“1619 Project” founder and New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones claimed that Kyle Rittenhouse’s not guilty verdict proves the validity of her work.
During an August 2020 riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Rittenhouse — then 17 years old — killed two men and injured a third. On Friday afternoon, Rittenhouse was cleared of all charges. Hannah-Jones and fellow progressives counted the acquittal as confirmation of their worldview.
“In this country, you can even kill white people and get away with it if those white people are fighting for Black lives,” tweeted Hannah-Jones after the verdict. “This is the legacy of 1619.”
In this country, you can even kill white people and get away with it if those white people are fighting for Black lives. This is the legacy of 1619.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) November 19, 2021
“But Trayvon Martin deserved to die because he fought back against an aggressor with no weapon. This is the legacy of white supremacy in action,” she emphasized in another tweet.
But Trayvon Martin deserved to die because he fought back against an aggressor with no weapon. This is the legacy of white supremacy in action. https://t.co/ZzCMaDPmCt
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) November 19, 2021
“Oh: law and order was just a racist dog whistle…” she said in a third post.
Oh: law and order was just a racist dog whistle…
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) November 19, 2021
“Even if you feel the jury got it right for legal reasons, what kind of person are you to celebrate *someone* who went armed to a protest with an illegal gun and killed two people,” Hannah-Jones tweeted again.
Even if you feel the jury got it right for legal reasons, what kind of person are you to celebrate *someone* who went armed to a protest with an illegal gun and killed two people.
— Ida Bae Wells (@nhannahjones) November 19, 2021
Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for the introductory essay of the 1619 Project, which frames American history around the year in which slaves first arrived in the English colony of Virginia. Though her work centers upon decrying the purported systemic racism found within the United States and its institutions, Hannah-Jones once highlighted communist Cuba as “the most equal, multiracial country in our hemisphere.”
“Are there candidates right now or even just places that you think have a viable and sufficiently ambitious integration agenda, and if so, what is it?” Vox co-founder Ezra Klein asked Hannah-Jones in a 2019 interview. After noting that she is “definitely not an expert on race relations internationally,” she responded that “if you want to see the most equal, multiracial democ… it’s not a democracy — the most equal, multi-racial country in our hemisphere, it would be Cuba.”
“Cuba has the least inequality between black and white people of any place really in the hemisphere,” she added. “I mean the Caribbean — most of the Caribbean, it’s hard to count because the white population in a lot of those countries is very, very small, they’re countries run by black folks, but in places that are truly at least biracial countries, Cuba actually has the least inequality, and that’s largely due to socialism, which I’m sure no one wants to hear.”
Reports confirm, however, that the Cuban government has a history of favoring the island’s white population.
“Critics alleged that educational policy and official culture remained strongly Euro-centric,” the Minority Rights Group International says about Fidel Castro’s regime. “Afro-Cubans were not, for example, widely represented in the higher echelons of the ruling Communist Party or in the upper levels of the civil service or state industries. And, with few exceptions, Afro-Cuban women have not yet reached the highest professional strata.”