If all children could just get an education, the logic goes, they would have the same opportunities later in life. Chicago award-winning writer, cultural organizer, and UChicago professor Eve Ewing argues that the opposite is true: American schools have helped build and reinforce an infrastructure of racial inequality, going back to the Founding Fathers. Returning to Chicago Humanities to discuss her newest book, Original Sins, Ewing demonstrates that these dynamics persist in a curriculum that continues to minimize the horrors of American history, with the most insidious aspects of this system falling below the radar in the forms of standardized testing, academic tracking, disciplinary policies, and uneven access to resources. Ewing makes the case that we need a profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom. Join us as she helps illuminate a path for a more just future.

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