A Message from Nikole Hannah-Jones
We are bombarded by information on our favorite channels, influencers or newsfeed. How discerning are you? And when you hear something that sounds “off,” do you go digging to find the facts?
CNN is a popular news source for many business people. In August of this year, TV fitness personality Jillian Michaels appeared on a CNN talk show. There she expressed her support of the U.S. President’s executive order to remove “divisive or partisan narratives” from the exhibits at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Check out the response from Nikole Hannah-Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and creator of The 1619 Project:
“I do not usually do these videos, but as a creator of the 1619 project and someone who has studied the history of slavery for three decades, I could not let that viral CNN clip of Jillian Michaels stand.
“I have to first state that the times are far too serious and dangerous for us to lend our platforms to harmful nonsense. It’s simply irresponsible with everything that’s happening in this country to have someone on a major network show legitimizing the erasure of our history…”
Watch Nikole Hannah-Jones Full Video Response
“…The United States economy and political systems were built in significant part by slavery. This is simply undeniable. Without slavery, our nation would be unrecognizable to us. We cannot let them choose the parameters of the conversation in order to obfuscate the truth. That is disinformation. And the times are too serious for us to proliferate a simplistic, unsophisticated, and childish understanding of the history of slavery in the United States…This mythology is being used to justify erasing our history because they want to erase our rights.”
What’s something you’ve heard in your organization that you simply “cannot let stand”?