Elan JournoOn the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King Jr. stood before a crowd of nearly a quarter-million people. The moment is iconic. His words — which may already be echoing in your mind — captured something vitally important: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” This statement has come to epitomize the ideal of “colorblindness” about race, an ideal that in MLK’s time was culturally salient.
In the sixty years since, however, the zeitgeist has shifted. The idea of “colorblindness,” one prominent intellectual claims, was cooked up in neoconservative think tanks. Another asserts that it’s part of a “whiteness protection program,” associated with such evils as dispossession, colonialism, slavery, and segregation. Far from being central to abolition in the nineteenth century or the civil rights movement in the twentieth, colorblindness is portrayed as a tool of rationalizing “white supremacy.”1 Today, the “general tone of public discourse about race displays alarming ignorance about colorblindness, which enemies of the [MLK] dream have caricatured and villainized,” observes Coleman Hughes in his recent book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America.(29)
One marker of the disrepute surrounding colorblindness is the pushback that Hughes faced when he gave a TED talk on his book. TED sees itself as a global forum for “ideas worth spreading,” but some of the staff objected to platforming Hughes, because of his advocacy for colorblindness on race. The talk was felt to be radioactive, morally. One TED staffer called it “dangerous and irresponsible” — and “racist.” The conflict, which I discussed with Hughes in an interview last year, was resolved through an unusual compromise: TED would release the video of his talk if he agreed to take part in a separate online debate on colorblindness, with the video of this debate published soon after his talk.
Though Hughes is “what you would call ‘half-black, half-Hispanic,’ or simply, ‘black,’” he has always regarded race as a meaningless trait morally (ix), which doesn’t tell us about an individual’s character. It was in 2012 that he first encountered the “anti-racist” outlook and its fixation on “race,” when his private high school sent him to the People of Color Conference. There, he “heard terms like systemic racism, safe space, white privilege, and internalized oppression.”(xi) Introduced to the idea of “microaggression,” he was taught that his victimization made him special. Then, during four years at Columbia University, he observed that “hardly a week passed without a race-themed controversy.”
In the school newspaper, students would say they experienced white supremacy “every day” on campus. A professor of mine once told our class that “all people of color were by definition victims of oppression,” even as my daily experience as a black person directly contradicted that claim. It felt as if 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. (xvi)
In rebellion against that race-obsessed atmosphere, Hughes seeks to redeem the idea of colorblindness and advocate it as a principle. Far from being the invention of reactionaries or white supremacists, Hughes demonstrates, it traces to “the radical wing of the abolitionist movement,” notably Wendell Philips.(47) Hughes observes that “Colorblindness was a constant theme in the battle against Jim Crow in the 1940s,” and a feature of the Civil Rights movement into the 1960s.(52) Crucially, in Hughes’s view, colorblindness does not mean ignoring the fact of racism. Nor is the aim to “pretend you don’t notice race.” To advocate colorblindness, Hughes writes, is to “endorse an ethical principle,” whereby “we should treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives.”(19) This formulation, though weakened by imprecision, points in the right direction.
'The orientation that we should be judged by the character we’ve formed is premised on the fact that each of us is a sovereign being with the fundamental power of choice, rather than determined by our unchosen membership in a (racial) collective.' Share on XThe case that Hughes presents in The End of Race Politics is important, because in my view it steers us toward the right orientationon matters of “race.” The idea of “colorblindness” is an orientation that is basically individualistic and, as a result, one that provides the foundation for justice, the virtue of evaluating individuals objectively. The orientation that we should be judged by the character we’ve formed, by our choices, is premised on the fact that each of us is a sovereign being with the fundamental power of choice, rather than determined by our unchosen membership in a (racial) collective. Some of this is implied in the book, some of it put into words; and while I find his basic argument compelling, there are key points that I wish were fully identified or stressed.
The book has two goals: to dispel the caricatures and vilification of colorblindness and to demonstrate that by abandoning the ideal of colorblindness, self-styled “anti-racist” thinkers are actually peddling a form of racism. Rather than breaking new ground, the book’s main value is as a trenchant corrective, and it is likely of greatest benefit to younger readers, especially students, and others marinating in today’s “anti-racist” outlook.
