Hannah-Jones calls backlash to school essay 'brutal' but says she doesn't regret it

Right · 1Nikole Hannah-Jones, a New York Times journalist and founder of the 1619 Project, told The New York Times in an interview that the response to her recent essay about her daughter's schooling was "pretty brutal". 1 Right · 1In a September essay, she said she regretted aspects of her decision to send her now-16-year-old daughter, Najya, to predominantly Black public schools in an effort to combat school segregation, after her daughter told her she had not received the education she wanted. 1 Right · 1The essay followed one she wrote a decade earlier defending the choice; in the new piece she wrote that she felt "overcome with regret. Najya deserved better." 1

Right · 1Fox News reported that critics accused her of sacrificing her daughter's education for her progressive values. 1 Right · 1In the interview, Hannah-Jones said some of the online discourse was hard because it concerned her as a parent, and that she briefly wondered whether she should have written the piece, something she said she had never questioned before as a journalist. 1 Right · 1She concluded she did not regret her actions, saying her "bruised feelings" were meaningless next to the attention the essay drew to children without a platform or choice, and noting that New York's mayor had promised to release a plan to address the issue. 1

Right · 1Asked whether her daughter might feel differently in ten years, she said she still did not know how to answer, "except it was worth a try. We should have tried. We all should try more." 2 Right · 1Corey DeAngelis, a Heritage Foundation research fellow and school choice advocate, told Fox News that people reacted because she "publicly used her child as a prop for a political experiment" and argued families should be given money and freedom to leave failing schools. 1 Right · 1In a Breitbart opinion column, John Nolte called her decision to sabotage her daughter's education for ideological purposes indefensible, and argued that sending a child to a failing school does not improve it. He also said he believed she did it for content and to signal virtue to Times readers, a motive he asserted without evidence. 2

Right · 1Nolte quoted the essay's account of Najya's school: chaotic lunches with little adult supervision and, in fourth grade, not performing at grade level or reading proficiently. 2 Right · 1Fox News said it asked Hannah-Jones for comment and did not immediately hear back. 1