideology that personal effort can fix anything. It sounded like one of those books that make the bold and arguably illogical claim that just about everything is within the individual’s control. They do not demand system change, but personal effort.
But its new companion volume, co-authored by young-adult novelist Nic Stone and published on Jan. 31, illuminates just how much that’s not the case. In a format accessible to younger readers, the book explores how we are gradually drafted into the thinking and lies that can render a person unable, or at least unwilling, to challenge the systems
