The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America, by Coleman Hughes, was released on February 6, 2024.
This is by far the most thoughtful and thorough book about race in America that I have ever encountered. The True Believers in Critical Theory/Social Justice/DEI will be unable to grok his arguments. But I am confident that every open-minded American who reads this book will come to understand how much harm is being caused by focusing on race.
NOTE: Coleman states clearly that individuals will continue to notice the skin tone, sex, height, and other immutable characteristics of other people. By colorblind, he simply means that our laws and institutions should not treat people differently based upon their skin tone.
Here is a short excerpt from the start of Chapter 5: The Neoracist Narrative:
Most readers will agree that it is dangerous to understate the amount of racism in society. If the problem of racism is bigger than we assume, then we cannot hope to address it effectively. Moreover, it does people of color no good to march into educational and workplace environments naive to the racism they’re likely to face.
In light of this fact, why not err on the side of overestimating racism? When in doubt, shouldn’t we assume that there’s more racism in society, rather than less?
The short answer is no. It’s important to be accurate, precise, and rational with regard to the scope and power of racism against people of color today. But rather than give a series of arguments to this effect, I want to tell a quick story.
My grandfather, Warren Hughes, was born to a poor family in segregated Washington, DC, in 1933. After receiving a degree in engineering from Ohio State University (one of the few blacks to receive such a degree in those days) and serving in the Korean War, he secured a job as an engineer with General Electric. For his ninetieth birthday, he wrote a short memoir, which included his reflections on navigating General Electric as a black man:
It was in September 1959 that I got a more permanent position in Cincinnati, Ohio, working for General Electric. That’s when I began to recognize that the outlook for a Black engineer in those days was different from that of a White engineer. I was told, in fact, that General Electric allows you to advance two ways: one is the management way up, and the other is technical. In other words, you can make the same amount of money by being a manager or by being very good technically. I was told by a well meaning White engineer that I should not strive to go the management route because the White guys who were the technical experts (welders and welding specialists) would not work for a Black manager. What I could do was become the best in my class and a technical expert. Well, at the time, that was not so much of a problem for me.
So, I was in regular engineering status for about ten years, but that was because I accepted what my White colleague had said, and I knew he was well meaning. Well, then, times were changing, and I found out that he was as wrong as he could be. A vacancy came up in my department, and they hired a manager and placed him over me, but I kept my position. However, that manager moved on to greener pastures, so the boss of the section was looking for someone to take his job. When I realized that the manager had been doing just the same kind of thing I had always been doing and that the boss was going to fill the vacancy with a White guy who didn’t even have my experience and who wasn’t even there half the time, I decided to go ahead and talk to my boss about the position. My boss was genuinely shocked that I asked because I had never given him the impression that I was interested in management.
Well, he gave me the job immediately. Interestingly, I found that the White guys—yes, they were all specialists in their fields—liked working for me. In fact, I had no problems whatsoever with them.
My grandfather went on to have a stellar career, eventually reaching the executive level by the 1980s. Had he listened to his well-meaning white colleague who overstated the amount of racism at General Electric, he would never have sought out the management position that led him to greater success. He may have lived his whole life telling himself that racism had held him back—and his background would have given him ample reason to believe this story. Just as there is a danger in understating the amount of racism in society, there is a less obvious (and therefore more pernicious) danger in overstating it. To exaggerate the extent of anti-black racism in society is to reduce every black person’s incentive to reach higher.
In this chapter, we will attempt to see racism for what it is—without either overstating or understating its scope and power. We will also attempt to see neoracism for what it is: a dangerous ideology that does not make contact with reality. Neoracism takes grains of truth and builds them into a powerfully seductive narrative.
The Neoracist Narrative: White people have always had power in society—power that they’ve used to create systems like slavery and Jim Crow that oppress people of color. Even though these systems were destroyed, American society has made little or no progress redressing the wrongs that white people have inflicted on people of color in the past and continue to inflict on people of color in the present. People of color continue suffering from the inertia of white supremacist systems, and they continue experiencing the pain and trauma that was inflicted on their enslaved ancestors. All around us, policies and institutions give rise to racial disparities—differences in outcomes between white people and people of color. In case after case, we see people of color receiving a smaller share of society’s benefits and a larger share of society’s harms. Wherever racial disparities exist, racism—past and present—is the cause. To make matters worse, white Americans are largely oblivious to the racism they perpetuate. They are blind to the plight of people of color and deaf to their pleas. And no wonder: there is no real way for them to understand the many ways in which people of color are made to suffer. Even the least-educated person of color has a better understanding of race and racism than the best-educated white person. Justice demands that we work to undo the wrongs of the past. It demands that we implement policies that rebalance the way resources are distributed. Wherever possible, we need to give people of color preferential treatment. This is the only way for our society to move beyond its checkered racial past and defeat white supremacy.
As seductive as this narrative is, it depends on several harmful myths and fallacies built into neoracist ideology. As I go through them, keep my grandfather’s story, and the lesson it embodies, in mind: comforting falsehoods help no one, least of all people of color. These falsehoods include the following:
- 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 in society, but black people don’t.
In the rest of this chapter, Coleman methodically examines and refutes each of these myths. Here are a few endorsements for The End of Race Politics:
“Humans have dignity and rights because of their ability to flourish and suffer, not their pigmentation. The affirmation of that moral principle here is humane, judicious, eloquent, and timely.” – STEVEN PINKER, professor at Harvard University and author of Enlightenment Now
“When I started writing on race twenty-five years ago, I hoped young people would read me and be assured that being melodramatic, tribal, and pessimistic on race issues is not higher wisdom. Coleman Hughes is exactly what I hoped would happen, and this book is spun gold from start to finish.” – JOHN McWHORTER, associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University and New York Times bestselling author of Woke Racism
“[Hughes’s] thesis ought to become required reading for students of all races on every college campus in America.” – GLENN LOURY, professor of economics at Brown University
“With unusual clarity, [Hughes] offers not merely a damning critique of all the ways the all-American skin game has failed us — he provides a compelling, positive vision of the heights we could reach together were we to finally stop playing.” – THOMAS CHATTERTON WILLIAMS, author of Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race
Table of Contents
Introduction: Why Write About Race?
1. Race, Anti-racism, and Neoracism
2. The Real History of Colorblindness
3. Elite Neoracists Institutions
4. Why Neoracism Is Spreading
5. The Neoracist Narrative
6. Solving The Problem of Racism in America
Appendix A: Population Genetics
Appendix B: “Post-Racial”
Appendix C: Kenneth Clark, The Doll Study
Appendix D: Observational vs. Experimental Studies
Ben Slivka 
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