Despite Lester Holt’s deep, honey voice, it’s all about Nikole Hannah-Jones today.

On Thursday at the Columbia Journalism School, NBC’s Lester Holt spoke with The New York Times Magazine’s Nikole Hannah-Jones, a.k.a. Ida Bae Wells, who was recently honored with the 2018 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism. Staff Writer Andrew Wang reflects on the event through Hannah-Jones’ groundbreaking investigative work on school segregation in New York City. “You probably have not read the story; it’s ten-thousand words, I understand,” she said.

In 1939, in the dark era of segregation, Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark began a sociological revolution. Giving black children in segregated schools black and white dolls— fully identical except in skin and hair color—the Clarks studied how the students perceived them. The qualitative data they produced would haunt American history forever: the white doll was good, the black doll ugly.

Years later, the Clark doll study became paramount to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Chief Justice Warren, delivering the majority opinion, declared “separate but equal” unconstitutional on the grounds that it produced in African-American children “a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community.” Thus began the era of de-jure integration.

Nikole-Hannah Jones retells this story in her New York Times Magazine piece, Choosing a School for my Daughter in a Segregated City. But she also presents an unfamiliar argument: that the American education system remains deeply segregated.

“What we’re being told is not right,” Hannah-Jones said at the talk. “And I know it’s not right because I’m seeing this, and it doesn’t make sense.”

Indeed, some suggest that the battle against segregation is an anachronism. Didn’t we fix that when M.L.K. was on T.V. in black-and-white? Others argue that de-facto segregation was a southern phenomenon. Hannah-Jones disagrees. Her work centers on a place perhaps more familiar: New York City, whose public schools are among the most segregated in America. She is armed with facts. In New York, “85 percent of black students and 75 percent of Latino students attend schools that are less than 10 percent white,” she writes.

But Hannah-Jones is also a far cry from the cold statistician who has nothing but facts. “You can’t have objectivity in a nation that works to deny you your basic rights,” she told the audience. “When I write about school segregation, I’m not pretending I’m objective about the issue of school segregation. I think school segregation is harmful to children; therefore, it’s wrong.”

One can’t help but compare her words to those of the Warren court. And yet, while Chief Justice Warren rationalized integration on the basis of African-Americans’ self-internalized hate, Hannah-Jones has a different explanation: that the current logic of integration ultimately benefits white students and parents. Think of the school that has “some students of color, but not too many.” As she argues, “Integration that allows white parents to boast that their children’s public school looks like the United Nations comes at a steep cost for poor black and Latino children.”

In a city like New York, racially segregated schools do not meet this formula of curated diversity. So integrate, some suggest. But Hannah-Jones recognizes that integration strategies in currently segregated schools often create harmful outcomes. For example, school officials often present “rezoning plans” that effectively redraw lines so that white students enter segregated schools. There’s a general formula to this, and one of which Hannah-Jones is skeptical. First, parents and officials attain more resources for the school. Then, they vote to redraw school zones. Finally, middle-class white and Asian parents enroll their kids. Being wealthier, they raise more funds and get more say. They ask to separate their children from “them.” And then, after a brief moment of racial integration, black and Latino enrollment dwindles.

As Hannah-Jones poignantly argues at the end of the piece, “true integration, true equality, requires a surrendering of advantage.” Take it from her: she, despite being middle-class, sent her daughter Najya to a low-income, segregated school embroiled in New York’s modern integration debate. Today, Najya will keep learning at P.S. 307, and Hannah-Jones will keep fighting.

Photo via Twitter