A review of The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America by Coleman Hughes

BY MICHAEL H. BERNSTEIN

COLEMAN HUGHES

Several years ago, I came across an imaginative essay entitled “Explaining Affirmative Action to a Martian.” 1 The author, who I had never heard of, described a fictious interaction where a human explains the rationale of affirmative action to an alien. Among its gems is the following interaction:

Earthling: Black people were enslaved and subjugated for centuries, so, sometimes they get special dispensations. It’s only fair…

Visitor: So those black kids…were enslaved and subjugated, so they get to score 450 [standardized test] points lower than Asians?

Earthling: Well these particular black students didn’t experience slavery or Jim Crow themselves… But their grandparents might have experienced Jim Crow.

Visitor: Might have?

Earthling: Well, around half of black students at elite colleges are actually the children of black immigrants so they have no ancestral connection to American slavery or Jim Crow…

Visitor: … I’m utterly confused by you creatures.

The author of this essay was Coleman Hughes, a Columbia University undergraduate at the time. In the intervening years, Hughes has been one of the leading voices on race. As a long-time listener and fan of Hughes, I was eager to read his first book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America. It did not disappoint.

Hughes has a gift for clearly and dispassionately evaluating one of our most explosive social topics. Oftentimes in today’s world, the political left exaggerates the prevalence of racism while the political right a priori assumes that all such accusations lack merit. What we so desperately need is a middle ground: An analysis that deals honestly with the racism which does exist without inflating it. This is what Coleman Hughes does.