Coleman Hughes is a charismatic spokesman for good ideas
The
End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America was published on
February 6, 2024, by Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Thesis was
established in spring, 2023 in order to publish "urgent idea-driven
nonfiction by thought leaders, journalists, and experts with a strong point of
view." The book is 235 pages long, inclusive of appendices, notes, and
index. The pages are small. The font is not. The book is a quick read.
The
End of Race Politics has been very positively blurbed by the intellectual
celebrities Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, John McWhorter, and Glenn Loury. The
average rating of its sixty-four Amazon reviews is 4.8 out of five stars.
Author Coleman
Hughes was born in 1996. He grew up in the chic suburb of Montclair, New Jersey,
home of Stephen Colbert, Christina Ricci, and other celebrities. He graduated from
Columbia in 2020 with a degree in philosophy. He has previously worked for the
Manhattan Institute and as an editor at its City Journal. Hughes hosts a
YouTube channel. He is an atheist, he is
handsome, he speaks in a calm and methodical way, and he is black.
The
End of Race Politics argues against ideas promoted by prominent race
hustlers like Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, and the leaders of Black Lives
Matter. Hughes argues for a colorblind society, the triumph of merit over
Affirmative Action, and uplift for black people starting with rigorous charter
schools. Hughes harnesses social science research to buttress his points.
For
decades, I've been reading work that pushes back against leftist approaches to
race. Almost twenty-five years ago, I read Hating Whitey by David
Horowitz. It was as if the scales fell from my eyes. I'm purposely using the
"scales fell from my eyes" cliché because my experience was cliched.
I was a graduate student at the time, who had spent most of my life on school
campuses and in left-wing organizations. Horowitz was speaking truths that were
buried, and silent, deep inside me. Truths that I didn't think anyone was
allowed to say. Truths that, once I saw them in print, changed me forever.
I went
on to read authors dubbed "black conservatives." Shelby Steele's
fever-pitch outrage encased, like a stiletto in a velvet-lined box, in Steele's
elegant prose, rendered him my "most quoted" black conservative
author. Jason L. Riley's deployment of key statistics; Larry Elder's
in-your-face boldness; John McWhorter's fearless integrity; Glenn Loury's
firehose of facts; Thomas Sowell's wide-ranging consideration of middleman
minority theory; and Candace Owens' outrageous willingness to state what we all
know to be true, that George Floyd was a lousy role model: all these authors
and all their gifts produced page-turning works and must-watch videos. I
remember individual pages from their work where I encountered something I'd
never known before, or was invited to put ideas together in a way that I never
had before.
The End of Race Politics was not, for this reader, that kind of work. It is, though, the ideal book for a certain kind of reader. Hughes' style is calm and methodical. He's like Mr. Rogers without the personal warmth. Unlike Steele, he does not recount personal stories that engender rage or sorrow. Steele yearned to be a batboy as a youth but was denied because his skin color excluded him from segregated ballparks. Steele describes white academics robbing him of his own accomplishments. "You didn't get to where you are today because of your own efforts," white liberals insisted to Steele. "You are where you are today because of white liberal benefaction." There's none of that kind of engaging and instructive anecdote in Hughes' book. The book is, for the most part, impersonal and dry. Ideas are clearly if unexcitingly expressed in simple, unadorned prose that should be transparent even to high school readers.
There is
not a single idea in The End of Race Politics that I have not seen
articulated in a Facebook post. For me, that made for boring reading. For a
different kind of reader, though, this book is ideal – if you can get the
reader to read it. It would be a gift to America if The End of Race Politics
were required reading in every middle school and high school. Please
consider purchasing this book and handing out copies to those who followed the
social media BLM frenzy. Hughes doesn't confront the reader. He speaks softly
and he isn't wielding a stick. Fellow travelers immune to other forms of
passionate suasion may succumb to Hughes' calmer, gentler approach.
"I've
always found race boring," Hughes states, in his opening line. But,
"I didn't choose the topic of race. It chose me … For most of my young life,
I rarely thought about my racial identity." Growing up in diverse New
Jersey, he thought of his friends as individuals, rather than as skin colors.
On rare occasions when a bully chose race as a cudgel, "The dominant value
system would come down on them like a tornado." Hughes says that such
bullying tormented non-blacks, as well. As we all know from our own experience,
the kids Hughes said had a hard time were "pale, skinny, nerdy, and
awkward," and "overweight, pimply, and white" and cursed with a
speech impediment.
