Nikole Hannah-Jones Exposes Why 'Black Identity' Fails Black Kids | Jason Whitlock Harmony

Jason Whitlock (0:00)

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times author, wrote 8,000 words confessing she sacrificed her daughter, Najya, on the altar of race. She had the money, the platform, and the choices, yet she enrolled her daughter in an inferior school, PS 307, to prove a point about segregation. She admitted that her daughter begged for Notre Dame while she preached loyalty to failing schools. Her daughter paid the price in classrooms where excellence was suspect and failure was normal. That is what I unpacked yesterday on this show, a mother who chose ideology over her child and then blamed America for the bill coming due.

Today, the panel picks up where we left off yesterday with her confession. TJ Moe, Shemeka Michelle, Dre Baldwin, Delano Squires joined the conversation. Did Hannah Jones accidentally expose the failure of black identity itself, a faith that promises belonging and delivers broken schools and bitter children? Has that identity harmed black Americans more than it helped? What replaces it is Christian faith, family responsibility, and the courage to choose excellence over grievance. Parents face the same choice Hannah Jones faced. Race, faith, schools shaped this debate about the future of our children and what they will inherit. Loving your child sometimes means rejecting racial loyalty and peer pressure to choose what is best for your child. That answer determines far more than test scores. So, let's bring in our panel, Shemeka Michelle, Dre Baldwin, Delano Squires and TJ Moe. I asked these guys yesterday to watch yesterday's show.

I think they did. I certainly asked them to read the Hannah Jones piece. Delano, you're our resident expert here. You've been talking about these issues, school choice, black children, the family.

What did you think of Hannah Jones' piece and the choice she made for her daughter?

Delano Squires (2:27)

I thought the piece was a necessary reflection on, obviously, a decision she made 10 years ago. I will say this, one thing I respect about Nikole Hannah-Jones more than many progressives, is that for lack of a better term, she put her proverbial money where her mouth is. Because what a lot of progressives do, is that they advocate goofy policies and ideas, and then they say, well, that's for their kids, and then let me put my kids in a different school. But she said, no, I'm going to live my values, and I have a certain amount of respect for that. So it was a well-written piece. I read the entire thing, I shared it with some people I know, including some close family who were educators in Brooklyn.

But the thing that stuck out to me, there's a few things. One, Nikole Hannah-Jones believes that proximity can be equated with performance. She said this, like, when she was making this decision 10 years ago, she said something to the effect of, well, you know, when a New York Times reporter shows up in this school, things get, you know, things f-ing change, or something to that effect.

She also believes that the key to improving black student outcomes is for children, black kids, to have more white classmates, right? Her entire worldview around improving outcomes for black students is predicated on racial integration. I reject that position completely.

Jason Whitlock (3:59)

You've confused me, Sir. She sent her daughter to an all-black environment, but she wants her daughter in an integrated environment or...

Delano Squires (4:08)

That's correct. That's correct. So when she says integration is two-part, the main part of integration is racial integration, right? I.e.

more white students, which is why she talked about it when she got to the point where they were choosing a high school for her daughter. The other part of it, the secondary part, is economic integration. So this is where you can include families like hers, right? Solidly middle class, upper middle class to be quite frank.

Sending their kids to predominantly low-income schools in the neighborhood, because that's the other thing that's important. For her, the neighborhood school. I think that is an institution that's worth preserving and worth participating in, even for families like her that have more resources.

So she tends to confuse proximity for performance. But I think the biggest part of this is just, Nikole Hannah-Jones, TJ Moe, Fearless Soldiers Nikole, New York Hannah-Jones Times Magazine has, Conservative a particular Voices, Dre world Baldwin view, BlazeTV. It's, Delano a left-leaning Squires, Delano progressive Squires, Shemeka Michelle ideology and that Najya rejects.

the idea that there is an order to love and duty and responsibility. You hear her daughter speaking to this when she's like, well, you have an obligation to me, not all these other kids. But for Nikole Hannah-Jones, she doesn't really see that. I think that's one of the reasons why she was willing to put her daughter in that type of position. And I'll say this, and then I'll stop right here. I understand the choice. When my wife and I were still living in Washington, DC, and our eldest, who's 10 now, was three and in DC, pre-K starts at three years old. We went through an exhaustive process of looking for the right pre-K for her. And we went to several schools. I was the one who kept a spreadsheet on all the different schools and outcomes, distance from our home, outcomes based by race, because sometimes you'll see a school and it'll be 75% of the kids are reading at grade level, but only 45% of the black students.