ted cruz put several books in the spotlight after his perplexing cross-examination at ketanji brown jackson’s confirmation hearing in the supreme court.
In a hearing ostensibly intended to assess whether Jackson is qualified to serve on the highest court in the land, the Republican senator brought up critical race theory, an academic concept taught primarily at the undergraduate and graduate levels that it has since become a political flashpoint – in K-12 schools.
You are reading: Ted cruz children’s books
as part of his cross-examination, cruz presented a handful of books that he claimed were taught at georgetown day school, an elite private school in washington, dc, whose board of directors belongs to jackson. Among the titles he mentioned were “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction” by Richard Slim and Jean Stefancic; “The End of Surveillance” by Alex S. vitale and “how to be an anti-racist” by ibram x. kendi
Cruz focused most of his questions, however, on two children’s books: “anti-racist baby” and “patterned (for children)”. and his characterizations of those titles were greatly distorted.
From the audience, two of the titles Cruz referred to shot to the top of the best-seller lists. For readers curious about the content of children’s books, here’s what they’re really about.
anti-racist baby
the book: “anti-racist baby”, written by ibram x. kendi and illustrated by ashley lukashevsky. It is an illustrated children’s book.
The claim: Cruz said he was “amazed” by the ideas in the book.
“One part of the book says, ‘babies are taught to be racist or anti-racist; there is no neutrality.’ Another part of the book: They recommend that babies ‘come clean when they’re racist,'” he said at the hearing. . Cruz added that the book is taught to Georgetown Day School students ages 4 to 7, asking Jackson, “Do you agree with this book that kids are taught that babies are racist? ?”
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reality: the characterization of a cross takes the ideas found in the book out of context.
In “Anti-Racist Baby,” Kendi argues that children are not born racist but rather learn racist attitudes from an early age from the world around them. To counter such messages, Kendi writes, parents and caregivers need to help children learn to be anti-racists.
The book encourages children to openly acknowledge differences in skin color, rather than pretend they don’t exist. It asks them to celebrate the differences between cultures, not to see any group as better or worse than another, and to be constantly learning and growing. He invites them to speak openly about race and admit where they might have fallen short.
Crucially, “anti-racist baby” advises children to “point to politics as the problem, not people” and proclaims that “although all races are not treated equally, we are all human.”
print (for children)
the book: “printed (for children): racism, anti-racism and you”, adapted by sonja cherry-paul and illustrated by rachelle baker.
The book is a children’s version of the young adult history book “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi – which, in turn, is an adaptation of Kendi’s bestseller “Recorded From The Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.”
the claim: cruz called this book “amazing.”
opening the book, he said to jackson, “on page 33, the question is asked, ‘can we send white people back to europe?’
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the senator continued, “also on page 115 it says, ‘the idea that we should pretend we don’t see racism is connected to the idea that we should pretend we don’t see color. It’s called colorblindness.”
cruz jumped on and quoted other sentences from the book, including “here’s what’s wrong with this: it’s ridiculous. skin color is something that absolutely everyone sees” and “so pretending not to see the color is quite convenient if you really don’t want to eradicate racism in the first place”.
finally, cruz summoned rev. martin luther king jr speech “i have a dream” and argued that the ideas contained in “anti-racist baby” and “print (for children)” contradict the values of the civil rights icon, a notion that scholars who have studied king say is a misrepresentation of his construction site.
The reality: Once again, the passages read aloud by Cruz are a serious mischaracterization.
the phrase “can we send the whites back to europe?” that the cross references on page 33 appear as an aside in a chapter on the contradictions in how thomas jefferson talked about slavery and how he acted. The book explains how some white assimilationists, including Jefferson at one point, advocated sending blacks back to Africa and the Caribbean, foreign places to many of the people in question.
in explaining the problems inherent in that idea, the book includes this aside: do you see how the racist ideas of today are linked to the racist ideas of the past? the phrase “go back to where you came from” that black and brown people are sometimes told today connects with ideas of “going back” from the past. now you can trace the origins back to thomas jefferson. (By the way, imagine what Native Americans and blacks must have wanted from their white oppressors: can we send whites “back” to europe?)
here, the phrase “can we send the whites back to europe?” It clearly demonstrates how illogical the idea of sending people “back to where they came from” is.
on page 115, the sentence referenced by cross (“the idea that we should pretend we don’t see racism is connected to the idea that we should pretend we don’t see color. It’s called colorblindness”) appears again in an aside in a chapter on inequalities in standardized tests. Although standardized tests look the same on the surface, the authors argue, not all schools and students have the same resources, which means that rewarding schools based on test results deepens existing inequalities. the authors also criticized the idea that the way to address racism in education was not to focus on it, which is when they stop to address the idea of ’color blindness’.
The point the authors make in that passage is that ignoring differences in skin color is akin to ignoring racism. it is only by acknowledging those differences in advance, they argue in the book, that society can begin to undermine the problem.
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