Original Sins

Starred review from January 1, 2025

In her latest book, cultural organizer, scholar, poet, and comic book writer Ewing (race, diaspora, and Indigeneity, Univ. of Chicago; Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side) identifies what she calls the two original sins of the United States: enslavement and the extinction of Indigenous people. She describes what she refers to as the race machine and how it is still being used in the U.S. to restrict specific groups from the benefits of full citizenship in this nation. Her book examines the three pillars of racism that are cultivated in American public schools. The first is intellectual inferiority, the belief that Black and Indigenous people are less intelligent than other races. The second is discipline and punishment, which is the belief that Black and Indigenous people are unruly and need to be constantly controlled. Third is economic subjugation that prevents marginalized people from taking charge of their own labor. VERDICT Ewing's profound work is a must read for politicians, school board members, education administrators, and teachers. It would also be an excellent addition to professional development and teacher education programs.--Laura Ellis

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Starred review from January 6, 2025
The American education system for centuries developed on two parallel tracks, according to this brilliant history from sociologist and poet Ewing (Ghosts in the Schoolyard). One track, Ewing writes, was for white and European immigrant children, and on it great strides in education theory were made that emphasized how cooperation through play made for engaged citizens. These developments, as Ewing cannily notes, also functioned to erase cultural boundaries between white children from disparate backgrounds, solidifying a sense of cross-cultural whiteness. Meanwhile, the other track, for Indigenous and Black children, aimed to “annihilate” their cultural identity and train them as “subservient laborers,” according to Ewing. She brings to light plenty of harrowing evidence to this effect, not just as a broad strokes theory but in the minutiae of teacher-training manuals and educators’ writings. Her citations span from Reconstruction era textbooks written by Northern white educators who stated that their aim was to stop Black people’s “relapse into barbarism” and turn them into “useful citizens,” to her own recollections of her Chicago middle school class being taken to the Cook County Jail in an effort to have the students “scared straight.” This ideological undertaking was often framed as a common sense, dollars-and-cents solution, Ewing notes; for instance, she reports that the idea that “the country could save money by schooling Indians rather than endeavoring to kill them” was a recurring theme in her research. It’s a troubling and eye-opening examination of the foundational role educators played in developing America’s racial hierarchy.

Starred review from January 1, 2025
Poet, sociologist, and cultural organizer Ewing (Ghosts in the Schoolyard, 2018; 1919, 2019) again turns her incisive, scholarly eye to education, racism, and American society. In this skillfully presented, searing critique, Ewing reveals the role that institutions of formal education have played in creating and reinforcing racial hierarchies in the U.S. Ewing argues that schools in America maintain racist inequities through the three pillars of claiming white intellectual superiority, discipline and punishment, and economic subjugation. Specifically, these dynamics have played out in consistently unequal and unjust ways, especially for Native and Black Americans. Ewing moves swiftly through numerous examples to make her case, building on familiar instances, such as that of Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to attend an all-white school, and by noting more obscure history, such as the African School of Boston, founded by free Black people in 1798. Ewing's prose style is intellectual yet accessible, and she cites a wealth of historical and contemporary sources, from W. E. B. DuBois to reports on corporal punishment and the abuse of foster care published in 2024. In the book's final chapter, Ewing ties race and education together with legacies of settler colonialism, slavery, and racist capitalism. A brightly intelligent, uncompromising, timely, and deeply clarifying investigation.

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