When he
was sixteen, Hughes was tapped by his "fancy private school" to
attend a People of Color Conference in Houston. The conference conveyed
critical race theory. Hughes noted that the atmosphere at the conference was
"less scholarly than spiritual." "Dissent was never welcomed …
You could no more challenge the doctrines being taught than you could argue
that God doesn't exist from a Sunday morning church pulpit." Hughes'
indoctrination into race mongering continued at Columbia. "In four years
at Columbia, hardly a week passed without a race-themed controversy." Being
black was conflated with being a victim.
Race
indoctrination made Hughes more conscious of his blackness, and made him feel
apart from his peers who were not black. He recognized the falsity of what he
was being told. He knew he was not a victim. "I was dropped into a
simulation where the Real Racism dial was set close to zero, but the Concern
About Racism dial was set to ten."
Hughes
defines his opponent as "neoracism," which, he insists, is
"racist, destructive, and contrary to the spirit of the Civil Rights
Movement." Neoracist ideas "pave the way toward a social and
political hellscape where skin color – a meaningless trait – is given supreme
importance." Robin DiAngelo's ideas would create a world where the only
thing white people can do that isn't racist is agree with whatever any black
person says. Ibram X. Kendi is a power-hungry, race totalitarian who can't
define racism but who demands racism against whites. "The only remedy to
past discrimination is present discrimination," Kendi says. In opposition
to neoracism, Hughes proposes colorblindness as a goal. Colorblindness, he
argues, "is the wisest principle by which to govern our fragile experiment
in democracy."
Hughes'
mother was Puerto Rican with a very black father and a white mother. She
thought of herself as Nuyorican, that is, someone of Puerto Rican background
who grew up in New York City. She's just one example of a person who did not
define herself as "black," although others did. Hughes goes on to
point out that race is a continuum. Arbitrarily dividing people by race lacks
scientific support, and yet government programs do just that, very imperfectly.
Asian Americans have widely diverse average incomes. Hughes compares, for
example, the low average income of American Hmong and the much higher average
income of Americans from the Indian subcontinent.
Hmong
are from Asia and they are underrepresented on American college campuses. Hughes
cites a low-income Hmong doctoral student who applied for a special program for
students from underrepresented groups. Her application was turned down because
she was subsumed into the larger overall category of "Asian" and
other Asians are not underrepresented on college campuses and tend to have
higher average incomes. Hughes cites other absurd situations where applicants
were arbitrarily excluded from programs awarded to persons from various racial
categories, in spite of ample qualifications to be part of that category.
Hughes
mentions that the blacks who benefit from Affirmative Action are most likely
not blacks from groups we think would most qualify. That is, like Barack Obama
himself, they are not descendants of American slaves. They did not grow up in
the South or in urban ghettoes. They do not speak black English. Rather,
beneficiaries of programs to aid blacks are often generationally wealthy
American blacks or recent immigrants from relatively wealthy African nations
like Nigeria or Kenya or from the Caribbean, and, like Kamala Harris, are
children of highly educated, high-earning, fully acculturated, white collar
parents.
"Even
if it were possible to create rational racial categories … those categories
still would not map onto the things that we should really care about … poverty,
disadvantage, and disparities of luck." Rather than using race as the
deciding factor in who gets government and institutional largesse, Hughes
proposes socioeconomic status as a criterion to certify qualifications for
handouts. Hughes supports his proposal with references to quotes from Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., including "As I stand here and look out upon the
thousands of Negro faces, and the thousands of white faces, intermingled like
the waters of a river, I see only one face – the face of the future."
It's not
hard for Hughes to find quotes from neoracists that are a combination of
absurd, frightening, and evil. "I strive to be less white," says
Robin DiAngelo. 'To be less racially oppressive … more racially aware … better
educated about racism … to be open … interested … compassionate." New
York Magazine published a video featuring real black people insisting that
white people are "violent … genocidal … ignorant … oppressive … dicks …
lack empathy … take what is not theirs."
Hughes
summarizes race hustlers' worldview. "Being white is tantamount to being
arrogant and ignorant about race, to feeling guilty and defensive about it, to
be closed minded, uninterested in and uncompassionate toward the struggles of
non-white people, to engaging in racist patterns of social interaction."
