Eve L. Ewing knows Chicago Public Academic institutions from the within: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. Which perspective has shown her that general public schools are not buildings full of failures-they’re an integral part of their neighborhoods, in the centre of their neighborhoods, storehouses of history and memory space that bring people together.

Hardly ever was that function even more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of college closings. Pitched about Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and College Closings in Chicago’s South Part simultaneously as a remedy to a budget problem, a reply to declining enrollments, and a chance to purge bad schools which were dragging down the complete system, the program was met using a roar of protest from parents, college students, and educators. But if these academic institutions were so bad, why do people care so much about keeping them open?

Ewing’s answer starts with a tale of systemic racism, inequality, poor trust, and distrust that stretches deep into Chicago background. Black communities start to see the closing of their schools-schools that are certainly less than perfect but that are theirs-as yet another in an extended type of racist policies. The fight to maintain them open is certainly yet another front in the ongoing struggle of black people in the usa to build effective lives and attain true self-determination.