Coleman Hughes's New Book on Colorblindness

A review, and a book giveaway

Above: Coleman Hughes on the Rebel Wisdom podcast.

I purchased and read Coleman Hughes’s first book, “The End of Race Politics,” the day it came out. The book makes a case for colorblindness as a goal of public policy and personal interactions. The idea is not that people should claim not to “see” color or race, but that we should treat it as irrelevant to how we interact with one another. It’s relatively short and highly readable. I read it on a plane, and immediately planned to do a review of it as soon as I could.

Then, about the time I was ready to review it, someone alerted me to an attack Radley Balko had made on Coleman, relating to a piece Coleman had written about the Derek Chauvin trial. To me, the timing seemed unfortunate. Even if Balko did not specifically time the attack to coincide with the publication of Coleman’s book (an accusation I am not making), it had that effect. All everyone could talk about was Balko’s attack on Coleman, and the publication of the book appeared to get lost in the shuffle, at the critical time just after its publication.

When I read Balko’s attack, I too fell victim to the distraction—because I was offended by Balko’s misreadings and mischaracterizations of Coleman’s piece. I immediately began a giant post showing how Balko had distorted everything Coleman had said.

That post is still in the works, and should be published relatively soon—but I’m not quite done. It’s currently some 8,000+ words long and I still have more Balko distortions to cover before I finish. So in the interim, I decided I would go ahead and write my review of Coleman’s book. That review is today’s newsletter. It comes with a special bonus for paid subscribers: a free giveaway of the book to the first five paid subscribers who email me asking for a copy. Details at the end of this post. If you’re a paid subscriber, you might want to scroll down to the bottom of the email and act on this offer fast . . . and then come back here for the review.

The End of Race Politics and the Insanity of Neoracism

As I said, Coleman’s book espouses an ethic of colorblindness— that we “treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives.” That’s the concept in a nutshell.

Coleman believes the main alternative to this ideology is the so-called “anti-racism” of the likes of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo (whom I lump together as KenDiAngelo, a formulation I assume I am not unique in coining, though I’m not sure where else I have seen it). Coleman labels the KenDiAngelo ideology “neoracism”—because to call it “anti-racism” seems like a misnomer, given that the KenDiAngelo types explicitly want everyone to take race into account, everywhere and all the time. In fact, Coleman says, the neoracists actually espouse a form of “de facto race supremacy.”

Wow. “Race supremacy.” Do you think that’s too extreme a view? Coleman has receipts, which is one thing I love about the guy. As one example, he cites a video with ten million YouTube views from The Cut, which he says is an “arm of New York Magazine.” The video is titled “So What Exactly Are White People Superior At?” (At this point in time, I can’t seem to find the video; all I can find are reaction videos. Leave a comment if you find a good link.) The answer to what white people are superior at, according to the video, is stuff like “genocide” or “violence” or “being ignorant” — you know, that kind of thing. Lovely.

As another example of neoracism as a philosophy that espouses the racial supremacy of black people and other minorities, Coleman cites a Harvard event discussing the Harvard affirmative action case that was decided by the Supreme Court last year. The lead lawyer for the plaintiffs mocked the idea that some races would consistently do better on ratings of objective personal qualities, sarcastically saying: “I guess there’s just something more personally appealing about African American and Hispanic applicants.” According to a report, about a dozen students in the crowd shouted “There is!” in response.

The examples go on and on. Coleman discusses one so-called academic who gave a talk on “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.” It ends up looking like the academic was the true psychopath. In her talk, she gave a gleeful description of her fantasies of killing white people—including emptying a revolver “into the head of any white person that got in my way” and then burying the body and walking away “with a bounce in my step, like I did the world a fucking favor.” In the debate over whether to post the video, the issue of this whack job’s racism is the one factor that never got discussed. Because why would it matter? Racism against white people is just something we expect, right?

The point is that there is genuine reason to believe that adherents of neoracism believe that white people are inferior, and that historically marginalized races are superior. And people seem to take this for granted, like there is nothing unusual about it. This is not a healthy attitude for society.

The whole notion of black racial superiority can take very odd forms, though. It can actually manifest itself in a way that sounds very much like the ravings of a traditional white supremacist. For example, a former chancellor of the New York City schools used a book to teach administrators that deems traits like “perfectionism,” “objectivity,” and “worship of the written word” to be a part of “White Supremacy Culture” that should not be taught to black students. Coleman notes:

The National Museum of African American History and Culture even included a graphic in its website (which was later removed) claiming that hard work, self-reliance, and the nuclear family were attributes of “white dominant culture.”

