Posted on 10/06/2026 1:01:34 PM PDT by Red Badger
Imagine your mom and dad intentionally sent you to a bad school. How would you respond?
Some 11 years ago, parents Faraji and Nikole Hannah-Jones dropped their daughter off at school for the first time. Because of New York City’s novel Pre-K for All program, they could apply for any of the 1,800 options across the city.
Instead of choosing the school that was best for their daughter, they deliberately sent young Najya to a school they knew was subpar.
Now they’re left wondering if that decision was a mistake.
On Sept. 20, Nikole Hannah-Jones released an essay examining all of this and more. The title says it all: “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?”
Hannah-Jones, a longtime writer for The New York Times, has spent much of her adult life investigating racism in America. Best known for her work on the 1619 Project, Hannah-Jones also spent significant time reporting on school inequality.
When it came time to send her child to school, however, Hannah-Jones had a difficult choice: prioritize her daughter’s education or fight the “hopeless battle for school integration.” She chose the latter.
To counter the segregation of the New York City schools, Hannah-Jones sent her black daughter to a predominantly black school.
In the essay, she expressed hope that her family’s wealth, voice, and influence would help bring positive change. It didn’t go as planned.
Within 10 months of starting pre-K, Najya found herself on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. According to Hannah-Jones, she “hadn’t intended at first” to write about their decision, but eventually felt the need to speak out against the systemic problems she saw.
And the problems only got worse.
Hannah-Jones writes that toward the end of first grade, she visited Najya during lunch. “Children were running wild, chasing, hitting and pushing each other while the teacher’s aides and cafeteria workers stood by looking bored,” she said.
“It was not the children that horrified me — kids of all incomes are rambunctious at lunchtime. It was the callous disregard of the adults.”
As detailed in her piece, this chaotic atmosphere made learning difficult. By the time fourth grade came around, Najya “was not performing on grade level in any of her academic subjects.”
In the essay, Hannah-Jones recalled that she asked for copies of her daughter’s schoolwork, which Najya brought home in her backpack. A brief glance revealed that none of the schoolwork was graded. So, Hannah-Jones began checking her daughter’s work. She found that most of the answers were wrong.
According to Hannah-Jones, the same problems followed Najya into her English assignments, which were “rife with uncorrected punctuation, capitalization and grammar errors.”
This wasn’t just a fourth-grade problem. In the essay, Hannah-Jones describes how her daughter carried the weight of insufficient schooling into the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades. Eventually, Najya had to speak up.
“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?” she asked her mom one day after school.
As they drove home, Najya rattled off test scores and school ratings, frustrated about being placed in an inferior environment.
Her mother finally gave in. Najya studied hard and was accepted into a prestigious New York City high school, where she is making up for lost time. Her story, however, is far from over.
A recent podcast episode revealed her opposition to her daughter’s desire to attend Harvard due to its status as a PWI — a predominantly white institution.
“I’m disappointed. I’m like, what is wrong with you?” said Hannah-Jones. Instead, she pushed for Howard University — preferring a school ranked No. 73 over one ranked No. 3.
That same podcast episode gave Najya the opportunity to confront her mother: “All you’re supposed to do is just put me in a good school.”
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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Ping!.............
Bad Decision - What would anyone expect a leftist to do?
This is what we are faced with. They will sacrifice their own children for the “cause”. If they are willing to do that, never doubt they won’t kill you if given the power.
Her daughter finally figured it out..............
She’s going to fool around and turn her daughter into a MAGA Hat wearing Republican, standing onstage next to Nicki Minaj and other late in life converts.
Her daughter is lucky Hannah didn’t pull a Lindsay Clancy on her...
She did not fail her child at all, in one sense.
The education system is set up to keep people like her daughter ignorant and dependent on the government, believing she is oppressed by whitey. She was educated that way.
What is bad is that she is recognizing what happened to her and is thinking thoughts that are definitely off the plantation. And now mom is thinking that she may never turn out to be a good slave to her masters in the Democratic party.
“Oh, where did I go wrong?”
What pathetic parents. I wonder if she will beat them when they are elderly???
“To counter the segregation of the New York City schools, Hannah-Jones sent her black daughter to a predominantly black school.” When you care about the “Cause” even more than you care about your own flesh and blood.
But “Nikole” is a leftist, so don’t try to make sense out of it.
Depraved.
Hannah-Jones is an historian who isn’t ignorant of history. A journalist who doesn’t do journalism. And a mother who grievously failed her daughter.
Should be ‘is ignorant of history’….
The author was debunked by real historian Peter W Wood “1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project”. Why do her lies continue?
Keep in mind the hamstringing of her daughter is not a principled stand but a sacrifice to prove her bonafides to the AWFLs.
This ping list is for the other articles of interest to homeschoolers about education and public school. This can occasionally be a fairly high volume list. Articles pinged to the Another Reason to Homeschool List will be given the keyword of ARTH. (If I remember. If I forget, please feel free to add it yourself)
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
Yes, she did betray her own daughter.
And after all that, she is still puzzled as to why her daughter wants to go to a mostly white school.
How clueless can you get????????
The mother needs to ask herself what is wrong with her that she's trying to hard to destroy her daughter for the sake of virtue signaling about race.
Doesn't she realize what this tells anyone about black culture these days?
Gee, thanks mom.
Yup, these are not our grandparents’ Democrats. These are evil child sacrifice worshipping demons.
Very.
“Hannah-Jones is a longtime writer for The New York Times.” Another reason why the NYT is dead. John Updike was a good writer in the 1990’s. Those days are long gone. Garbage NYT.
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