In this,
as Hughes accurately assesses it, religious environment, there are things that
white people cannot say and that only black people can say. In the high church
of Woke, the value of a message depends entirely on "the identity of the
messenger rather than the content of the message." He cites a study that
disseminated a King quote. Some study subjects were told, accurately, that King
said the quote; others were told that Trump said it. When Trump said it, the
quote was assessed as racist. When King said it, it was not racist. Further,
Republicans and Democrats assessed the quote differently. Not only the identity
of the speaker, but also of the hearer affects how words are heard and
assessed. This experiment provides a clue to one of Hughes' bête noirs:
tribalism. Assessing a quote requires work. Some feel insecure about their own
cognitive abilities. Tribal affiliation can fix that. You don't have to think.
You can just nod when the tribe tells you to. Going along with what your gang
thinks is much easier and less risky than original thought.
A
related study asked, "Would People Agree with Hitler When his Statements
are Directed Against Whites Instead of Jews?" An online summary of this study reports that,
"Agreement was significantly higher for 7 of the 9 statements in the
anti-White frame compared to the anti-Jew or anti-Black frame. Of note, 55% of
college students agreed with at least one of the three Hitler statements
applied to White people."
Hughes
likes hard evidence. He adduces evidence to support his assertion that white
supremacy doesn't have the power it used to have. There are black mayors, black
congressman, black senators, black SCOTUS justices, black CEOs, and a black
vice president and president.
Hughes
provides a list of nine characteristics of neoracists. Most of us have noted
these characteristics, including "They endorse racial discrimination,"
and "They endorse racial stereotypes;" they do not support policies
that would end racism; they do not actually help the black underclass. He lists
seven myths of neoracists, like the myth of no progress and the myth of
inherited trauma.
Hughes
points out that Kendi's "When I see racial disparities, I see racism"
formula is poppycock. One immediately thinks of the NBA, where 17% of players
are white. White people are not prevented from playing in the NBA because of
anti-white racism. Blacks dominate the NBA because they play basketball better
than others. In my own state of New Jersey, occupations reflect divisions of
labor that sometimes go back a century and sometimes are quite new. Some Asian
ethnicities dominate in nail salons while other Asian ethnicities are
frequently doctors. Italians manage trash hauling. Greeks own diners. Hughes
lists several diseases that kill whites at higher rates than blacks. The black
suicide rate is about one-third that of whites. Clearly, of course, Kendi is
wrong, and racism is not responsible for all or perhaps even most racial
disparities.
Hughes
points out that automated traffic camera systems have been condemned as racist
because they assign more tickets to blacks than to whites. The cameras are
machines that operate on objective data. Race hustlers calling for the removal
of the "racist" cameras render citizens, including black citizens,
less safe.
Hughes
provides a list of ten qualities of supporters of a colorblind worldview. Such
people remain committed to the principles of Martin Luther King. They oppose
stereotyping and prejudice. Hughes sketches a history of the colorblind
worldview. Neoracists insist that colorblindness is a recent invention and a
ploy by white supremacists to hold on to power. Hughes demonstrates that this
is not true, and that past heroes of the fight against racism advanced
colorblindness as an ideal. These heroes include Frederick Douglass, Henry
Highland Garnet, Wendell Phillips, John Marshall Harlan, Thurgood Marshall, and
Bayard Rustin.
In
another historically revisionist project, neoracists insist that MLK was much
more radical than he is perceived to be. Neoracists also insist that white
supremacists attempt to tame and coopt King by making him less radical. In
fact, though, Hughes says, MLK was radical on certain issues, like class and
foreign policy. "He favored universal health care … and he strongly
opposed the Vietnam war." When it came to race, though, he was opposed to
neoracism. He argued for one race, the human race. Hughes quotes King.
"Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout 'White
power!' when nobody will shout 'Black power!' but everybody will talk about
God's power and human power."
Hughes acknowledges
that neoracists control many arms of American culture and life, including
education, media, and government. He quotes New York Times writer Sarah
Jeong who bragged publicly about getting pleasure from hurting white men.
Hughes mentions government programs that distribute money to non-whites.
