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

The title of Ewing’s work contains two allusions which will inform the text throughout. The first is the word “miseducation,” which is a multilayered reference to Carter Woodson’s 1933 text The Mis Education Of The Negro and to Lauryn Hill’s1998 song “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” (itself a reference to Woodson’s work). Woodson’s text examines how racism and beliefs of Black inferiority shaped Black education, as reflected in Black educators; the structure of Black schools; and their inherently racist curriculum. All three prevented Black students from succeeding. Ewing’s nod to Woodson’s work emphasizes that these problems persist nearly a century later. Ewing quotes Hill’s song in the Introduction epigraph: “Life squeezes so tight that I can’t breathe / and every time I’ve tried to be what someone else thought of me” (3). This lyric highlights a central idea in Ewing’s text: Black and Indigenous students are hindered by a system that has low expectations for them, forcing them to be “what someone else thought of” them. Both Ewing and Hill ask “why black people always have to be the ones who settle, and why is it that for someone to increase [they have] to decrease” (Besses, Ty. “Lauryn Hill’s Final Hour. A Breakdown of the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” Medium, 2021). 

The second allusion is the phrase “original sins,” which is a reference to the Bible. In the Book of Genesis, Adam commits mankind’s original sin by eating forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. As a result, he and Eve—and their descendants—are cast out of the Garden of Eden as punishment. This allusion highlights the importance of history and cultural legacy in Ewing’s work. Unable so far to rectify the decisions, policies, and perceptions of Black and Indigenous people at the inception of the United States, the education system in the United States continues to suffer from this damning mistake. As Ewing explains, “The sin lies not only in the act of violence, but in the creation of the idea that makes the violence morally permissible” (5). The “creation of the idea”—i.e., the “original sin”—happened centuries ago, yet it impacts education to the present day. Thus, exploring these “sins” is vital to creating change by Understanding History to Address Current Social Issues.

In her introduction, Ewing outlines the argument that she will make throughout the text: that education today is rooted in initial perceptions of Indigenous and Black peoples. First, she introduces the motif of the Race Machine—a process that divides people into arbitrary groups that form the foundation of capitalism in the United States. Groups identified by the Race Machine as non-white, such as Black and Indigenous peoples, are exploited for the perceived advancement of society. For Black students, education as determined by the Race Machine’s sorting centers on subjugation and the formation of a labor class, anchored by the initial belief that Black people were inferior and could contribute to society only manual labor. For Indigenous students, education centers on assimilation and erasure, forcing them to become “white” and abandon their cultures and histories. These ideas introduce The Role of Education in Perpetuating Racial Hierarchies. 

Ewing mitigates her authoritative tone by acknowledging the limitations of a work discussing these difficult and important issues. She explains, “This book is not an ‘ultimate guide’ or ‘definitive history’ or any comprehensive attempt to cover everything” but “an exercise in striving, in gathering stories, in grieving” (15). By eschewing the idea of a “definitive” polemic, Ewing embraces communality and emphasizes the importance of stories, which have served throughout Black and Indigenous histories as a source of legacy and history transmission. In this way, Ewing hopes to “open space for conversation” (15) with her readers so that everyone can work together to create radical new concepts for the youth of the US.