Nikole Hannah-Jones had a racial bone to pick with America.

To confront the inequities she saw in New York City’s public school system, the “1619 Project” creator sought to become a personal catalyst for change — by sacrificing her only child’s educational peace and prosperity to the political cause.

In reality, it wasn’t Hannah-Jones who paid a price for social justice: It was her young daughter Najya, who at 16 is now coming to terms with the cost. 

And “sacrifice” is a good way to describe Najya Hannah-Jones’ predicament, because she was made a sacrifice on the altar of DEI.

That’s where children seem to end up in the progressive left’s never-ending pursuit of “the greater good.”

The greater good must come before everything, even if people get hurt.

Even if daughters get hurt.

It’s the natural outcome as American leftists become ever more fervent in their worship of politics.

They’ve embraced an agenda that completely reverses our social poles — up is down, down is up — and abiding by its strictures requires complete devotion.

Nothing can come before politics. Nothing.

Another natural outcome of this religious fervor is the devaluation of children.

In a healthy society, children are nurtured and protected; their needs take priority over adults’ wants.

In the religion of progressivism, children are useful tools — impressionable, controllable, a means to an end.

Like Hannah-Jones, forcing her child into a segregated, failing school.

Like the disturbingly long list of mothers who coerce their toddler boys into believing they are little girls for the TikTok glory.

Like the thousands of women who voiced their support of Lindsay Clancy, demanding her mental health take precedence over the brutal murder of her children at her own hand.

When politics becomes religion, the rituals add up.

We need to destroy white supremacy: Take my daughter.

We must defeat the heterosexual patriarchy: Take my son.

We must normalize female depression: Take these children.

No rationale can break through this religious fervor.

The American left made race the sole issue on which to judge this nation’s progress, pain and prosperity — an absolutist philosophy that necessarily means putting everything else last.

Hannah-Jones chose that creed for herself and her daughter, even though the consequences of sending a young child to a dangerous and failing school can be devastating.

Low-achieving social circles, limited learning opportunities, educational gaps, violence — the list of harms goes on and on.

To Jones, that list was meaningless. Her political faith superseded motherhood.

In a revealing passage of her viral New York Times piece, Jones chats with the principal of her daughter’s middle school, a white woman who has swallowed the racialist orthodoxy whole.

One of the school’s biggest failures was its homework-elimination policy, set so as not to burden its majority-black students.

The principal admits that perhaps the blind focus on racial justice had the unfortunate result of lowering educational standards.

“We must never reduce standards under the banner of antiracism,” she says. “That’s the inevitable trap, isn’t it? It is simply bigotry masquerading as social justice.”

But that’s not a “trap” at all: It is a consequence, one that we on the right have been warning about for decades.

For our troubles we have been called white supremacists, fascists and Nazis.

As it turns out, we were correct all along.

When the outcome is prioritized above the person, the natural result is bigotry in a new form.

The progressive left’s religious devotion to a political agenda has, as that middle school principal danced around so delicately, cursed America’s most vulnerable children with the soft bigotry of low expectations.

And now we’re counting the black Americans left behind by the cult of progressivism in terms of generations, not just years. 

The results speak for themselves, but only now does Hannah-Jones see the end of this morbid road.

Will she ever admit her folly? Will other members of her cult of progressivism? 

I think not.

The tithes have been paid; the ceremonies have been performed.

And now, with Donald Trump in the White House, absolutely nothing is more important to the progressive left than the defeat of their enemies and the rise of a new social order.

The right has been right this whole time, but when politics morph into religious fervor, conversation becomes meaningless.

It’s tragic that our dire predictions proved correct when the cost is measured in the lives of children.

But the cult of progressivism takes no prisoners.

It can only make sacrifices.

Kira Davis is an independent opinion journalist and podcaster living in Southern California.