Regular listeners of this show know that we frequently explore interpretations and nuances of abolition. When we think of abolition, we often conjure Angela Davis’ articulation, that prisons are a way of disappearing people and the social problems that are associated with those people. From that framing, abolition tells us to rethink the social problems being disappeared by prisons, in order to address those problems, as a space from which to grow, where no one person, regardless of how exceptional or not, they are, is disposable. Where the social problems people have engaged with, or experienced, or been structured by, have social solutions, as opposed to locking them away, while making no real changes.

On today’s show, we add more layers: How embedded are these social issues, in the United States? How were they not only created, but institutionalized and maintained in just about every one of our, life, if not day to day, experiences?

Our guest today draws clear and direct lines between the civilizing project that was the conquest of the land that the United States is on, the genocide of indigenous peoples of this land, the institutional formation of enslavement of Black people in its both economic and social functions, and the creation and reinforcment of the idea of citizenship, embedded in every one of our institutions – starting, with schools and schooling, where our young folks learn about their roles, their access, and a false idea of American exceptionalism that still now binds a colonial nexus of success with whiteness and christianity, and embeds economic accumulation as the primary priority of not only our working lives, but our very identities.

We’re joined now by award-winning author, scholar, cultural organizer, and poet Eve L Ewing, who is from Chicago, now working as a professor at University of Chicago, and a former middle school teacher in that city. Today, we’ll be talking about her latest book, Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism.

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