Government decision-makers wanted to distribute newly developed COVID vaccines
to non-whites first, "even though this approach was guaranteed to lead to
more overall deaths." The neoracist domination of education is very well
known. Hughes cites Dr. Aruna Khilanani, who was invited to talk at Yale. She
said, "I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white
person that got in my way, burying their body and wiping my bloody hands as I
walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step, like I did the world
a favor." Minneapolis public schools introduced a new hiring system that
replaced the old "last hired first fired" policy with a new policy
that protects non-white teachers. Regardless of seniority, non-white teachers
would be fired last; whites would be fired first. Neoracist educators taught
students that being on time, adhering to objective reality, performing well at
one's job, and being able to write were all "white" qualities.
Hughes
cites skewed media coverage of police shootings as examples of neoracism in
media. Hughes lists several whites shot and or killed by police under
suspicious circumstances. These events were not covered by mainstream media;
shootings and deaths of blacks were covered. This bias brainwashed the public
into accepting the false BLM narrative.
Neoracism
is spreading, Hughes alleges. He includes charts that show that Americans'
beliefs about racism have changed. As blacks progress and white supremacy
recedes, people asses race relations as worse, not better. Hughes attributes
this change to the smart phone and social media. Black people who use social
media are more likely to cry "Racism!" than those who do not use
social media. These perceptions are not based in facts. When asked how many
unarmed black men are killed by cops each year, respondents insist that the
number is over a thousand. In fact, though, in 2019, the real number was 12.
Neoracists' excessive harping on race has just made matters worse. If we talked
less about race, Hughes argues, things would improve.
We
should, Hughes insists, talk about culture. For life for the black underclass
to improve, culture must change. China, a once relatively powerless and
famine-ridden country of peasants, with no strong history of piano playing, now
produces great pianists. Japanese from internment camps went on to get great
educations. American Jews, a hated minority, rose from penniless immigrants, worked
hard and became an affluent group. All these examples show that people can and
do move on from their pasts into more rewarding futures.
Studies
show that resumes topped with various ethnic names, including black, Indian,
and Chinese, result in fewer callbacks than resumes topped with WASP-sounding
names. But Indians and Chinese, in spite of such documented discrimination, go
on to make money anyway. Giving a less qualified black person a job and turning
away a more qualified white person is unfair, it can't fix past discrimination,
and it endangers society.
Hughes concludes
with a recommendation for a colorblind approach as the solution to the problem
of neoracism. As part of this approach, any expression of racism, against
blacks or whites, should be stigmatized. Schools should adopt blind grading
systems. In fact, on standardized and other objective tests, these already
exist. Charter schools that demand performance in accord with objective
standards should be established.
A few
aspects of this book didn't work for me. Hughes produced a quick and easy read.
That will be a good thing for many readers. But he does have end notes and an
index, and he left out citations that he should have included. Hughes must know
that he's saying things that have been said for decades. For example, Hughes is
a proponent of class, not race, as a criterion for Affirmative Action. That is,
employers and universities should offer special programs based on an
applicant's poverty or other deprivation, rather than the applicant's skin
color. Current Affirmative Action programs are more likely to help well-to-do
blacks rather than the underclass who need it most.
Hughes doesn't
credit Richard D. Kahlenberg. Kahlenberg is "arguably the nation’s
chief proponent of class-based affirmative action in higher education
admissions." Kahlenberg's 1997 book The Remedy: Class, Race and Affirmative
Action was named one of the best books of the year by Norm Ornstein writing
in the Washington Post.
When
recommending charter schools, Hughes should have mentioned Abigail and Stephan
Thernstrom's 2004 book, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. The
publisher describes that book thus,
"Black and Hispanic students are not learning enough in our public
schools, and their typically poor performance is the most important source of
ongoing racial inequality in America today … The racial gap in school
achievement is the nation's most critical civil rights issue … An employer
hiring the typical Black high school graduate or the college that admits the
average Black student is choosing a youngster who has only an eighth-grade education
… Scattered across the country are excellent schools getting terrific results
with high-needs kids. These rare schools share a distinctive vision of what
great schooling looks like and are free of many of the constraints that
compromise education in traditional public schools." The Thernstroms
strongly recommended charter schools.
Hughes
points out the many problems with Affirmative Action. All non-whites are now
dogged by assumptions that they have achieved what they have achieved not
because of their own merit but because of Affirmative Action. That's just one
problem. Other potential problems include disastrous mismatches. Richard H.
