Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the ahistorical, politically driven "1619 Project," made a startling admission over the weekend. In a damning and heartbreaking article, Hannah-Jones admitted she knowingly ruined her daughter's education to serve a political agenda. For most parents, including this writer, the goal is to give their children a better life and better opportunities than they had.
That's not to say this writer or other parents had bad childhoods. Quite the contrary. But every good parent wants their child to have something they didn't. Unless you're a leftist, it seems. In that case, your political agenda comes before the wellbeing of others, including your own offspring.
“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?”
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 20, 2026
Brutal.
Nikole Hannah-Jones sacrificed her daughter’s education for political reasons, and her daughter called her on it — correctly. pic.twitter.com/2Y7UESA3Xh
Here's some of that article (emphasis added):
I could feel her looking at me. Her body slung in adolescent impertinence against the front passenger seat door, shoulders turned so she could face me fully. Usually when I picked up my daughter, Najya, from middle school, she’d tumble into the car and bombard me with the day’s escapades, chattering nonstop about her friend group or complaints about an annoying teacher or her wonder at the test she’d aced despite thinking she’d failed it. But not this day.
“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” she asked.
...
By dismissal time, Najya’s shock had turned to boiling, and the seatbelt had barely clicked before she was confronting me.
I had braced myself for this moment, spent nearly a decade expecting it, preparing for it. When Najya was entering pre-K, my husband, Faraji, and I decided to send her to the type of school that wealthier families with choices uniformly avoid — one that is low-income and mostly Black. Our decision had been informed by values shaped by my years of reporting on the enduring and too often seemingly hopeless battle for school integration.
...
But my child just shook her head, her face a mask of disbelief, and something else: betrayal.
“So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?” she said, hurling her words. “Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school?”
Najya was asking what I’d accomplished by not choosing the “best” school for her. And the honest answer is, I don’t know. When it comes to the choices my husband and I have made about public education, these days I feel that I failed both my values and my child.
...
Then one day in December, Najya came home and excitedly informed me that she had suddenly jumped three grade levels in reading in one month. Knowing that this was virtually impossible, I reached out to the school’s literacy coach and learned that after we began asking for the reading assessment, Najya’s teacher had instructed the coach to perform the evaluation and that she found Najya was reading just fine. What became clear to me was that Najya’s teacher had most likely never performed the school’s mandatory reading assessments for Najya or any of her classmates but instead had assumed the flagging competency of these mostly low-income Black children.
Finally, a few days before school let out for winter break, I received a folder in Najya’s backpack with the math assignments I had been requesting since our conference. Once I tucked her into bed, I sat at my dining room table and scanned one page, then another and another. None of them were graded. I started checking Najya’s work and discovered most of her answers were wrong. Najya believed herself to be good at math — it was her favorite subject. But now I understood she thought she was correctly solving all her problems because her teacher was not checking her work. Similarly, Najya’s writing assignments were rife with uncorrected punctuation, capitalization and grammar errors.
The entire thing is a damning indictment of leftist politics. Hannah-Jones tried to justify her decision to her daughter.
Then she tried to justify the decision to her: pic.twitter.com/6efVZ81cDy
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 20, 2026
"Glancing between her and the road, I told her everything that I had said a hundred times on stages, in interviews, in discussions since I had made her a symbol of how the choices we make can help sustain — or dismantle — educational inequality," Hannah-Jones wrote. "Even if her schools were not academically the strongest, I explained, her father and I knew that we could provide for her tutoring and any other assistance to make up for what her school may have lacked."
Okay, but how does that help address the inequalities Hannah-Jones sought to "dismantle"? Surely most of the families in that school couldn't afford private tutoring, and it's clear the teachers weren't doing their jobs — whether out of laziness or incompetence, or some combination of both.
Now Hannah-Jones is "overcome with regret."
NHJ is now “overcome with regret.”
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 20, 2026
Her daughter says, “Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me.”
Brutal. pic.twitter.com/iH6aVLy6uX
"Najya deserved better. 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," she wrote.
And therein lies the heart of leftist ideology: they do not choose what is best for their own children. How can they possibly do that for you or yours?
Not many people would be willing to sacrifice their children's education to pursue their ideology. That's a certain kind of vanity.
— AAE (@AAC0519) September 20, 2026
It's evil.
We have to wonder if Hannah-Jones' daughter was going to go public with this, or what prompted a sudden mea culpa in The New York Times Magazine.
This writer suspects the daughter was going to go public with this.
Nikole Hannah-Jones says her daughter read her essay.
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 20, 2026
“Her main feedback: I was not hard enough on myself.” https://t.co/HEPRDxD2fK pic.twitter.com/9k7hIub49T
This is actually quite sad.
Nikole Hannah-Jones got a MacArthur “genius” grant and a magazine cover for putting her daughter in a failing school as a civic sacrament. Ten years later the kid can’t do fractions, failed the algebra exam after collecting A’s, and asked her mother why other children’s… https://t.co/Brvz3lBW0K
— Henry Mack (@HenmackIII) September 20, 2026
"Ten years later the kid can’t do fractions, failed the algebra exam after collecting A’s, and asked her mother why other children’s disadvantage mattered more than her own education. That’s not integration. That’s a byline with a body count of one," Mack wrote.
And Hannah-Jones got awards for this.
Editor's Note: President Trump is fighting to ensure America's kids get the education they deserve.
Help us fight back against Big Government waste and restore power to the states. Join Townhall VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the Conversation
VIP members get the ability to comment on articles.