No institution in American life has perpetuated “systemic racism” quite as effectively as the big-city public school system. And no institution has fought harder to preserve segregated communities more than teachers unions.

In a fascinating New York Times essay, “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?” Nikole Hannah-Jones, one of the authors of the pseudohistorical 1619 Project, is thrown into this system, witnesses its inequities, wrestles with its problems, and still lands on the most convenient, prefabricated ideological answer imaginable: racism.