The AP Interview: Nikole Hannah-Jones’ warning on democracy

“The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story,” and “Born on the Water,” a picture storybook collaboration with co-writer Renée Watson and illustrator Nikkolas Smith, each have spent consecutive weeks atop the Times bestseller list since their Nov. 16 release. A TV documentary on the work is due out later in 2022.

Still, Hannah-Jones said the backlash to her work is evidence that the U.S. is approaching a make-or-break crossroads on its global standing as a democracy.

“I think that we are in a very frightening time,” she said in the interview at AP’s New York City headquarters.

“People who are much, much smarter than me, who have studied this much, much longer than I have are ringing the alarm,” Hannah-Jones said. “I think we have to ask ourselves … the narrators, the storytellers, the journalists: Are we ringing the alarm in the right way? Are we doing our jobs to try to uphold our democracy?”

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

AP: If anything, what did this year teach you about where we are in our country currently, when it comes to racial justice and our reckoning with history?

HANNAH-JONES: This year, to me, is just reflective of what I’ve always understood about this country. And that is that steps forward, steps towards racial progress, are always met with an intensive backlash. That we are a society that willfully does not want to deal with the anti-Blackness that is at the core of so many of our institutions and really our society itself.