Among America’s race hustlers masquerading as journalists, few are as pernicious as Nikole Hannah-Jones. The name might sound familiar. She is the brainchild behind the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” a black writers’ forum created two years ago resting on the premise that our nation’s history is an unending saga of white evil. She also may be on the verge of showing her litigious side. More on that later.
These past several years, the press has pulled out the stops to accommodate black grievances. Its advocacy likely was a major factor in the outbreak of rioting in scores of U.S. cities last year that continues to this day. It is a bitter harvest of the shibboleth that white America needs a “reckoning.”
Business chieftains have responded with sympathy and money. By the end of last December, corporations already had committed $35 billion to Black Lives Matter-allied organizations. Individual CEOs also opened their wallets. In a dramatic gesture, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey provided $10 million in seed money to Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, a project of black revolutionary author Ibram X. Kendi.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, a mixed-race black, fits in here. Born in 1976, the Waterloo, Iowa native put her racial animosity on full display at a young age while as a Notre Dame undergraduate. In a 1995 letter to the editor of the campus newspaper, she opined, “The white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager and thief of the modern world.” She’s still going at it. “No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the 250 years of slavery that followed,” Hannah-Jones wrote for The 1619 Project. That many whites were “indentured servants” (i.e., slaves) and that blacks often owned other blacks, apparently haven’t registered with her.
Hannah-Jones’ recent writings are rife with woke clichés. “Systemic racism,” “white privilege,” “mass incarceration” – they’re all there. It is little wonder, then, that her employer these past several years has been the radicalized New York Times. Executive Editor Dean Baquet, himself black, hired her in 2015 to cover race-related issues. She proved an apt employee, so much so that the MacArthur Foundation in 2017 rewarded her with a five-year, $625,000 “genius” grant.
Her profile rose further in August 2019 when, with Baquet’s blessing, she launched “The 1619 Project” in the Times Sunday magazine, so named because 1619, the year in which African slaves were first brought to our shores, was our nation’s “true” founding. Hannah-Jones doesn’t see much to like about the ensuing four centuries. Sample insight: “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.” In other words, blacks must receive sole credit for our nation’s achievements.
Such incendiary nonsense is reaching a mass audience, thanks in part to Oprah Winfrey. Last July, Winfrey, the New York Times and Lionsgate Entertainment announced “a wide-ranging partnership” to develop a TV series, movies and other content inspired by The 1619 Project. Oprah tweeted: “When the #1619Project came out almost a year ago, I stood in tearful applause for the profound offering that it was giving our culture and nation. Today, I am honored to be a part of @nhannahjones’ vision to bring her transformative work to a global audience. Stay tuned, y’all.”
Meanwhile, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The 1619 Project’s official education partner, has distributed project-approved curricula to about 4,500 elementary, secondary and higher education classrooms. The materials include reading guides, lesson plans and extension activities. To date, at least five local public school systems – Buffalo, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Wilmington (Del.) and Winston-Salem – have adopted this pedagogy.
Shocker alert: Ms. Hannah-Jones last May won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary journalism. The prize board praised her for “a sweeping, deeply reported and personal essay for the groundbreaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.”
Her reporting was neither deep nor accurate, responded a group of respected academicians. Last May, the New York City-based National Association of Scholars called upon the Pulitzer board to rescind its prize to Ms. Hannah-Jones, asserting that The 1619 Project and Hannah-Jones’ lead essay in particular were riddled with “serious factual errors, specious generalizations, and forced interpretations.” She did not respond to any of the criticisms. The only change made by the Times was a mild softening of a passage claiming the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery.
Suitably impressed with Nikole Hannah-Jones, the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media offered her a tenure-track appointment this April. It was a homecoming of sorts; Hannah-Jones had received a master’s degree from the university. The dean of the Hussman School, Susan King, glowed: “Now one of the most respected investigative journalists in America will be working with our students on projects that will move their careers forward and ignite critically important conversations.”
Euphoria would be short-lived. Due in part to public criticism of the hiring, the UNC board of trustees in May vetoed the automatic grant of tenure though it did approve the hiring itself. A university spokesperson stated that “details of individual faculty hiring processes are personnel-protected information.” Hannah-Jones reportedly is considering suing the university. The lady wants tenure. Nearly 40 journalism school faculty members supported her in an online statement.
As a public intellectual, Nikole Hannah-Jones is a disaster. But she’s in good company with the chorus of claims that America is one long racist lie. She and like-minded activists are determined to continue rewriting history to their liking. They are demagogues. Their “reckoning” can’t come too soon.
Carl F. Horowitz is a Washington, D.C.-area policy consultant. Previously, he had been Washington correspondent with Investor's Business Daily, housing and urban affairs policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation, and assistant professor of urban and regional planning at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. He has a Ph.D. in urban planning and policy development from Rutgers University.
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