We are not supposed to feel sorry for Najya Jones. Nope. According to her mother, Nikole Hannah-Jones of the atrocious 1619 Project, we are supposed to applaud her for keeping Nayja in failing schools for “the collective good.”

Nikole and her husband their daughter in a school that they KNEW was failing academically. They did so on purpose. 

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.

This was well before Jones wrote her 1619 screed. Now that her daughter has spent the last couple of years being pissed off at her parents about this choice, Nikole ran to the NY Times to write a ‘please support ME’ essay about how HER decisions were made for all the very best woke virtue-signaling reasons. Her daughter’s education? Meh.

Najya was put in predominately Black elementary and middle schools so Nikole and her husband would have bragging rights and show that they were ashamed that they grew up in integrated schools while growing up.

My husband and I had largely avoided segregated schools like these. He and his siblings attended integrated schools that served the military bases where their family lived. Starting when I was in second grade, my parents enrolled me in a school-integration busing program that allowed a limited number of Black students to leave their segregated neighborhood schools for white ones on the other side of town.

Being given access to the most resourced public schools in my hometown allowed me to flourish academically, and I am convinced that the integrated education my husband and I received set the foundation that has allowed us to become the successful upper-middle-class family that my daughter was born into.

This decision wasn’t for Nayja. It was for the “collective good.”  Nikole used her daughter to send a signal about systemic racism.

https://twitter.com/dhr194/status/2101844766120116409

Nikole wrote about choosing to put her daughter in failing schools. That is what got her into the spotlight in the first place. Which led to the 1619 Project. Meanwhile, Najya’s parents were willfully ignoring very relevant facts about their daughter’s education.

No homework

Writing skills were sub par

Math knowledge, nearly non-existent. Nayja couldn’t even do rudimentary long division

They found that out when Nayja went into a high-performing public high school that was predominantly white. Before that, however, Najya and her friends discovered that their school was a failure.

In the outside world, my choice had earned me valor. And yet that day, under the withering glare of my daughter, the words that I was formulating sounded hollow to my ears even before they passed my lips.

“Your school is not bad,” I told her, modulating my voice. “What are you talking about?”

Najya grew agitated. “You know what I am talking about. We looked up our school! We saw the test scores. We saw the ratings.” She ticked off the school’s below-state average reading and math scores, and that it ranked poorly on a popular school-rating website. I said I was aware of her school’s academic rankings, but that test scores alone do not define a school.

Read that again. Nikole soaked in all the applause and kudos from complete strangers. She thrived on it. She built a career off of it. And then, when confronted by her daughter, gaslit her. “test scores do not define a school,” You see, Najya was supposed to absorb and embrace the fact that she was the poster child for helping “dismantle educational inequality.”

“Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?”

Brutal.

Nikole Hannah-Jones sacrificed her daughter’s education for political reasons, and her daughter called her on it — correctly. pic.twitter.com/2Y7UESA3Xh

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) September 20, 2026

Which leads me back to Nayja’s experience as a freshman in high school. Her parents, by Nikole’s admission, were astute co-teachers. Which leads me to ask, how did you miss the fact that your daughter had ZERO math skills when she went into high school? Evidently Najya failing a specialized exam that would aid in gaining admission into high-performing high schools wasn’t enough of a red flag for them.

Oh wait, that’s right. Her parents were writing the 1619 Project, preening before the public, and browbeating UNC into handing her unearned tenure.

Jones insists it was racism and the failure of the education system that led to her daughter’s struggles. Choosing to put their daughter in a failing school for the “collective good” backfired when Najya called her out. 

“So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?” the girl yelled in one fight, according to the essay. “Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school?”

Hannah-Jones wrote of her decision, “We thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and Black school, we could help improve it for all the children there.

And now, Nikole Hannah-Jones is somewhat remorseful.

For years, I had been defending my decision to Najya, trying hard to balance empathy for her with the justification of her father’s and my choices. I wanted my child to see it my way, to see the struggles she was having as part of a lineage and a mandate, to understand the tremendous privilege that I believed inoculated her against the worst consequences of the dysfunction and at times educational malpractice that she and her classmates experienced.

This from the same woman who ALSO believes that parents should have no voice in their children’s schools.

Nikole Hannah-Jones chose “the collective good” and ideology  for NINE YEARS over her child’s education.

It wasn’t the schools that failed Najya Jones. It was her parents.

Feature Photo Credit: Original artwork by Victory Girls Darleen Click