Perverse priorities made Nikole Hannah-Jones put her cause before her child

New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones thought she was making her educational choices to favor the interests of black people, and she was — just the wrong ones.In a long essay for The New York Times Magazine, the radical African-American journalist writes about how her decision to send her daughter to dreadful New York City public schools for ideological reasons ended in tears. Jones, who achieved notoriety for her role as an editor of the paper’s “1619 Project,” believed that putting her daughter in rotten elementary and middle-school schools would strike a blow for racial equity. In her view, it’s unfair that so many black kids are trapped in under-performing New York City schools.If she trapped her own daughter in them, the thought, she and her husband — with their superior wherewithal — could make the schools better for everyone. What started as a project motivated by a savior complex ended as an episode of educational Munchausen syndrome by proxy.Her bright young daughter fell far behind where she could have been academically.Most parents who are paying attention and who have the means would immediately get a kid out of a school where there are fights during the lunch period, where there is no homework, where the principal and teachers are routinely absent, and where schoolwork isn’t graded — but Nikole Hannah-Jones persisted. By the time her daughter was old enough to realize what was going on and force her mother to let her apply to better high schools, she knew no algebra despite getting excellent grades in math at the subpar schools. Hannah-Jones should be furious at the adults who failed her daughter so abysmally.But she is, in effect, still on their side — by portraying school choice as a racist scam and complaining about a lack of resources. The New York City officials, administrators, principals and teachers who are blighting the futures of young people aren’t white supremacists.By and large, they agree with Nicole Hannah-...