Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism

“I assert that the general idea of original sin is that it differs from the everyday transgressions each of us commits, the venial acts of greed and vice for which we can be forgiven. Original sin is inherited and fundamental. It doesn’t go away.”

The book’s title alludes to the Bible’s Book of Genesis, a creation myth in which first people Adam and Eve commit the foundational sin that dooms humanity to exile from paradise. Ewing argues that the racist roots of the US education system is another foundational sin akin to this religious one—a comparison that underscores the permanent impact of this history.

“This book is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. It’s an invitation into a conversation, a tool for you to mark up and lend out and disagree with and share and highlight and bend out of shape. […] The absolute best scenario is if you can find somebody else, or several somebodies, to read it with—use it for collective work, if you can.”

Ewing’s tone throughout the text is not authoritative. Rather than offering a “prescription” on how to fix a broken system, she wants to create a working dialog. The image of readers marking up the book as they consider its ideas represents working together toward a solution.

“Many times you may find yourself saying, ‘But that’s also true for my people!’ I hope that these moments of recognition spur not the sent that something is therefore not true in some distinct way for Black and Native people, but rather a sense that we are all struggling to pilot our boats through the same tumultuous sea.”

Ewing uses a metaphor to close her introduction, comparing struggling against institutionalized racism to steering a boat through a “tumultuous sea.” In both cases, the path is difficult, yet possible—but only with the efforts of the collective. Even though she focuses on Black and Indigenous children, she reminds readers that we are all in this “sea” together.

“The Doctrine of Discovery was the idea that in the act of ‘discovering a new land’ (in other words, arriving in a non-European place where Indigenous people already lived), White settlers instantly gained full legal, governmental, political, and commercial rights over the people living there, without the necessity of their knowledge or consent.”

Ewing often uses sarcasm to highlight how laughable historical assumptions seem today. Here, she points out that rather than “discovering” the North American continent, settlers simply “arrived” in a fully inhabited place. Her diction conveys modern judgment of earlier ideas—while also emphasizing that they were the prevailing thought and policy of the time.

“Suddenly, in the face of these newcomers—bringing with them new physical appearances, faith practices, languages, and foods—German and Irish immigrants and their children became the ‘old’ immigrants, in a process that Painter refers to as a ‘great enlargement of American whiteness.’ They were no longer a foreign scourge, they got promoted to being White.”

Part 1 argues that race has always been socially constructed in the US. One example comes from waves of immigrants; each group was initially outcast as non-white, then eventually invited into the fold of whiteness after assimilating. This foundational aspect of postcolonial theory undergirds Ewing’s argument about the ongoing marginalization of Black and Indigenous people.

“Despite the vaguely militaristic and expressly nationalistic trappings of this practice, the [Pledge of Allegiance], which was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892, did not make its debut on a military base, in the halls of Congress, or at citizenship ceremonies. It was born for the place where it now most famously lives—the American school.”

This passage exemplifies Ewing’s rhetorical technique of taking a well known and accepted facet of school life and exploring its typically racist, eugenicist, or white supremacist origins to demonstrate the importance of Understanding History to Address Current Social Issues. Here, she explains that the Pledge of Allegiance—which surprisingly doesn’t come from “military base” or “citizenship ceremonies”—was actually first developed as a tool for control within the education system.

“The school committee issued a clear decision: although Black children in Massachusetts were entitled access to free public schools, it was against natural law that they should do so in the company of White children. This was not simply a matter of skin color, they argued: ‘It is one of races, not of colors, merely. The distinction is one which the All-wise Creator has seen fit to establish; and it is founded deep in the physical, mental, and moral natures of the two races.’”

While Supreme Court decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (1954) have become famous, Ewing introduces a less-known confrontation to emphasize that the struggle for equal education was ongoing for over a century. In an 1846 petition to a Massachusetts school committee, Black parents argued that their children’s schools should be equal to those educating white children. By discussing the school committee’s decision, which affirmed segregated schooling, Ewing emphasizes the importance of understanding history to change educational practices.

“[Pratt’s wife] was awakened later that night by dramatic cries of grief coming from the barracks: the young man had gotten out of bed and walked out onto the parade grounds to make a public ceremony of cutting his own hair, as the other children watched and wailed in mourning.”

The anecdote of an Indigenous student’s protest about his treatment in one of General Pratt’s assimilationist boarding schools introduces the motif of hair as a symbol of cultural identity and pride. The communal “mourning” at the young man’s loss of his hair humanizes the children and urges indignation at the way white education destroyed their ties to their heritage.

“These ideas bring acclaim to their proselytizers because they give voice to something that feels deliciously taboo for many Americans, something roiling just beneath the surface of polite discourse even if most people would never say it aloud.”

