by Eve L. Ewing
One World
2/11/2025, hardcover
SKU: 9780593243701
"A fascinating and eye-opening look at how American schools have helped build and reinforce an infrastructure of racial inequality . . . a must-read for every American parent and educator."--Esquire (Most Anticipated Books of 2025)
If all children could just get an education, the logic goes, they would have the same opportunities later in life. But this historical tour de force makes it clear that the opposite is true: The U.S. school system has played an instrumental role in creating and upholding racial hierarchies, preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives.
In Original Sins, Ewing demonstrates that our schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority, to "civilize" Native students and to prepare Black students for menial labor. Education was not an afterthought for the Founding Fathers; it was envisioned by Thomas Jefferson as an institution that would fortify the country's racial hierarchy. Ewing argues that these dynamics persist in a curriculum that continues to minimize the horrors of American history. The most insidious aspects of this system fall below the radar in the forms of standardized testing, academic tracking, disciplinary policies, and uneven access to resources.
By demonstrating that it's in the DNA of American schools to serve as an effective and underacknowledged mechanism maintaining inequality in this country today, Ewing makes the case that we need a profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom. This book will change the way people understand the place we send our children for eight hours a day.
Reviews:
"Reimagining schools through a communal practice of braiding, Ewing invites readers to consider the power of education toward liberation--schools as collective sites where we can dream and grow our knowledge to building new worlds based on ethical relationships of care." --Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of As We Have Always Done
"In Original Sins, she makes clear how our country's schools have intentionally configured the contemporary landscape of inequality. Exhaustively researched and exquisitely written, Original Sins is breathtaking." --Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed
"The clearest most comprehensive answer to 'how did all this happen?' I've read." --Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
"Eve L. Ewing lays the bare the core project of dispossession and race-making in American education and statecraft. . . . an extraordinary contribution to political history, studies in education and shared futures." --Audra Simpson, author of Mohawk Interruptus
"Though the argument of this book is bleak, it illuminates a path for a more just future that is nothing short of dazzling."--Oprah Daily (Most Anticipated Books of 2025)
"This book will transform the way you see this country."--Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
About the Author:
Eve L. Ewing is a writer, scholar, and cultural organizer from Chicago. She is the award-winning author of four books: Electric Arches, 1919, Ghosts in the Schoolyard, and Maya and the Robot. She is the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks and has written several projects for Marvel Comics. Ewing is an associate professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other venues.