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

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, physical abuse, graphic violence, child abuse, child sexual abuse, rape, death, child death, mental illness, and death by suicide.

During Ewing’s third year of teaching middle school, her colleagues organized a trip to the local jail so that students could see what prison life is like, supposedly to deter them from crime. Ewing was uncomfortable with the idea, which seemed to send the message that the school expected students to end up in prison. Instead, Ewing organized an alternative class trip—viewing a documentary about a poetry slam. Afterward, Ewing was shocked at the reactions from the students who went to the jail. Two of them wept openly; Ewing learned that their fathers were in prison. This story highlights the consistent message that has been sent to Black and Indigenous students for generations: that they were born prone to misbehavior, so the role of school is to control them and to “socialize them to be accustomed to surveillance and control” (153).

Ewing discusses the idea of the school-to-prison nexus, a theory that addresses the design of schools, which use prison-like structures like metal detectors, uniforms, and police officers, and have prison-like philosophies, such as punishment, isolation, and exclusion.