NYT writer Nikole Hannah-Jones daughter says she only turned out fine after fighting for better high school than her mom wanted
The daughter of writer Nikole Hannah-Jones — sent by her mother to weak New York schools as a racism-fighting “sacrifice” — insisted bucking her mother’s wishes and going to a top high school was the only reason she landed on her feet, a confrontational new interview revealed.“I think I’m fine because I’m in the school I am now,” Najya Hannah-Jones, 16, told her mom in a recent showdown on WBEZ’s This American Life.“I feel like if I picked a different choice that you wanted me to, I don’t think I would be fine,” she added.That shocking comment came a week after her mother released an essay confessing her daughter was left years behind her peers after being deliberately sent to some of the Big Apple’s worst schools, where the New York Times journalist thought her own “time and status” would be able to uplift the predominantly black schools.Instead, Hannah Jones admitted in the Times essay, her daughter simply ended up struggling to do basic math and writing by the time she was 12 — and that the girl was “boiling” mad when she discovered her education had been used as a tool for her well-heeled mother’s social experiment.So Najya insisted she be allowed to choose her own high school and drew up a list of potential candidates — which her mother relented to, but not without misgivings.“She comes back with her list of schools, and I internally cringed,” Hannah-Jones told This American Life.“I’m like, I cannot believe this.My child came up with the exact opposite of my life’s work,” she added.
“And every school on there is a school that screens and has hardly no black kids.”Despite her mother’s reaction, Najya studied hard and got into her top choice.And while she struggled to keep up with classmates when she was first admitted, she’s since caught up and is thriving.And even though Hannah-Jones admitted that she’d “failed” her own daughter to help other people’s kids, she continued to push back on her...