
Original Sins
The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism
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Narrated by:
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Robin Miles
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Eve L. Ewing
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By:
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Eve L. Ewing
About this listen
Why don’t our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they’re actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America’s classrooms were designed to do the opposite: to maintain the nation’s inequalities. It’s a task at which they excel.
“This book will transform the way you see this country.”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
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.
*Includes a downloadable PDF containing a bibliography, notes, and images described in the book.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Eve L. Ewing (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“This stark critique of America’s schools anchors our current educational system in eighteenth-century ideas about race and intelligence. Tracing a line from Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia through Jim Crow to present-day policies on housing, zoning, and standardized testing, Ewing argues that this system was always intended to operate differently for different people.”—The New Yorker
“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
“Original Sins is a commitment to being true about the past in order to truly have a future. Fiercely hopeful, this is a book you will read, and then want everyone in your life to read—a book to be read in community.”—Eve Tuck, co-editor of Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education
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- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Rich Benjamin’s mother, Danielle Fignolé, grew up the eldest in a large family living a comfortable life in Port-au-Prince. Her mother was a schoolteacher, her father a populist hero—a labor leader and politician. The first true champion of the black masses, he eventually became the country’s president in 1957. But two weeks after his inauguration, that life was shattered. Soldiers took Danielle’s parents at gunpoint and put them on a plane to New York, a coup hatched by the Eisenhower administration. Danielle and her siblings were kidnapped, and ultimately smuggled out of the country.
By: Rich Benjamin
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1919
- By: Eve L. Ewing
- Narrated by: Eve L. Ewing
- Length: 1 hr and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, the most intense of the riots comprising the nation's Red Summer, has shaped the last century but is not widely discussed. In 1919, award-winning poet Eve L. Ewing explores the story of this event - which lasted eight days and resulted in 38 deaths and almost 500 injuries - through poems recounting the stories of everyday people trying to survive and thrive in the city. Ewing uses speculative and Afrofuturist lenses to recast history and illuminates the thin line between the past and the present.
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visceral felt and poetically read
- By BF J.V. on 01-30-24
By: Eve L. Ewing
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Ghosts in the Schoolyard
- Racism and School Closings in Chicago’s South Side
- By: Eve L. Ewing
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Eve L. Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures - they're an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together. Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings.
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Great Reviewer
- By Great Reviewer on 05-07-20
By: Eve L. Ewing
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Stuck
- How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity
- By: Yoni Appelbaum
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In this illuminating debut, Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, shows us that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan to Jane Jacobs’ efforts to protect her vision of the West Village.
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land of opportunity
- By Anonymous User on 03-16-25
By: Yoni Appelbaum
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The Dark Path
- The Structure of War and the Rise of the West
- By: Williamson Murray
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 18 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Although the fundamental nature of war has not altered over the centuries, constant change, innovation, and adaptation have repeatedly reshaped how wars are fought in the West. Revolutions in military practice cannot be separated from larger social developments in areas like logistics, finance and economics, and the culture of military organizations.
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President McKinley
- Architect of the American Century
- By: Robert W. Merry
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 19 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Republican President William McKinley transformed America during his two terms as president. Although he does not register large in either public memory or in historians' rankings, in this revealing account, Robert W. Merry offers "a fresh twist on the old tale . . . a valuable education on where America has been and, possibly, where it is going" (The National Review).
By: Robert W. Merry
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Under the Skin
- Tattoos, Scalps, and the Contested Language of Bodies in Early America (Early American Studies)
- By: Mairin Odle
- Narrated by: Lee Ann Howlett
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Under the Skin investigates the role of cross-cultural body modification in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century North America, revealing that the practices of tattooing and scalping were crucial to interactions between Natives and newcomers. These permanent and painful marks could act as signs of alliance or signs of conflict, producing a complex bodily archive of cross-cultural entanglement. Indigenous body modification practices were adopted and transformed by colonial powers, making tattooing and scalping key forms of cultural and political contestation in early America.
By: Mairin Odle
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You Didn't Hear This from Me
- (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip
- By: Kelsey McKinney
- Narrated by: Kelsey McKinney
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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As the pandemic forced us to socialize at a distance, Kelsey McKinney was mourning the juicy updates and jaw-dropping stories she’d typically collect over drinks with friends—and from her hunger, the blockbuster Normal Gossip podcast was born. With listenership in the millions, Kelsey found herself thinking more critically about gossip as a form, and wanting to better understand the role it plays in our culture. In You Didn't Hear This From Me, McKinney explores the murkiness of everyday storytelling.
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Breaking down gossip
- By JASmall on 04-30-25
By: Kelsey McKinney
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Everything Must Go
- The Stories We Tell About the End of the World
- By: Dorian Lynskey
- Narrated by: Dorian Lynskey
- Length: 14 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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As Dorian Lynskey writes, “People have been contemplating the end of the world for millennia.” In this immersive and compelling cultural history, Lynskey reveals how religious prophecies of the apocalypse were secularized in the early 19th century by Lord Byron and Mary Shelley in a time of dramatic social upheaval and temporary climate change, inciting a long tradition of visions of the end without gods.
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A book that I needed
- By TJ Schreiber on 02-19-25
By: Dorian Lynskey
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Spell Freedom
- The Underground Schools That Built the Civil Rights Movement
- By: Elaine Weiss
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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The acclaimed author of the “stirring, definitive, and engrossing” (NPR) The Woman’s Hour returns with the story of four activists whose audacious plan to restore voting rights to Black Americans laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement.
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They kept on keepin’ on!
- By Janie on 03-15-25
By: Elaine Weiss
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Homes for Living
- The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons
- By: Jonathan Tarleton
- Narrated by: Max Newland
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In Homes for Living, urban planner and oral historian Jonathan Tarleton introduces listeners to two social housing co-ops in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Longtime residents of St. James Towers and Southbridge Towers lock horns over whether to maintain the rules that have kept their homes affordable for decades or to cash out at great personal profit, thereby denying future generations the same opportunity to build thriving communities rooted in mutual care.
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A passionate, knowledgeable, and fair parable on the topic of housing and ownership that resulted in work of literary art.
- By Amazon Customer on 04-03-25
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Maya and the Robot
- By: Eve L. Ewing
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Maya's nervous about fifth grade. She tries to keep calm by reminding herself she knows what to expect. But then she learns that this year won't be anything like the last. For the first time since kindergarten, her best friends Jada and MJ are placed in a different class without her, and introverted Maya has trouble making new friends. She tries to put on a brave face since they are in fifth grade now, but Maya is nervous! Just when too much seems to be changing, she finds a robot named Ralph in the back of Mr. Mac's convenience store closet.
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Too much “adult storyline”
- By Christina Williams on 04-02-24
By: Eve L. Ewing
What listeners say about Original Sins
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- james aceino
- 04-11-25
Required reading.
This book should be required reading. It’s not meant to entertain but inform and mortify and light a fire to envision a new way and a better future. Narrator was excellent, though a little slow for my ear, but all in all, wonderful book.
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- Kayla
- 04-08-25
Jaw dropper
This was such an eye opening book. I was dropping my jaw during every chapter.
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- Alonna
- 05-06-25
A must read for educators and everyone!
Dr. Ewing does a fantastic job of exploring the parallel histories of African Americans and Indigenous Americans through themes around colonization, culture, and education. It has definitely made me reflect on my own educational upbringing and becoming an educator in Higher Education. And always, Robin Miles is a fantastic and immersive narrator!
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