
By Selwyn Duke
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?”
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