Nikole Hannah-Jones just taught us all a lesson

Go where you are loved, not where you are merely tolerated…

Whew! If you missed the news, the culture is BUZZING with excitement for Nikole Hannah Jones.

In case you missed it, Nikole Hannah-Jones, winner of the MacArthur "genius grant" for her reporting on continued segregation in American life and Pulitzer Prize winner for her essay accompanying "The 1619 Project," a New York Times Magazine initiative she conceived on the legacy of slavery in the United States, was being wooed by University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, to become their Journalism School’s Knight Chair, a position that includes professorship and tenure. 

UNC's board of trustees had different opinions. 

Against the school's wishesyet spurned on by doners like Walter Hussman, a 1968 UNC journalism graduate whose name graced the journalism school since he made a $25 million pledge, the Board of Trustees of UNC revoked the tenure. They opted for a 5-year professorship and THEN her tenure would be reviewed. This, of course, is something that has NEVER happened to previous Knight Chairs, all of whom are White, none of whom penned one of the most prolific pieces of journalism that centers Black people in American History. 

Jones (with her legal team) fought back. 

After back and forth between Jones and UNC's Board of Trustees, weeks of terrible press, pressure from the culture, and several other high profile Black professors either leaving or refusing to take jobs at UNC-Chapel Hill, after a vote of 9 to 4, the trustees agreed to give her the tenure.

But HERE'S THE PLOT TWIST: Nikole Hannah-Jones REFUSED the position. 

Instead, she chose to teach at Howard University, one of the most prestigious Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

About this decision, Nikole Hannah-Jones made a statement, saying; 

“I cannot imagine working at and advancing a school named for a man who lobbied against me, who used his wealth to influence the hires and ideology of the journalism school, who ignored my 20 years of journalism experience, all of my credentials, all of my work, because he believed that a project that centered Black Americans equaled the denigration of white Americans. Nor can I work at an institution whose leadership permitted this conduct and has done nothing to disavow it. How could I believe I’d be able to exert academic freedom with the school’s largest donor so willing to disparage me publicly and attempt to pull the strings behind the scenes? Why would I want to teach at a university whose top leadership chose to remain silent, to refuse transparency, to fail to publicly advocate that I be treated like every other Knight Chair before me? Or for a university overseen by a board that would so callously put politics over what is best for the university that we all love? These times demand courage, and those who have held the most power in this situation have exhibited the least of it."

She continues: “For too long, powerful people have expected the people they have mistreated and marginalized to sacrifice themselves to make things whole. The burden of working for racial justice is laid on the very people bearing the brunt of the injustice, and not the powerful people who maintain it. I say to you: I refuse."

We love to see it. 

Honestly, Jones is one of the greatest journalists of our time. To see her so unappreciated because of blatant racism and misogyny is disgusting. I’m glad she (along with the incredible Tanehisi Coates) is heading to an amazing HBCU. 

In her decision, Jones has taught many of us, self included, a master class. Black Women are often the work horses of the society, often doing the labor of both educating about racism, misogyny, womaninsm, homophobia, etc and healing the people who are often guilty of those forms of bigotry and hatred. Jones teaches us that we do not have to accept that additional labor, that we have other work to do, and that we can refuse to do that extra labor in order to go where we are valued, treasured, and loved rather than just tolerated. 

Let this be a lesson to us all:

-don’t settle for less when you are literally the best.

-whenever you can, be the plot twist.

-go where you are loved, not merely tolerated.