It’s a common refrain to hear that getting an education opens doors, even in a community like Madison with its huge achievement gap. But today on the show, host Ali Muldrow speaks with Dr. Eve L. Ewing, who argues that instead of creating equal opportunities, the American education system perpetuates inequality. Ewing is the author of Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children, in which she demonstrates how schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority.

Ewing asks a deceptively simple question, what are schools for? Though schools purport to create opportunities, they also serve an important ideological function: teaching students what it means to be a person, how to relate to others, and understand social roles. She says that you can’t understand the education system in this country without understanding what it means to Black and Native people. From segregation and achievement gaps to the phenomenon of land grab universities, our educational system is deeply inequitable. 

In describing the painful process of writing this book, Ewing says that “every time I hit the bottom, there was more.” Yet she challenges listeners to question what a “good” school is, to be wary of “opportunity hoarding,” and to research the Land Back Movement. 

Dr. Eve L. Ewing is a writer, scholar, and cultural organizer from Chicago. She is the award-winning author, most recently, of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism, as well as the poetry collections Electric Arches and 1919, the nonfiction work Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side, and a novel for young readers, Maya and the Robot. She is the co-author (with Nate Marshall) of the play No Blue Memories: The Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. She has written several projects for Marvel Comics, most notably the Ironheart series and Black Panther, and is currently writing Exceptional X-Men. Ewing is an associate professor in the Department of Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago.

Featured image: the cover of Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children. 

The post What are schools for? A Conversation with Eve L. Ewing appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.