Critical Race Theory, Comic Books and the Power of Public Schools
About this episode
Eve Ewing explains what critical race theory actually is — a graduate-level academic framework — versus the political caricature used to ban classroom discussions of racism. Drawing on her book Ghosts in the Schoolyard, about Chicago's closure of schools in the Black neighborhood of Bronzeville, she shows how technocratic expertise dismisses the knowledge of Black communities and why emotional testimony counts as real data. They discuss how affluent parents effectively choose schools through the housing market, making school choice universal only in name; the importance of compensatory funding; Afrofuturism as a way of imagining just futures; and her Marvel work writing Ironheart, where the origins of a young Black heroine matter. The episode ends with her Studs Terkel oral-history project.