Nikole Hannah-Jones Shamed by Daughter Over Struggling School Choice

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author behind the 1619 Project, has been publicly shamed by her own daughter for sending a youngster to struggling public schools simply because they matched her Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion beliefs. The controversy exploded after reports confirmed that the fifty-year-old writer sent her sixteen-year-old child, Najya, to poorer, mostly black neighborhoods in Brooklyn even though she had the money to afford elite private schooling in New York City.

In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Hannah-Jones admitted to making this choice. She claimed that wealthier families like hers should boost public systems by attending them and stated she felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good rather than just individual advantage. The reality, however, was far less ideal. Her daughter fell years behind her peers. By age twelve, Najya was already struggling with basic math and writing skills before confronting her mother about being purposefully placed in worse schools.

The tension came to a head during an interview on This American Life. Hannah-Jones described the moment her daughter returned with a list of better options she could use to finish high school. 'She comes back with her list of schools, and I internally cringed,' Hannah-Jones said. She admitted feeling shocked that her child had come up with the exact opposite of her life's work. Every single school on that list screens applicants and has hardly any black kids.

Najya joined her mother in the follow-up interview to berate her for treating her childhood like a social experiment. 'You put me on the line to help a school, but it didn't work,' she said. The daughter did not want to feel dumb just because she was set back in other schools. She specifically mentioned that by ninth grade, she actually felt dumb and thought she did not know anything.

Hannah-Jones rose to prominence through the 1619 Project, a New York Times initiative that aims to reframe national history by placing slavery's consequences at the center of the narrative. In her piece, she wrote that while she and her husband, tech specialist Faraji, both fifty, had the funds for good schools, they decided against it. They chose the type of school wealthy families with choices uniformly avoid: one that is low-income and mostly Black.

She noted their decision was informed by values shaped by years of reporting on the battle for school integration. But Najya told her mother that this approach made no sense because receiving a worse education did little to help other struggling students outside of their immediate circle. The daughter asked why she had to suffer when her mother could have benefited kids in another way.

There are other options available. The author recently shared an op-ed in the New York Times where she admitted to giving her daughter a worse education because she wanted to help the battle for school integration. Hannah Jones says that while she and her husband, tech specialist Faraji, 50, had the funds to send Najya to good schools, they decided to send her to the type of school that wealthier families with choices uniformly avoid, one that is low-income and mostly Black. You didn't want me to have advantages over other kids, isn't that what you want? the teen questioned during the conversation. Is that not a normal thing to want me to have? Hannah Jones told her daughter that she had many advantages in her life, and pushed back: We don't have to actually agree. It's OK for us to see this in a different way. But ultimately, you got into your first choice of high school. But you could have had me way higher in education, Najya responded. Hannah-Jones said her school choice was not just about giving some additional funds to a school, as she believed she could change the power dynamics by being a wealthier family attending a poorer school. The author also defended sending her daughter to public schools in her early years because most of the kids looked like her. She had a Chinese American educator. She had incredible Black educators. She had Caribbean educators. Amazing Black History Month celebrations, she said. But after Hannah-Jones told an anecdote about enjoying seeing Najya create self-portraits in school as a black woman and seeing yourself in that lens and not in the lens of this outside world, the teenager said the experience did not help her. Yeah, I don't really remember a lot from elementary, she said. It was just regular. It was fine... It was just a school that she picked for me. I didn't really care about it. I wasn't ever thinking about stuff like that. Hannah-Jones said she kept Najya at the school even when she realized in her daughter's fourth grade that she had fallen far behind in her education after looking through her error-filled homework. I felt like I was failing my child, like my decision was failing my child. God, I was so worried that I had done wrong by my child in a way that was irreparable, she said, saying she sat with her husband and briefly considered moving Najya. Hannah-Jones said she ultimately apologized to her daughter for sending her to poorer schools on purpose. We felt stuck because those other kids did not deserve not to be taught either and understanding that the consequences for them were going to be so much greater than for my child. These were already kids living in public housing, living in poverty, no power in our society, she said. We would have these discussions. And we would be like, who are we if the moment it gets really rough, we give up? Then what did we do it for in the first place? And in the end, we just felt we couldn't abandon the rest of those kids. Hannah-Jones said she ultimately apologized to her daughter, but said she still believes her intentions were good in her daughter's schooling. The stakes were so high for me personally. I feel like the stakes are so high when it comes to the issue of integration and equality that I couldn't admit to her that, yes, you did bear a cost, she said. And I don't know that we made the right choice. I don't know what the right choice would be.