Book: Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism by Eve L. Ewing
Genre: History
Publisher: One World
Publication date: 2025
Pages: 375 (but that includes 100 pages of bibliography, notes, etc — so don’t be intimidated by the length of the book)

Source: Physical book borrowed from the library

Summary: Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism provides a missing piece of the story of American Racism — the ways that our public education system was set up to perpetuate racism. Since nearly all of us are impacted by our own public education or that of people around us, this isn’t just a story of schools and young people.

Education does not happen only in schools; it happens in all the places where we receive messages about who we are, what we are, and how we ought to live together. I’ll argue that Black and Native kids have been miseducated in schools, to be certain. But all of us–youths and adults, past and present, Black and Indigenous and otherwise–have received a profound miseducation. We have been offered a racial hierarchy that is violent, belittling, and ultimately unsustainable, and told that it’s the only way to live. (p. 13)

Our schools, like our society, provide us the unexamined framework of White Supremacy as the organizational principle. It’s time to examine that framework so that we can dismiss it as a harmful concept that is leading us all toward disaster. This book, alongside others, like The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee, illuminates the past in ways that can help us build a brighter future.

Thoughts: I’ve been saying, for a while, that the US reluctantly integrated our schools. We never attempted to dismantle the systems that created segregated schools.

I didn’t know enough about those systems to understand what needed dismantling.

Eve. L. Ewing did that research and put it together in this readable format, a book that alternates the experiences of White, Black, and Native students while guiding us through the history of the United States. It’s a unique and illuminating approach.

This is a small point in the book and not even about education, but I still get taken by surprise every time I learn yet another deliberate way that White Americans preyed on Black Americans. This is about life insurance from Prudential, when someone developed statistics showing that black people had a shorter life expectancy, without interest or investigation into systemic reasons for that.

In any case, his findings were in line with a policy the company put in place in 1881, paying out one-third less to Black policyholders than to White ones, though Black folks would have to pay the same premiums.

I’ll admit that there were multiple times that I felt uncomfortable while reading this book. But it’s the discomfort that invites deep thinking and growth.

Our book group felt a little defeated at the end of our discussion. Fortunately, our facilitator had done some research. She recommended this interview of the author, Eve L. Ewing, with Clint Smith. We read his book, How the Word is Passed, in 2024. The two together we’re a pleasure to watch. As our facilitator pointed out, Ewing is inspiring to hear in person. Whether you read the book or not, I recommend this video: