Reluctant Ghetto Girl: 1619 Project Creator Sacrifices Her Child to Her Leftism

Well, “You can’t choose your family,” they say. This comes to mind with the plight of young Najya, daughter of Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the pseudo-historical “1619 Project.” Mother Hannah-Jones, you see, sacrificed Najya on the altar of her own activism.

That is, despite having resources, Hannah-Jones said that she and her husband, Faraji Hannah-Jones, purposely sent their daughter to a ghettoized public school, P.S. 307 in Brooklyn. She explained herself in a 2016 New York Times Magazine article. She told her husband she wanted Najya in “a segregated, low-income school,” she stated. She then elaborated:

If we removed Najya … from the experience of most black and Latino children, we would be part of the problem.

Oh, meanwhile, the Hannah-Joneses also decided to enjoy life in a $1.5-million-plus home in gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. One could wonder why they didn’t share “the experience of most black and Latino” city dwellers and live in the hood.

This is all in the news again, however, because Hannah-Jones just wrote a follow-up article in the Times Magazine. “In Fighting for Every Black Child,” she asked in her title Sunday, “Did I Betray My Own?” Yet more fundamental questions may be:

“Was I actually fighting for every black child?”

“Or was it all just vanity and ego?”

Keeping Up With the Hannah-Joneses

On the one hand, many may say Hannah-Jones deserves credit. She’s not like a fellow left-wing Brooklynite who, reacting to “diversity” efforts at his kids’ school, responded quite differently. “It’s more complicated when it’s about your own children,” he confessed in 2015. Hannah-Jones is more devoted.

“To what?” is the question.

If it wasn’t to her child, she was just carrying on a long left-wing tradition, commentator Andrea Widburg may say. As Widburg wrote Sunday about the Hannah-Jones story: For centuries, leftist ideologues,

whether anxious to live by their own theories regardless of their children’s needs or to prove those theories using their children as guinea pigs, did terrible things to their children.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,” never intended to be chained to children. Despite being famous for his wholesome child-rearing theories, he consigned all five of his children to a foundling hospital. It’s unknown whether any survived.

Mahatma Gandhi refused to give his son Harilal the same quality English legal education he’d received. When a scholarship opportunity arose that would have benefited Harilal, Gandhi nominated other young men.

Doris Lessing, a hardcore communist in southern Rhodesia, abandoned her two children to ally herself with a communist who rejected the entire notion of family. She later came to regret that decision.

Bronson Alcott, one of the early transcendentalists, kept his family in grinding poverty so that he could live out his ideals, most of which involved him not working.

None of this would surprise journalist Peter Schweizer, who reported in 2008 on moral-character studies relating to liberals vs. conservatives. He wrote:

When asked by the World Values Survey whether parents should sacrifice their own well-being for those of their children, those on the Left were nearly twice as likely to say No.

“I’ll have babies if you pay for them,” one Leftie blogger said on the social networking website yelp.com.

Why, research even shows that liberals hug their children less than conservatives do, Schweizer informed.

This brings us back to young Najya, who eventually learned, perhaps not long ago, about her mother’s scheme. It was a bit like suddenly learning you were adopted — from sanity. “Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” she asked mama. The elder Hannah-Jones also related:

“So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?” she [Najya] said, hurling her words. “Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school?”

Yeah, well, sorry, kiddo, but your mother was busy hugging her ideology.

Reality Is Your Friend

The consequences for Najya were not inconsequential. The A’s she earned at P.S. 307 and middle grades did get her into a competitive, screened high school. Yet serious gaps in her knowledge became apparent once there. School help and private tutoring (so much for sharing “the experience of most black and Latino children”) were required for her to catch up.

Mother Hannah-Jones, however, still hasn’t caught up — with reality. Referencing her daughter’s questions, she wrote, “Najya was asking what I’d accomplished by not choosing the ‘best’ school for her. And the honest answer is, I don’t know.”

I do: nothing.

To echo the Washington Examiner, no sane person would go Hannah-Jones’ educational route. It’s like saying: We’ll find a lousy supermarket farther away and shop there. That way, we can “help improve the place for shoppers in the future.”

In truth, Hannah-Jones can’t solve any educational problems because she won’t even acknowledge what they are.

Claims vs. the Truth

For example, Hannah-Jones falsely asserts that black and Hispanic schools are underfunded. The truth:

P.S. 307 “spends $52,000 per student each year,” the Examiner informs. “The student-teacher ratio is 9 to 1. Teachers at the school make, on average, over $100,000 a year for nine months of work. PS 307 does all the things that leftists have been imploring us [to do] to make schools successful. More money. Smaller class sizes. Good pay.”

In fact, “New York lays out around $42,000 per student on average,” the Examiner adds. This is “double the taxes paid by the average city household.” The outlet then continues:

Yet, in over 900 New York City public schools, the majority of students, somewhere around 400,000 right now, can’t pass a simple state reading and math test. How much more money does New York City need to teach fourth graders basic reading and arithmetic?

In contrast, consider Mississippi. Our poorest state, it’s approximately 45 percent “minority” and spends only about $12,000 per student. Yet its national elementary-school reading and math scores have skyrocketed in recent years. Once 49th in reading, the state is now top 10.

Oh, how this was accomplished is no mystery: by resurrecting tradition.

Also consider Catholic schools. They spend one-half to three-quarters per pupil what government schools do. Yet they also register far better results.

Hannah-Jones further claims that black and Hispanic schools deny the kids adequate access to technology. First, if true, then where are the gobs of money going? More significantly, however, is research linking more tech with worse educational outcomes.

The real problem is something else. As author Peachy Keenan wrote on X Monday, referencing Hannah-Jones’ revelations about P.S. 307:

Why am I just learning now that public schools in the New York city ghetto don’t assign homework, don’t grade tests, don’t respond to parents emails or phone calls, don’t supervise feral, fighting kids at lunch, don’t know or care if their students can read or do grade level math, and give them As on their report cards when they are actually doing F level work?

Why did Nikole Hannah Jones bury this explosive lede?

There you have it. Money and computers don’t discipline kids. Tech and cash don’t establish obedience. New pedagogies don’t quell a zoo-like environment. Strong, virtuous people do. This leaves out Nikole Hannah-Jones, who’ll subordinate her daughter’s well-being to ideology, but won’t do what’s really necessary.

That is, subordinate her ideology to Truth.

Oh, how hard it is for people to admit they’re wrong.