The founder of the New York Times’ 1619 Project and Pulitzer Prize winner wrote a letter as a sophomore, colorfully condemning all white people in a barnstorming screed to the editor in Notre Dame’s The Observer.
A common theme in recent weeks has been anti-white racism, following the Black Lives Matter-led backlash that ensued after the in-custody killing of George Floyd. Several opinion pieces promoted fallacious notions of so-called “white privilege” – which is now widely accepted as gospel to many.
Nicole Hannah-Jones wrote a piece titled “Modern Savagery” in 1995 where she accused the “savage” white race of being “the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world,” in a letter exercising questionable historical understanding.
She claims that white people have “committed genocide against cultures that have never offended them in their greed and insatiable desire to control and dominate every non-white culture,” bolstering the claims within her letter.
“Christopher Columbus and those like him were no different then [sic] Hitler,” she goes onto add, before suggesting that Native American and Africans traded technological and harbored a mutual respect. Aztec pyramids and Olmec heads were allegedly a testament to their long-standing friendship.
