Coleman Hughes' Arguments for a Colorblind America
It’s easy to forget how unique America is to every other society both past and present. It’s something we take for granted, which is what causes much of the anti-American sentiment that arises on the far right and left. Not only is America the most diverse country in the world, in terms of racial and ethnic demographics, it is also one of the most free, even compared to other first-world western nations. Take a country like England, a cousin to America. England doesn’t have a first amendment, which is why they annually arrest more than 3,000 people for “offensive speech” posted online. But there is one way that America is especially unique among other countries the world over. It’s the thing that demonstrates how progressive of a country we really are, while also being what could ultimately tear us apart at the seams—and that is our willingness to feel and express remorse over the wrongs of the past. As Coleman Hughes points out in his new book “The End of Race Politics - Arguments for a colorblind America,” if you ask any progressive white person in America about the history of slavery, you’re likely to be met with much handwringing and self-flagellation. But go somewhere like, say, Nigeria or Ghana, ask about the slave trade and those there that participated in it, and you’re likely to get a shrug. It is just a fact of history there. Rather than a foundation for guilt. It is precisely this guilt that has caused many in America over the past 50 years to seek out ways of redressing those wrongs. The wrongs not just of slavery, but also Jim Crow and all that came with it. There are two competing notions about how to do that. The first is what might be called race-consciousness, whereby we think and talk about race more and more, attempting to institute policies that favor individuals based on their race. The second is colorblindness, whereby public policy does not take race into account. It is this second notion that Hughes argues for in his new book.
Drawing on the philosophies of abolitionists and civil rights leaders like Zora Neale Hurston and Martin Luther King Jr, Hughes bemoans what he labels the “neoracists” of today. Thinkers such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin Diangelo, who argue for a kind of present-day reverse discrimination to atone for past discrimination. Beginning with an exploration of what, exactly, race is and what it means (it doesn’t mean anything, it turns out; it is a mere social construct and it’s impossible to draw clear lines to demarcate one race from another; in fact, black and asian immigrants from different countries have wildly different outcomes, making policy based on the color of one’s skin a fool’s errand that often ends up benefitting the most well-off individuals in those categories), Hughes examines the real history of colorblindness (today colorblindness is actually used as a kind of pejorative, often implying someone is kinda sorta racist, but historically throughout the civil rights movement the idea of colorblindness was actually the stated ideal), how race-consciousness has infiltrated elite institutions and many of the failures this ideology has commanded (just look at the recent resignations at Harvard and Penn, this FAA scandal, the way that racist speech towards white people has become normalized in some areas—prejudice+power=racism—etc), what is leading to the spread of this neoracist ideology throughout America (hint—you are likely reading this on a device that is at least partially responsible), and finally the neoracist narrative (the idea that America is just as or more racist today than it was in 1968, despite evidence demonstrating there is actually less racism than ever before, and America is one of the least racist societies on the planet—just check out Japan’s immigration policy or one of the 21 Islamic countries in the middle east that do not allow Jews to live within their borders) and Hughes’ suggested solutions, such as reconceiving the meaning of diversity, stigmatizing all racist talk, even against white people, banning race-conscious policies like affirmative action, instituting more high-quality pre-k and kindergarten programs, weekend-learning programs and charter schools. The issue is that what many of these race-based policies do is try to fix the problem from the top down by reverse-engineering it so that we become more interested in equity by numbers even if that equity leads to resentment and unqualified individuals performing vital functions in America society. It is, in other words, a pipeline problem, where there are not enough qualified individuals to fulfill these roles. Starting with K-12 education is then the best way to open up that pipeline so that diversity doesn’t have to mean the right color but unqualified.
It’s a fascinating book and will probably be one of my tops for the year. I also recommend checking out Hughes’ podcast Conversations with Coleman.