Sander has argued that Affirmative Action actually hurt not helped the number
of black lawyers. Given the above-mentioned inadequate schooling, absent
Affirmative Action, relatively underprepared black applicants might be more
likely to apply to a lower tier law school, get accepted, do well, graduate,
and go on to practice law. With Affirmative Action, top tier law schools
actively recruit black applicants. These recruits are less well prepared to
keep up in elite schools, they are more likely to drop out, and less likely to
have careers. A terrific summary of the problems with Affirmative Action is a
2005 article by Marie Gryphon writing for the Cato Institute. That article is here. Hughes might have cited it or another
equally good resource.
Hughes
points out that assessments of racism in the US got worse even as, by objective
standards, things got better. He attributes this unfortunate trend to smart
phones and social media. There's another obvious cause that he doesn't explore.
For a long time, both blacks and whites defined themselves in relation to white
supremacy. White liberals applauded themselves as champions of the underclass.
Blacks became used to applauding themselves as survivors of racism, or they
used racism as a crutch. "I failed at x, y, z because the white man kept
me down … I don't have to follow the
rules that others follow because I'm black and society is out to get me."
These attitudes became so much a part of people's self concept that defeating
them was no easy task.
Hughes
is an atheist and two of his blurbs come from New Atheist godlings, Pinker and
Harris. Hughes acknowledges that Christianity and the larger Judeo-Christian
tradition was inspiration and guide for the Civil Rights Movement. Hughes
rejects Christianity, saying that "the decline of Christianity in American
culture has been beneficial in many ways." He acknowledges, though, that
that decline "has created an ideological vacuum." Hughes bemoans
neoracism and other forms of tribalism. He doesn't put two and two together.
Neoracism and tribalism have arisen at least partly because of that ideological
vacuum. Identity, membership in one's own tribe, was a keystone of spiritual
life before Christianity. Ancestor worship, celebration of one's own and hatred
of the other, including the very separate moral systems depending on tribal
membership that irk Hughes, are features of non-Judeo-Christian religions
worldwide. You can't eliminate religion;
you can only replace it.
Hughes
defers to Martin Luther King as guide. Putting up a mortal man as determiner of
a value system is risky. King was, in public, a peerless representative. In
private, he was an imperfect person. That will become more obvious in a short
three years when various unflattering files are opened, as
Pulitzer-Prize-winning King biographer David Garrow has pointed out in a 2019 Standpoint article.
So,
Hughes wants America to make a 180 and reverse course on several key pillars of
every day life. Our schools, media, government, and day-to-day interactions
must change. Hughes leaves unaddressed two key questions: why and how.
As he
himself says, Civil Rights leaders answered the why question. In fact atheist
Hughes quotes the exact scripture that many of those leaders, and we, their
heirs, would turn to. It's Galatians 3:28 and it's a verse that I, as a
feminist, cherish. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond
nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ
Jesus."
A fish
doesn't know it is in water, and many of us today living in a Western
civilization partially formed by the Judeo-Christian tradition don't realize
how revolutionary this verse is. If you've ever lived overseas, you'd know
better. When I lived in the Indian subcontinent, it was unquestioned that
Brahmins were a higher form of life than the rest of us, and Untouchables were
not even human. In Islam, diyah, or compensation for a death, is on a sliding
scale, with Muslim males commanding the highest price. According to the
International Religious Freedom Report for 2012, "The calculation of
accidental death or injury compensation is discriminatory. In the event a court
renders a judgment in favor of a plaintiff who is a Jewish or Christian male,
the plaintiff is only entitled to receive 50 percent of the compensation a
Muslim male would receive; all other non-Muslims are only entitled to receive
one-sixteenth of the amount a male Muslim would receive." On what basis,
in our brave new post-Christian America, do we argue for the equal worth of
human life?
Like
many atheists, Hughes uses constructions like, "we need to" and
"we should." Why do we need to, and how will we make this come about?
Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo command troops. We saw their troops set fire
to cities in the summer of 2020. They rioted, they looted, they killed, they
toppled statues. People obey neoracist commands because they are afraid. What
force will Hughes wield to enact his policies? He does not say.
Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
Another post of yours that I really appreciated! I like where you're coming from, which seems to me something like defense of idiosyncratic individuality crossed with an ethical universalism ... if you don't mind my saying ...
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for reading. I'm glad someone is out there!
DeleteI hear that! Thanks
Delete