Review: Coleman Hughes, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America, Thesis (Penguin Random House), 2024
The topic of race is ‘boring’ to Coleman Hughes.
To state such a thing publicly, in the United States, is enough to land one in both social and professional hot water.
Yet New York-born Hughes – half black, half Puerto Rican – has carved himself out as a leading contrarian figure on the issue of race in the United States.
I label Hughes ‘contrarian’ here because the space occupied on his short path, at only 28 years old, is not within the same arenas of mainstream appeal like that of Robin D’Angelo and Ibrahim X. Kendi.
Hughes not only dismantles such figures – he also opposes reparations, supports colour-blindness, questions exclusive displays of identity, and seeks proper explanations for racial income disparities and police shootings of black Americans.
His first book, The End of Race Politics, is thus a fresh take on such issues.
There are three themes in particular Hughes focuses on.
The first is the attack upon colour-blindness, which Hughes defines as the simple principle to ‘treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives’. He notes, however, that: ‘….colour blindness is under attack. When I Google colour blindness, race, nine of the ten articles that appeared argue that colour blindness is wrong-headed, counterproductive, or racist.’
Channelling Martin Luther King Jnr and other civil rights leaders – individuals aspiring to be assessed on the content of their character versus the colour of their skin – is thus very much on the outer in modern America.
Others, Hughes notes, prefer to see colour as an apparent vehicle for vengeance and not an equal playing field. ‘The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination,’ wrote one author. ‘The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.’ Such punitive yet infectious thinking has alarmed me, especially since hearing friends – well-meaning millennials from across the globe – insisting others show their ‘anti-racism’, bizarrely, by discriminating against white people.
The second theme Hughes focuses on – channelling the work of towering figures like Thomas Sowell and the late Walter Williams – is how black Americans have, historically, done well in some quarters, despite discrimination.
Here Hughes alludes to the 1947 Clark study of doll reactions, one of ‘the most important social science studies of the 20th Century,’ where both southern segregated and northern integrated black kids were exposed to coloured dolls to record their self-esteem reactions.
Clark’s expert testimony, far from irrelevant, was instrumental in Brown v Board.
Hughes, however, challenges the study’s oft-cited legacy that ‘segregation lowered black kids’ self-esteem’, taking time to actually read the study in full, noting ‘the kids who attended segregated southern schools had higher self-esteem than the northern kids who went to integrated schools’. The study’s relevant appendage is included in the book.
The point here is not that segregation is good… It’s that black American history is not just a mashing of bleak oblivion, despite obvious horrors and humiliation.
There’s also a social element to Hughes’ observation, where wider cultural perceptions, taken on board by the individuals themselves, have implications for self-esteem. ‘To the extent that black Americans had low self-worth,’ Hughes notes, ‘it was not because of segregated schools per se but because of the wider cultural perception of blacks as lesser beings.’
Perceptions and race also have outward versus inward implications.
Hughes cites how Americans today prescribe so much to not what is said about racial issues, but who says them. Take, for example, this statement:
Black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy, and God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men. God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race.
When study participants were told this was a Trump quote (false), Republicans rated it a ‘1.4’ (with 1 being not racist at all and 5 meaning extremely racist) and Democrats rated it a ‘3.4’. Conversely, when both groups were told this was a King quote (correct), both rated it 1 and 1.3 respectively, meaning nobody thought the quote was racist.
Democracies do not fare well under this level of suspicion and fragmentation.
Hughes reminds us, however, that colour blindness and curbing race politics, are good places to start.
Sean Jacobs writes at www.seanjacobs.com.au