Ewing links clear instances of racist policies from the past to ongoing discourse in the present. Here, she discusses “I’m-just-saying-what-if-ism” (107): Since openly racist speech is now taboo, those who question the innate intelligence of Black students disguise their ideas as “just asking!!!” (135). Understanding History to Address Current Social Issues clarifies that this version of scientific inquiry is rooted in a dangerous history of racism and eugenics.

“From a contemporary vantage point, we tend to selectively call the beliefs of the past pseudoscience when they make us uncomfortable, rather than confronting the reality that they were once considered orthodox science and reflecting on what that should mean for us now. We would never call the early efforts of Galileo, da Vinci, or Newton ‘pseudoscience,’ even though we understand some of their axioms to have been wrong.”

Understanding History to Address Current Social Issues means that rather than simply dismissing “beliefs of the past” as pseudoscience, we must engage with the value that they held in their time. These ideas were taken seriously by the government, sociologists, psychologists, and the public; ignoring them without rebuttal risks allowing them to continue to impact society today.

“You now have something in common with me and with countless other ‘unintelligent’ World War I recruits, the sharecropper from Mississippi or the recent arrival from Sicily who had never heard of the novel Vanity Fair. (In which Becky Sharp is apparently the protagonist. I guessed, incorrectly, that she was an actress. I need to brush up on my nineteenth-century British war fiction.) If my load of coal gets stuck in the mud, I’m totally screwed.”

Here, Ewing uses humor to criticize early IQ tests. Her use of slang words like “screwed” and “brush up” conveys a conversational confession with which she assumes readers can identify. The intended effect is to emphasize that questions about 19th century novels and coal transportation do not actually measure someone’s intelligence. This tone, which Ewing uses at different times throughout the text, mocks early policies from the perspective of reasonable common sense—an added layer to Ewing’s more data-driven critiques.

“The gospel of intellectual inferiority not only harms Black and Native children individually—propagating the idea that our children are lesser, are incapable—but harms all children in this deeper, more fundamental, even spiritual way, by denying all of us forms of knowledge that celebrate the wisdoms of our ancestors, that encourage us to be in good relation to the more-than-human world, to our kin, to our souls and the souls of others.”

Ewing insists that the work of Reimagining Education for Black and Indigenous Students needs to be collective: Readers of all backgrounds should view her work as relevant. Even white students, who are part of the predominant culture and epistemology, are harmed by the exclusion of other knowledges and cultures that has become so prevalent in education.

“So much heart-driven inquiry awaits us if we make space for it—so many other epistemologies. My own position of inquiry has been forever transformed by thinkers like Black queer feminist writer Audre Lorde, who wrote: ‘The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us—the poet—whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.’ Indeed, a great deal of Black feminist epistemology recenters the roles of feelings, intuition, and observed wisdom as critical forms of knowledge.”

Ewing quotes feminist author Audre Lorde to broaden her argument and reach. Lorde reimagines a famous line by French 17th-century philosopher René Descartes proving his existence—“I think, therefore I am.” Rather than centering thought as the primary evidence of being as Descartes does, Lorde foregrounds feeling and love as existential necessities. This focus is key for Ewing’s vision of better schools.

“In schools, discipline and punishment enable us to kill two savage birds with one stone. The treatment endured by young people like Hadden’s students is traumatic and dehumanizing. But just as important, this treatment prepares Black and Native youth for lives as disciplined and punished adults—as docile bodies.”

Ewing literalizes and thus subverts the idiom “kill two birds with one stone,” shocking readers with the new image of a “savage” birds—ones that are possibly fighting back against being “traumatized and dehumanized” like the abused students. This rhetorical device prompts readers to align with Ewing’s perspective on the harms inflicted by “discipline and punishment” the way they are currently practiced in schools.

“As Ross describes, the construction of criminality as quintessentially Native and Indigeneity as quintessentially criminal goes back a long way. Today, a stunning number of Native youth find themselves entangled in a system of harsh penalties and cruel treatment—due, in part, to the legacy of a crime that took place in 1881.”

Ewing’s strategy is to connect history to contemporary issues, showing how today’s attitudes and policies do not emerge from a vacuum. Here, to explain why Indigenous young people today are entangled with the carceral system in the US at such higher rates than other groups, she explores how Indigenous territory has been policed in previous decades and centuries. Citing the work of influential American sociologist Edward A. Ross, whose racist ideas aligned with the Major Crimes Act of 1885, Ewing shows how making Indigenous crimes fall under federal jurisdiction and preventing Indigenous peoples from policing themselves has led to the prevailing assumption that this group is “quintessentially criminal.”

