‘1619 Project’ Creator: ‘I Don’t Really Understand This Idea That Parents Should Decide’ What’s ‘Taught’ In Schools

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of the far-left “1619 Project” – which has been widely criticized by historians – said during a segment on Sunday that she did not understand why parents should get a say in what their children learn in school.

Jones made the remarks during a panel on NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” when pressed on how parent’s involvement in education shaped the governor’s race in Virginia.

“Well, I would say the governor’s race in Virginia was decided based on the success of a right-wing propaganda campaign that told white parents that they needed to fight against their children being indoctrinated as race – as being called racists. But that was a propaganda campaign,” she claimed without providing any evidence.

“And I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught,” she later added. “I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science. We send our children to school because we want them to be taught by people who have an expertise in the subject area. And that is not my job. When the, when the governor or the candidate said that he didn’t think parents should be deciding what’s being taught in school, he was panned for that. But that’s just the fact. This is why we send our children to school and don’t homeschool, because these are the professional educators who have the expertise to teach social studies, to teach history, to teach science, to teach literature. And I think we should leave that to the educators.”

CHUCK TODD: Welcome back. When The 1619 Project was published by The New York Times, it became an object of both admiration and criticism. The series of essays was named for when African slaves were first taken to these shores and it places slavery and its legacy at the center of American history. Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for the project, but also came under criticism for suggesting that the American Revolution itself was fought to preserve slavery. Few people have spent more time researching, thinking and writing about race in America than Nikole Hannah-Jones, and she joins me now. Nikole, welcome to Meet the Press.

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Hi. Thanks for having me.

CHUCK TODD: Let me just start with this. Describe in your own words what The 1619 Project is and its mission.

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: The 1619 Project is a book now. It began as a magazine and a special section of The New York Times. And what it is is it marks the advent of African slavery in the original 13 colonies. So 1619 is the year the first Africans were sold into slavery in Virginia. And what the project argues through a series of essays is that very little about American life today has been left untouched by the legacy of slavery and the anti-Blackness that developed in order to justify it. So it is trying to place the leg – slavery as an institution, which is one of the oldest institutions in America, really at the center of the story that we tell ourselves about our country, and to explain so much about American life through that lens.

CHUCK TODD: Did you intend for The 1619 Project to become public school curriculum? Or did you intend it to start a debate to improve the curriculum of how we teach American history?

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: Well, when I first pitched the project, I simply pitched it as a work of journalism, which it is. I mean, I’m a journalist at The New York Times, and I pitched a project to run as a piece of journalism in The New York Times. Now, some months in, as we were working on the project, we began to talk about – that this could be a great learning tool for students. Particularly we were thinking about the broadsheet that ran in partnership with the National Museum of African American History and Culture that talks about — teaches slavery through objects found in that museum. Now, The New York Times has an education division. The New York Times regularly turns its journalism into curriculum, as does the Pulitzer Center, who we ultimately partnered with. They are constantly turning works of journalism into curriculum. It’s only become controversial because people have decided to make The 1619 Project controversial.

CHUCK TODD: I think in the last two years, a lot of people have come to realize that our teaching of of history has been — has been incomplete, to be generous, particularly on I would say whether it’s Reconstruction – I mean, we start – talk about glossing over that. Or specifically, think about the Tulsa Massacre and how so many people have said, “I didn’t get taught that.” I grew up in Miami, Florida. I didn’t get taught about Ax Handle

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