We covered this story a lot when it broke. Nikole Hannah-Jones, best known as the author and organizer of the 1619 Project, wrote a lengthy opinion piece explaining why she sent her daughter to a poor-performing school in New York City rather than to a better school that she and her husband could have selected.
As you’ve probably guessed, the reason had a lot to do with race. The sub-standard school had primarily black students. The better schools have a high percentage of white and Asian students.
In her story about it, Hannah-Jones makes it clear that, from a very early age — maybe six, her daughter was telling her things at the school were chaotic and she didn’t like being there.
Toward the end of first grade, Najya started sometimes saying she didn’t like her school and complaining how chaotic it was at lunch. I decided to visit during the lunch period and was shocked by what I saw. Najya’s class and another class were sitting at their tables in the cafeteria with no lunch and no adult supervision. Children were running wild, chasing, hitting and pushing each other while the teacher’s aides and cafeteria workers stood by looking bored.
Several times, I had to instruct children to stop striking each other and to sit down, at one point physically pulling two boys apart. When I asked one of the aides why the children weren’t being supervised, she told me the lunch period was short-staffed. After I sat back down with Najya, she told me, “It’s always like this, and that’s why I don’t want to go to this school.”
But Hannah-Jones was on a mission to save the school, rather than trying to save her daughter. And by her own admission, she completely failed to do this. The school didn’t change, except maybe to get worse. The teachers weren’t teaching and weren’t grading assignments. It was a terrible situation to put a bright child into, but Hannah-Jones stuck with it until it was time for her daughter to go to high school.
At that point, she finally had to explain her decision to her daughter. And her daughter does not respond well to the idea that she was some kind of human sacrifice for her mother’s political views.
“So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?” she said, hurling her words. “Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school?”
For reasons that I don’t understand, Hannah-Jones not only made all this public, but is now talking about it and allowing her daughter to be interviewed on podcasts. The good news is that her daughter is not and has not let her famous mom off the hook.
Both Hannah-Jones and her 16-year-old daughter appeared on the podcast, where Najya expressed her thoughts about her mother’s viral New York Times Magazine essay, in which Hannah-Jones revisited her decision to choose her daughter’s school in an effort to challenge school segregation.
Though Najya told the podcast that she had never read her mother’s original essay, she called out her mother’s reasoning for sending her to what she considered a lesser-quality school.
“I didn’t ever agree with her response,” Najya said. “All I know is that I wasn’t having it. I was just like, ‘why? Why am I here?’”
Hannah-Jones was still defending her “intervention” in the school system and still wondering why she should care more for her own child.
“What do we then do? Do we just say, well, there’s nothing I can do? Or do you try in some way to make some intervention? It’s like, why should my child be the one that’s rescued? You should escape what we consign so many other kids just like you to. I just will never feel right about that,” Hannah-Jones said.
Her daughter, who I genuinely feel sorry for, is clearly still frustrated. Aren’t you my mother? Isn’t looking out for me your whole job?
“Why? It makes no sense. You’re talking about, ‘Oh, I’m just going to give you the worst just because it’s not fair that you’ … I didn’t ask to be born. All you’re supposed to do is just put me in a good school. Like, ‘oh, well, I didn’t want to put you in a great school and have you have advantages over other kids.’ Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you want me to have? Is that not a normal thing you want me to have?” Najya responded…
“I wanted better. All the kids in my school that wanted better, wanted better. There’s no benefit that came out of you putting me in those schools. There’s no benefit at all. Could you tell me a benefit?” Najya said.
There’s certainly no benefit to Najya, but there was a benefit to her mother. She got to virtue signal in front of lots of people and was rewarded for her stance. So there was a benefit, but it only accrued to mom. That’s the truth of it. Nikole Hannah-Jones failed as a parent but succeeded as a public progressive. She traded her daughter’s future for a bit of street cred.
Luckily, her daughter was able to wrest control of her own education before it was entirely too late. But it made her miserable for a whole year when she finally discovered how far behind she was and how much she hadn’t learned. She paid a high price for her mom’s preening in the newspaper.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is fighting to ensure America’s kids get the education they deserve.
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