Doesn’t it remind you of that classic Ryan Long sketch with the woke guy and the racist who agree on everything?

You can easily imagine these guys looking at each other and chanting in unison: “perfectionism, hard work, and self-reliance are attributes of white culture!” Wow, you believe that too?! How great is that?!?!

The History of Advocacy for Colorblind Policies

Coleman argues that colorblindness has a deep-rooted and storied history among civil rights advocates, who have historically fought for the rights of black people by citing arguments for colorblindness.

Coleman tells a story about the 14th Amendment that I had not known: that a prominent abolitionist named Wendell Phillips had sought passage of a version of the amendment that would have enshrined colorblindness in the Constitution, by explicitly preventing states from making any distinction whatsoever in civil rights and privileges on the basis of race, color, or descent. But some Republicans believed this proposal would be too radical for their constituents, on the grounds that giving black people full equal rights would be unacceptable. So the factions compromised on the watered-down language of “equal protection” that was interpreted for decades to allow the travesty of “separate but equal.”

We all know, I assume, that Justice Harlan famously dissented in Plessy v. Ferguson on the basis of an argument for colorblindness. Equally well known among those who follow legal matters closely is the fact that Thurgood Marshall argued for a colorblind interpretation of the 14th Amendment in Brown v. Board of Education—but the Court ended up ruling on the basis of garbage social science. Why? The speculation is that it was for reasons similar to the Republicans’ rejection of explicit language endorsing full colorblindness in the 14th Amendment in 1868. Advocating such a policy, they worried, would be seen as too extreme. It would mean striking down every Jim Crow law in the nation in addition to banning segregated schools . . . and that just seemed like too big a step to take.

At several steps in our history, Coleman argues, we have failed to embrace full colorblindness—and in the process, we have allowed racism to fester for generations that have paid for our cowardice.

Neoracism’s Falsehoods

In discussing the neoracist narrative, Coleman identifies seven specific falsehoods that he says form the backbone of that narrative. I won’t discuss them all at length in this review—if you want an in-depth discussion of these topics, buy the book! (Or, if you’re a paid subscriber, be one of the first five to ask me for it, and you’ll get it for free.) But I think it’s worth quoting Coleman’s definitions of all seven falsehoods, so you can see his thesis, and the issues that he spends a good section of the book discussing:

The Disparity Fallacy: Racial disparities provide direct evidence of systemic racism.

The Myth of Undoing the Past: New acts of racial discrimination can undo the effects of past racial discrimination.

The Myth of No Progress: American society has made little or no progress combating racism against people of color since the civil rights movement.

The Myth of Inherited Trauma: Black people who are alive today inherit the trauma that was inflicted on their enslaved ancestors.

The Myth of Superior Knowledge: The knowledge that people of color have about racism is superior to any knowledge about racism that a white person could have.

The Racial Ad Hominem: You can dismiss any claims about race and racism that white people make simply because they are white.

The Myth of Black Weakness: White people have power iin society, but black people don’t.

This is the backbone of Coleman’s book, and most of the arguments are fleshing out this basic outline. I’ll discuss a couple of them below.

The Disparity Fallacy

At the heart of neoracist ideology is what Coleman calls The Disparity Fallacy. Coleman notes that, according to the logic of the KenDiAngelo neoracists, if there is any racial disparity among races whatsoever, that disparity must be the result of racism. As a perfect example of this mindset, Coleman quotes Ibram X. Kendi making the following totally inane comment that, for all its obvious stupidity, serves as a central tenet [interlaces fingers] of neoracist ideology:

If Black people make up 13.2 percent of the US population, then Black people should make up somewhere close to 13 percent of the Americans killed by the police, somewhere close to 13 percent of Americans sitting in prisons, somewhere close to earning 13 percent of US wealth.

By this logic, by the way, black people should also make up somewhere close to 13 percent of the perpetrators of fatal violence against the police. But this is not the case, as I have discussed extensively on this Substack—and will discuss more thoroughly below when I discuss my very minor criticisms of Coleman’s book.

Also by this logic, if men make up roughly 50 percent of the US population, then men should make up somewhere close to 50 percent of the Americans killed by the police, and somewhere close to 50 percent of Americans sitting in prisons. Guess what? They don’t. They make up waaaaay more of both groups. Because different groups are different.