“The United States is a nation of vengeance, prone to retribution when we could pursue healing; drawn to reciprocal cruelty when we could choose restoration. Collectively, we find comfort in reacting with all our might to avenge a transgressor rather than dedicating creative energy toward asking much harder questions about the root of the transgression. […] Perhaps it’s foolish of me, but I do believe schools can be laboratories of the otherwise—places where we try new things, new ways of dealing with the harms we all inevitably enact upon one another.”

A key component of Ewing’s vision for Reimagining Education for Black and Indigenous Students is building love and respect for people. She takes a self-deprecating tone with words like “we” and “foolish,” including herself in both the acts of “retribution” and the need for change. Instead of being authoritative and prescriptive, she acknowledges that she, too, needs to change for the better.

“The typical White family possesses eight times the wealth of the typical Black family. Casual observers are quick to offer simple pathways to closing the wealth gap, often rooted in the need for Black people to change their behavior: ‘get it together,’ save more, create different family structures, or value school more highly. But exactly zero of these theories is borne out by the evidence. Black people don’t actually save proportionally less than White families; being in a home with two married parents does not close the racial wealth gap; and studies consistently show that Black people highly value education—and invest in it accordingly.”

Ewing strengthens her argument by addressing potential counterarguments to her claims. Here, she stresses her interpretation of the statistical fact that white families have more wealth than Black families, by first acknowledging and countering three common explanations for this reality. Her strong diction—that the theories she cites have ”exactly zero” proof—emphasizes her dismissal of these arguments to reaffirm her own point.

“We can imagine these statistics as applied to a group of cars on a track. A car with a White family is zooming around at speed, and the driver has their foot on the accelerator so that their speed is increasing as time passes. The car with the average Latino family is moving at a slower speed, but they are accelerating, such that they will just about catch up with the White family eventually. The cars with the Black and Native families, meanwhile, are broken. They are moving at a low speed…and the gas pedal isn’t working.”

This metaphor, comparing economic progress to cars on a racetrack, makes Ewing’s argument more accessible. Lay readers may find statistics about relative wealth hard to parse, but an analogy to a multilane highway is easier to grasp. The image conveys her point: Black and Indigenous families’ financial growth is stagnant or decreasing—like a car moving backward on a track, while others “zoom” past.

“[These families’] cognitive dissonance likely emerges from the fact that moral goodness and educational success are equated with hard, laborious effort. To be a good person is to work, and to accumulate wealth through that work. To be poor is to be lazy, and to be lazy is to be immoral.”

In an experiment, even when sociologist Thomas Shapiro showed white families that their wealth was largely inherited from their ancestors, these families still asserted that they were self-made—that their success came through hard work. Ewing does not vilify these families, but interprets their inability to internalize their standing as “cognitive dissonance”—analysis that emphasizes how entrenched fears of being described as “lazy” and thus deserving of poverty and prone to immorality are.

“The very same universities whose success is predicated on the seizure of Indigenous land now laud themselves for being bastions of equity and opportunity, while failing to serve as such for Native young people descended from those who once stewarded that land.”

Ewing points out that the Morrill Act, which granted universities land on which to expand their institutions and/or to use to lease or sell for profit, resulted in a great irony. Universities took Indigenous land for profit—yet largely exclude Indigenous students from their institutions.

“When we do that—when we throw up our hands and pronounce that we’re doomed—we abdicate our responsibility to those who come after us, to those who will look to us as ancestors. Further, we disrespect the struggles of those who came before us, who fought and laughed and wrote and built things.”

In her conclusion, Ewing argues that it is not enough to simply lay out the links between historical facts and current issues to see the pervasive and long-lasting flaws of the US education system. Truly Understanding History to Address Current Social Issues means also chronicling the “struggles” of our predecessors against these harmful legacies—work we must continue.

“But I think it’s equally important to acknowledge the ways we have hurt one another—sometimes of our own volition, sometimes as instruments of the state. […] Black and Native people have been forced to fight for survival under the same regimes of terror, within which we have harmed one another in the ways humans living under duress will always do.”

Ewing’s diction is important to her warm, conversational tone. She never scolds, belittles, or places blame. Instead, she repeatedly uses the words “we” and “our,” including herself and her readers in the group responsible for some of the “harms” of the past and the potential for improving the future. By taking partial blame for mistaken biases, she invites readers to examine their own actions and emphasizes the importance of everyone working together toward a solution.

“I humbly offer that braiding allows us a metaphor to think about a different mode of teaching and learning, a lens for reflecting on the ways we are connected to one another and as a practice that teaches us something about how we can be teachers and learners in community.”

Ewing uses a metaphor to begin Reimaging Education for Black and Indigenous Students. Returning to the motif of hair, Ewing compares her ideal of schools to hair braiding: Just as braiding requires teamwork, respect, and care, so, too, must the new model of education.