Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist behind the New York Times’ controversial “1619 Project,” said that reparations for slavery would represent an acknowledgment that “the entire existence of the United States” is tied to a crime.
In an interview with The Meteor about reparations and the nation’s history, Hannah-Jones argued that many Americans continue to resist confronting the legacy of slavery. She pointed to ongoing cultural battles over Juneteenth, the 1619 Project, critical race theory, and state-level limits on classroom discussions of history as evidence of that resistance.
“Paying reparations is an admission of the crime. But it’s not an admission of the crime of a handful of bad apples or a few years of bad policy. It is the crime of the entire existence of the United States,” Hannah-Jones said.
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She maintained that slavery is woven so deeply into the country’s founding and development that its legacy cannot be neatly separated from American public life, suggesting that fully removing its symbols would mean taking down “all the monuments on the Mall in Washington.”
“And so you can have reconciliation when you don’t have to look every day at the people that you visited these crimes upon. My God. But we’re right here in the country that did this to our ancestors,” Hannah-Jones added. “Slavery predates the founding of our country by 150 years. You could never knock down all the statues to enslavers, or you have to remove all the monuments on the Mall in Washington.”
