Nikole Hannah-Jones - an old and too familiar story
After a long weekend in Mississippi, I arrived home Monday to find the saga over investigative journalist Nikole
Hannah-Jones’s tenure at the University of North Carolina finally over.
Instead of remaining at her alma mater, she will take a tenured position at Howard University, a historically Black university in Washington, D.C.
Good for her. Good for Howard and her students. Makes me want to enroll, too.
Hearing the news, I felt like a kid on the night before Christmas. What good things will flow in and through her now? Through her students?
This could’ve easily gone the other way. UNC offered to her the position of the Knight Chair of Race and Investigative Journalism, where she would be the first Black person to hold the position and the first person offered the position without tenure, after a member of the board of trustees challenged her credentials.
Never let it be said that people won’t turn on you. It doesn’t matter how loyal you’ve been, how hard you’ve worked or how long.
News stories said UNC at Chapel Hill faculty were stung by Hannah-Jones’ rejection of their offer. After all, as Audre Lorde warned us, in the eyes of those in power, “it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes.” But they should not have expected her to meekly agree to be their doormat.
“I wanted to send a powerful message, or what I hope to be a powerful message, that we’re often treated like we should be lucky that these institutions let us in,” Hannah-Jones told the Associated Press. “But we don’t have to go to those institutions if we don’t want to.”
She didn’t have to because her credentials are impeccable. Indeed fellow Hussman School of Journalism and Media faculty and staff described her in an online post as “one of our nation’s most-decorated journalists.”
And yet, instead of granting her full tenure like Knight chairs before her, the university offered her a five-year contract. Five years.
Her supporters said the decision was because of her work on the 1619 Project, which focused on slavery’s lasting impact on American history. I don’t doubt it.
Those UNC school of journalism faculty and staff members I mentioned earlier were honest and called it racist.
What else could it have been?
This is what can happen when black folk dare to act, say or do anything white folk don’t like.
Hannah-Jones had done everything right. She played by the rules. She went to school, got an education, a job and worked hard.
Her mistake? She knew who she was before she arrived at UNC, before the world tried telling her who she was. And it’s quite clear to me that she knows her value because her vision is bigger than herself.
In her own words, “it’s not my responsibility to heal the University of North Carolina. That is the job of the people in power who created this situation in the first place. She is headed to Howard University to fill her cup and enrich the lives of students and faculty who will appreciate her talent and genius.
When you know who you are, no amount of money or status is enough to purchase your soul. The old way of doing things won’t work. Symbolism is no substitute for sustenance. Not when you know the difference.
Even if we went in believing the hype that journalism’s first responsibility is to the truth, we learned pretty quickly it was a business by and for white men.
Jill Nelson, author of Volunteer Slavery, will know what I’m talking about.
You get tired not because you no longer believe you can. You just don’t want to try anymore. Life’s too short to dance in circles.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had with an editor early in my career when I told him I felt like I was on a roller coaster. He said, ‘no, a treadmill.’ He was right because he was the short guy manning it.
I would soon trade that newspaper for another one. Freedom can be stopped in the short run but free thinking people will always find another way. And another until you’ve just had enough.
Hannah-Jones said that she had become enraged and humiliated by her treatment at UNC. I know what that feels like.
I hope she’s in a good place now, that Howard University will be good to her because we need more Nikole Hannah-Jones. Not less.