Coleman generally does an excellent job of pushing back against the lazy assumptions inherent in Kendi’s silly formulation above (although, as I will discuss below, I think even Coleman himself occasionally falls victim to the fallacy). As an example of Coleman’s pushback, Coleman cites the example of suicide rates, which are far higher for whites than for blacks or Hispanics. And when I say far higher, I’m not exaggerating. Whites’ suicide rate is more than twice that of blacks or Hispanics. Is this clear evidence of racism against whites? If the races were reversed, that would be the clear conclusion.

Coleman explains that explaining disparities by looking at culture differences is not automatically racist, and in fact is an approach that has actually been used to combat racism in the past. Anthropologists argued against Nazi race supremacy ideology in this manner.. Coleman asks why 80 percent of the world’s pianists are Chinese when the Chinese comprise 18 percent of the world population. The obvious answer is culture. Why did black Caribbeans own most businesses in Harlem in the early 1900s when they formed a minority of the black population in America? Culture. Coleman provides innumerable examples like this.

The Disparity Fallacy leads to all sorts of distasteful policy measures.

Government Practicing Economic Racism

The blatant favoritism for blacks at the expense of Asians and whites has spread to government policy, as in the example Coleman provides of the Minneapolis school district policy of selecting teachers to be laid off by starting with the last white person hired.

Another example Coleman cites is the “Restaurant Revitalization Fund.” Part of the American Rescue Plan, this fund provided up to $5 million in aid to each eligible restaurant that was suffering as a result of the pandemic. But the “priority group” for receiving the money was deemed to be “women, veterans, and socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.” It turned out that “socially disadvantaged” basically meant “non-white.” And only “socially disadvantaged” folks turned out to be considered “economically disadvantaged.”

If all this sounds appallingly illegal, well, it was. And white male restaurant owners sued and won. But by the time the litigation was done, most of the money was gone.

Sounds bad, right? But it barely even compares to the infuriating policy of prioritizing medical care on the basis of skin color.

Neoracist Medicine

Government policy disfavoring whites for being white is not limited to economics. It even extends to matters of life and death. Coleman discusses the absolutely enraging influence that the neoracists have had on the administration of vaccines. Coleman discusses a New York policy, which I discussed at the time on this Substack, which prioritized non-whites for the vaccine . . . or whites, if and only if the whites had a pre-existing medical condition justifying their jumping the line all the way up to the spots held by their non-white brethren.

To the inevitable retort that black people suffer worse from COVID, a result lefties lazily attribute to systemic racism, Coleman wonders exactly what form of systemic racism leads to whites dying at greater rates from “chronic lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, liver disease, and eight types of cancer.”

Nobody would dispute that people actually suffering from a particular disease, or who are personally at greater risk due to actual medical factors, should be prioritized for cures of treatment. But when we start favoring one race over another due to a perception of “systemic racism” based purely on disparities, we travel into dangerous territory. Imagine a law that required that whites be prioritized for new treatments for Parkinson’s, and you can begin to see the problem.

The Myth of Superior Knowledge and The Racial Ad Hominem: “Lived Experience”

To what extent are black folks suffering worse in our society? You are welcome to join this debate, but . . . well, not if you are white.

You see, one of the things that any white person runs into when discussing any matter of race is the retort: “You can’t understand what it’s like. I’ve lived it. You haven’t.” Coleman points out that the concept of lived experience is obviously valid, but need not be racialized—and when it is, it’s odd that the unique perspective one gains by virtue of living inside a particular skin color never extends to white people. Neoracist black people certainly claim to know what it’s like to be white: it’s an endless fiesta of privilege, gumdrops, and rainbows. But imagine how they would react if you told them: “You can’t know what it’s like to live as a white person in today’s society. Only I, the person with white skin, can possibly understand that experience.” It’s almost worth trying it, just to watch the neoracists’ heads explode.

Which is not to deny that there is more anti-black racism in the country than anti-white racism. Alt-right people might deny this, but I do not. And I agree that it is more vivid to actually experience discrimination than to witness it. But Coleman is a good example of someone who has experienced racism but is able to make rational arguments about race and not allow it to dominate his life.

Next up, for paid subscribers: The Myth of No Progress; a discussion of Common Humanity; my (minor) criticisms of the book (including some issues that I will modestly contend I have covered better in this newsletter in the past), and finally, a book giveaway for a select group of paid subscribers with a quick email trigger finger. Details below, and stay tuned for the big Coleman/Balko post, coming soon!