The book’s strength is its commentary on the self-proclaimed “anti-racist” movement, which Hughes argues is predicated on racism. He shows that “anti-racist” thinkers push racial discrimination, racial stereotypes, and race supremacy, while redefining “racism” to insulate their own position. In this redefinition, discrimination or prejudice counts as racism if it flows from a position of power — “which white people have and black people don’t.”(31) Hughes quotes Robin DiAngelo, a bestselling author on “anti-racism”: “only whites can be racist . . . only whites have the collective social and institutional power and privilege over people of color.”(31)
The alleged remedy to discrimination on racial grounds is discrimination in favor of “marginalized” racial groups. Hughes points to manifestations of such racism in an economic stimulus program that allocated aid only to non-white farmers; in universities that offer race-segregated dorms and graduation ceremonies; and racial preferences in the hiring of professors. In some Hollywood films, Hughes sees a worrying racist pattern: “either it exaggerates wrongdoings of white people or it downplays the wrongdoings of people of color.”(87) The two film examples he gives, like the cases he also covers of how Covid therapies were allocated and how media reported on racial issues, are plausible evidence of racism, but at least debatable.
Hughes calls this “neoracism,” but on the strength of evidence he puts forward in the book, there’s nothing “neo” about it. What he terms “neoracism” is merely a “different flavor of race supremacy.” Both white supremacists and the apostles of “anti-racism” agree that “some races are superior to others, and they both agree that not all people deserve to be treated equally in society.”(33) A point that supports this which Hughes mentions at times but deserves greater emphasis is that “anti-racist” advocates push stereotypes and views of “people of color” as in some respects inferior to others; for instance, by “depicting black people as being emotionally fragile — almost like children.”(145)
This underscores how racism is a form of collectivism. An insight I take from Ayn Rand’s analysis of racism is that the claims to racial superiority or inferiority are “not two different claims” but “two applications of the same basic premise.” Both ascribe “moral, social or political significance” to a person’s inborn group identity. Further, this reflects the determinism underlying racism. It holds that the “content of our character” (our mind) is set by unchosen, biological or non-essential features of our identity. To advocate such a position in the name of “social justice,” which many who gravitate to “anti-racism” do, is to negate the individual, and therefore the possibility of treating each individual justly.
The “neoracist” position, Hughes writes, depends on a particular narrative. Central to it is the notion that “Wherever racial disparities exist, racism — past and present — is the cause.”(108) But this, Hughes demonstrates, is a fallacy, which he effectively dislodges. The “neoracist” narrative also depends on several other claims that Hughes regards as myths, and which he rebuts. Among these: the idea that there has been zero progress in combatting racism in America; the myth of black weakness; and the notion of inherited trauma. This last, Hughes writes, is the idea that trauma experienced by one’s enslaved ancestors “survives in the subconscious, where its effects can’t be detected even by those experiencing it.”(138) Hughes refutes this notion and decries its fostering of “chronic victimhood.” An important point which goes unnamed here: this is further evidence of the determinism underlying every form of racism, the denial of an individual’s agency and the choices that form the “content of their character.”
The End of Race Politics is less compelling in accounting for why “neoracism” surged into the mainstream, and why the idea of “colorblindness” receded. A few questions I thought were unaddressed or inadequately answered: When intellectuals were turning their backs on colorblindness decades ago, could stronger arguments have been offered in its defense? Can Americans today be convinced to embrace that ideal? Is negating the disrepute of colorblindness sufficient for people today to embrace it?
Earlier, I noted that Hughes’s formulation of the colorblind principle is imprecise. While the book has an individualist thread, its positive case for colorblindness is underdeveloped and significantly flawed. Hughes uncritically regards the notion of “equity,” which his opponents often invoke, as a worthwhile goal and, without addressing the contradiction, he embraces a collectivist idea, economic class, as a proxy for what he calls social disadvantage. Further, in keeping with conventional thinking, Hughes seems to operate with a utilitarian moral framework. The effect is to negate the book’s individualist thread and the attempt at a positive case. It is a further (albeit inadvertent) sign of how collectivized thinking saturates the cultural debate. A more apt subtitle for the book might be: “Arguments against ‘Anti-Racism,’” which would highlight its strength.
Hughes demonstrates that “anti-racism” is a form of racism, but the evidence he presents warrants a stronger moral condemnation of its agenda. For instance, he observes the desire to perpetuate, rather than resolve, grievances:
Normally when someone demands an apology, they actually want one. But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes, the ability to continue demanding the apology is worth more than the apology itself. Sometimes the debt is worth more unpaid than paid. For neoracists, the social and political power that stems from the perception that they are still “owed” something is far more valuable than anything they would get from another national apology or an actual program of national reparations. (132–33)
More damning: racial “strife is what fuels the neoracist industry,” and if racism were eliminated, “they’d no longer be able to garner the cultural power they crave.”(177) The advocates of this racket deserve a far harsher verdict.
Still, The End of Race Politics is a brave, useful work. Colorblindness deserves to be revived and explained, for it points us toward a rational, individualist orientation. Hughes’s book has the potential to resurface an idea long associated with MLK’s dream.
Ziemowit Gowin
Itamar Feldman
