In the turbulent summer of 2020, as protests against police brutality and racism erupted across the country, historian and anti-racism scholar Ibram X. Kendi was struck by how many young people were joining what was probably the largest mass protest movement in American history. He saw children marching in the streets with their families, teenage activists hoisting hand-lettered signs, students demanding that their schools teach the full truth about their country's history — and he also saw parents and teachers who seemed determined to guide these children toward a better future, who wanted to know how to help make that future possible. The result is "How to Raise an Antiracist," both an instructive guide and memoir. The following interview about his book has been edited for length.

Q: In addition to your groundbreaking study of racism and its origins — you have received the National Book Award and a MacArthur "genius" grant for your work — you are also the father of a young daughter. What made you decide to include your own story in your new book?

A: I thought it was important for parents to be able to move past our discomfort around the mistakes that we make as parents. To be a parent is to be imperfect, to be a parent is to be human. I felt by providing my story as a parent and the mistakes that I've made, as it related to race with my child, I thought it could help other parents to be self-reflective as well.

Q: I've talked to a number of white parents about race, who were actively trying to overcome their own "colorblind" upbringings. Something I've often heard is anxiety about saying the wrong thing, giving a wrong answer to a question that a child asks, or not being informed enough to offer a complete answer in the moment. I'm wondering what you would say to parents who are experiencing that worry and insecurity.

A: First, I think the source of the worry and insecurity is this belief that if we somehow get it wrong, meaning if we say the wrong thing, in the wrong way, in response to our child engaging us about race, that we'll somehow make them racist. So the best solution is to just not say anything or to shut down the conversation when, in reality, it's the other way around. If we don't say anything, then they're going to get an answer from somewhere else, and chances are that answer is more likely to be a racist one.

Q: So, how might we begin?

A: When a child asks us a question about race that we don't know, we [might] say we don't know, and then, "Let's discover and investigate together." And then we relay to our child, "This is something I'm learning too," or "I had a different perspective about this, and now this evidence is showing me that it's something else." So we're modeling for the child not only discovery, but also changing our minds, which is also indicative of critical thinking. Scholars have shown that to raise a critical thinker is to raise a child who is going to be more likely to protect themselves against racist thought.

Q: You also write of the necessity of parents asking children questions about race, starting when they're preschoolers or kindergartners. Why is that important?

A: I think it is incredibly important to ask questions of our children, not just to model critical thinking but also to raise empathy. So when a child does something wrong — let's say your child hits another child — instead of us just saying, "Don't do that!" we can say, "Why did you hit the child?" We can ask, "How do you think that child felt?" That is more in line with what scholars call inductive discipline, and inductive discipline is more likely to teach a child to be empathetic. And a child that's more empathetic is more likely to be anti-racist. So it's all sort of connected in that way, whether we're raising a critical thinker or raising a child to be empathetic, we should be consistently asking them questions.

Q: I've spoken to so many parents over these past couple of years — about the pandemic, police violence, gun violence, climate change and the intersection of racism with all of those things — and in many of those conversations, parents have expressed deep fear, sometimes even despair, about what's happening around us right now. But they've also often noted that parenthood doesn't afford the luxury of hopelessness, that we owe these kids something better. I wanted to ask you how parenthood has affected the way you relate to this current moment. How has it shaped your sense of what is possible?

A: Our daughter's name is Imani, which means "faith" in Swahili. When we decided to name her Imani, we just really loved the name but we weren't thinking at the time that she, through her presence in our lives, would become one of our anchors, if not our principal anchor, for hope and for believing that we can transform this world anew. Just witnessing a young person coming of age and navigating her world and just seeing how she doesn't have all the racial baggage that adults have, that I have, and knowing that all the things that we've gotten wrong as adults, our children could get right.