How My Family Chose Excellence Over Nikole Hannah-Jones’s Experiment

My parents chose the best for me.

They chose to send me, a black boy, to a competitive, majority-white and Asian private school. I was challenged with rigorous homework, test routines, and expansive extracurriculars in athletics and the arts. Through my parents’ striving, I got the chance to learn, grow, and succeed – it’s unfathomable that someone would not want this for their child.

Yet the New York Times investigative journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones chose almost the worst path for her daughter, as she writes in her essay, “In Fighting For Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?”

Hannah-Jones enrolled her daughter in underperforming, majority-black schools in Brooklyn to prove a political point: her daughter needed to be in the vanguard fighting against the “new segregation.” Activists argue that private and charter schools, which use admittance tests to filter for merit, perpetuate that “segregation” by funneling resources away from bad schools.

In the piece, Hannah-Jones explains her zealous fight for “integration,” which required sending her daughter to some of the worst public schools in New York City. When allowed to transfer to a high-performing school, the child, now a teenager, realized she had significant knowledge gaps compared to most of her white and Asian peers. This challenged Hannah-Jones’s entire worldview and led her to question her parenting ability.

Yet the essay misses the point by ascribing individual failure to the collective, and maintains that systemic inequality is to blame for the underperformance of NYC public schools. “Segregation” continues if there are disparities in educational outcomes: We live in a “system so devastatingly unequal that it puts at odds trying to be a good person with trying to be a good parent.”

Even if we accept Hannah-Jones’s interpretation of “equity” as a net positive for society, this abstraction has to stop at her child. Reading the author’s ideological self-indulgence at the expense of her child is like watching a sociopath pick the wings off of a fly. When the logical application of equity and community leads a mother to hamstring her daughter’s future, I have to call into question her character.

I believe a parent should do everything possible to make life better for their child. It’s natural to care, in this order, for yourself, your family, and your neighbors. Family life, achievement, and excellence matter more than an overly broad interpretation of community that blames “the system” for an individual’s problems.

My grandfather fled the Jim Crow South for New York to build a better life for himself and my father. He created a successful construction business and raised my father in a stable household, which in turn allowed my father to strive for a better life. Having achieved success, my father raised my siblings and me in Las Vegas, attempting to get us away from the racism he saw on the East Coast. Through generations, my family consistently chose to leave poverty, mediocrity, and apathy behind in favor of personal responsibility, achievement, and excellence.

So, why does Nikole Hannah-Jones’s opinion matter? Because too many well-meaning, usually white, liberals think the solution to racial disparity in educational outcomes is to legislate everyone’s kids, talented or not, rich or not, into underperforming neighborhood schools. Najya, the writer’s daughter, disagrees. “Putting me in this school didn’t change anything. I was not trying to be in this type of environment,” she argues.

No child should be forced to study at an underperforming school, and I’m glad New York’s state government made the right choice this year.

In May 2026, Gov. Kathy Hochul chose to opt New York into the federal tax credit scholarship program, where individual taxpayers can claim up to $1,700 in federal tax credit for donations to nonprofits that grant scholarships to K-12 students. Eligible families will be those making under 300% of the Area Median Gross Income – for a New York City household of three, that amounts to under $458,100.

Starting January 1, 2027, most families living in New York will be eligible for school vouchers to send their children to top-rated private schools, or they can use the funds for tutoring, technology, uniforms, and other needs at any schools they prefer.

Hannah-Jones would see all students suffer in the name of equality, while this new policy aims to uplift students of all backgrounds to the same high standard.

However, the fight is not over. Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on ending gifted and talented programs in NYC public schools, part of his fight for education “equity.” In the meantime, families across New York and America should take advantage of the new federal tax credit scholarship program.

To those who agree with Nikole Hannah-Jones and the mayor: black people are not victims, and we are not a collective that bends to the whims and wishes of teachers’ unions and public-school administrators. We need to choose excellence, as my family did, and give every kid the chance to learn, grow, and become victors.

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Alexander Norton III is the Dissident Project Program Manager at Young Voices, a nonprofit talent agency for classical liberal writers, commentators, and creators.