Nikole Hannah-Jones Reflects on Backlash Over School Choice

Nikole Hannah-Jones, a journalist from The New York Times and the mind behind the 1619 Project, shared her thoughts on the critical responses she received regarding her essay about enrolling her daughter in mostly Black public schools. The reactions, she described, were quite “brutal.”

In a recent essay, Hannah-Jones, who sent her now-16-year-old daughter to these schools in a bid to address school segregation, expressed some regrets about her choice. It comes a decade after her initial decision. Her daughter revealed to her that she wasn’t getting the education she desired, which prompted Hannah-Jones to reconsider her decision.

“Now I felt overcome with regret. Najya deserved better,” she stated in her September essay. “They all did. But she was mine. This girl, my only child, looked to me to protect her, to give her what she needed to thrive. And I had not chosen her.”

Hannah-Jones’ frank admission drew significant criticism from those who felt she had compromised her daughter’s educational well-being for her progressive beliefs. The backlash caused her to reflect on whether she should have shared her story at all.

“I know it would sound crazy if I say none of the critique was valid, but I’m like, what is the critique?” she remarked in an interview. She also noted that while she has faced challenging discussions before, receiving criticism regarding her parenting was particularly hard.

“For a minute I’m like, ‘Man, should I have written this?’ and I’ve actually never, ever as a journalist questioned that,” she explained. “There was a moment when I thought, ‘I did not have to subject myself to this. Should I have done this?’” Yet despite the impact of her essay, Hannah-Jones concluded that she had no regrets.

“You know, in the end, I’m fine. I will be fine. My feelings got a little hurt because I’m a human being. But in the end, like, people are talking about these kids who don’t have a platform, who don’t have a choice,” Hannah-Jones said. She emphasized that her writing contributed to an important conversation that compelled the New York mayor to promise a plan to improve the situation.

“My little bruised feelings in the end are meaningless. It is the power of what we can do with our platform, and what I would argue is our responsibility to do,” she added.

Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and proponent of school choice, criticized Hannah-Jones’ approach. He argued that her framing of the backlash as ‘brutal discourse’ missed the fundamental issue: that she used her child in a political experiment that had detrimental outcomes.

“School choice exists so that parents can leave schools that don’t work. You don’t fix these schools by trapping more kids inside them and hoping your presence changes the system,” DeAngelis stated. “Hannah-Jones tried that. It didn’t work. Her daughter knows it. Parents across the country already knew it. We need to empower families with the financial means and freedom to make better choices.”