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

Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism is a 2025 nonfiction work by Eve L. Ewing. The text examines the history of education in the United States regarding Black and Indigenous students, exploring the ways that early policies continue to impact this system today. Black and Indigenous peoples have served as the “Other” on which US capitalist society was built—and this idea is reflected in the way that these students have been educated. Understanding this history is the key to changing a broken system, which Ewing argues is vital to the future of Black and Indigenous children. Through historical research, personal experiences, and descriptions of contemporary education, Ewing explores themes of Reimagining Education for Black and Indigenous Students, The Role of Education in Perpetuating Racial Hierarchies, and Understanding History to Address Current Social Issues.

This guide uses the first hardcover edition of the text published by One World in 2025.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism, physical abuse, graphic violence, child abuse, child sexual abuse, rape, death, child death, mental illness, and death by suicide. In particular, the text explores anti-Black and anti-Indigenous rhetoric and discussions of slavery.

Language Note: The source text includes racially insensitive and outdated language when quoting sources. Ewing chooses to capitalize the word “White” throughout the text and quotations from the source text preserve this choice throughout the guide. Additionally, the text uses the term “Native,” to refer to Indigenous Americans. This study guide reproduces this language only in quotations; elsewhere, it refers to Indigenous people.

Summary

Ewing opens Original Sins with a discussion of what education means. To Americans, it means the achievement of the American Dream, as education ostensibly creates equal opportunity for everyone to find success through hard work. However, for Black and Indigenous students, the nature of the education system undercuts this idealized vision.

Ewing explains that since its inception, education in the United States has been designed around the white population, while having very different goals for Black and Indigenous students. For Black students, Ewing argues that the goal has been subjugation and the creation of a labor force. For Indigenous students, the goal was destroying their identity and forcing assimilation.

Ewing identifies three historic pillars of educational philosophy. The first is the assumption that non-white children are intellectually inferior, which has created separate goals, expectations, and education systems. The second is that discipline and punishment are cornerstones of the treatment of Black and Indigenous students, who Ewing claims are seen as innately uncivilized and unruly. The last is the subjugation of non-white people, which allows white supremacy to take advantage of them as a source of labor—and limit their advancement. 

Ewing acknowledges that conversations around this topic are difficult. She also identifies two potential critiques: that she has combined Black and Indigenous students, and that her work ignores other non-white groups. However, she aims to make the differences between Black and Indigenous histories clear, while also highlighting the importance of discussing them together. She also encourages other non-white readers not to be upset over their exclusion, which was not her goal.

Ewing explores the origins of education in the United States for Black and Indigenous students. In the late 1800s, the predominant theory—as expressed by influential figures like Thomas Jefferson—was that Black people were intellectually inferior. As a result, while white schools focused on leadership and the perpetuation of democracy, Black schools emphasized the importance of agriculture and physical labor. In this way, Black schools served to find the best ways to re-subjugate Black children after the end of enslavement, seeing them primarily as a labor source.

For Indigenous students, the primary goal of late-19th century education was assimilation. The government turned to General Richard Henry Pratt, who took a handful of Indigenous prisoners of war and attempted to deracinate them by cutting their hair, changing their clothes, forcing them to work and live as white men. Using Pratt’s project as a guide, early Indigenous boarding schools established across the United States focused on forced assimilation and the erasure of Indigenous culture.

For both Black and Indigenous students, believed to be intellectually inferior and incapable of participation in white society in their current state, civilization and servitude became key components of their schooling. Schools in the late 1800s and early 1900s used rigid structures, punishment, and even forced labor, as tools for education.

To reaffirm their beliefs about Black and Indigenous intelligence, researchers and school officials turned toward testing. The IQ test was developed to test child intelligence, with questions that were heavily based on lived experience. As Black and Indigenous children regularly underperformed, predominant thinkers considered this proof that children of color were intellectually inferior to white children. Today, schools continue to use standardized testing—rooted in a history of racism and ignorance—as a tool to determine aptitude, school funding, and teacher success.

Ewing then discusses the school-to-prison nexus—the idea that Black children are predominantly pushed out of the education system and toward the prison system. Some policies and procedures—forcing children to wear uniforms, teaching them how to walk, choosing when they can eat and use the bathroom, suspending them for minor violations, and more—replicate prison. While white children are taught to be imaginative, expressive, and lead, Black children are taught how to behave and how to be controlled.

Similarly, Indigenous children are inherently viewed as uncivilized. Since the US government can step in and take over the investigation of any crime committed on Indigenous land, a vast number of federal crimes are believed to be committed by Indigenous youths. A secondary effect is that Indigenous people are viewed as unable to police themselves, with police-Indigenous relations deteriorating as a result. Ewing argues that this creates erasure, as Indigenous cultures are dismissed and Indigenous peoples are not respected enough to make their own decisions.

These attitudes are reflected in school. Units on Indigenous histories emphasize savagery, portraying them as aggressors against heroes like Christopher Columbus. Like Black students, Indigenous students are militaristically controlled, forced to cut their hair, follow strict rules, and erase their own culture in favor of whiteness.

Ewing then explores the idea of capitalism as it has been constructed in the United States. The upper class thrives by building society on the work of the lower classes, consistently made up of non-white peoples. Black and Indigenous populations are thus restricted from achieving the American Dream in areas like income and property ownership.

Income plays a key role in one’s ability to succeed in the capitalist US. Black and Indigenous peoples often lack the same economic opportunities as white people because of discrimination in employment, generational wealth, and low expectations for Black and Indigenous students.

Property has always been a key measure of success in the United States, where citizenship was initially determined by land ownership. However, due to the theft of Indigenous land, the Dawes Act allowing the government to seize and hold Indigenous land in trust, and Indigenous emphasis on stewardship of land rather than ownership, Indigenous peoples lack the same access to property. Similarly, in the 19th century, newly freed Black men focused on building their homes and families, largely refusing to participate in the land accumulation of the capitalist system. 

In her conclusion, Ewing admits that the solution to these problems in education is not easily addressed. It may require creating something new to truly educate Black and Indigenous students. However, she emphasizes the importance of both groups working together as they have throughout history to build an education system centered on care and love.