For many progressives, it was a big moment. In 2019, Congress held its first hearing on whether the United States should pay reparations for slavery.
To support the idea, Democrats invited influential author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who had revived the reparations issue in an article in The Atlantic, and actor and activist Danny Glover.
Republicans turned to a virtual unknown: Coleman Hughes, a 23-year-old philosophy student at Columbia University.
At the hearing, Mr. Hughes, who looked his age, testified to the House subcommittee that failure to pay reparations after the Civil War was “one of the greatest injustices ever perpetrated.”
But, he continued, they shouldn’t be paid now. “There is a difference between acknowledging history and allowing history to distract us from the problems we face today,” he said, pointing to endemic problems affecting African Americans, such as poor schools, dangerous neighborhoods and a punitive criminal justice system.
Some in the audience booed. The Democratic subcommittee chairman, Steve Cohen of Tennessee, called for calm (“calm, calm”), but then suggested that Hughes’ testimony had been presumptuous.
More than four years later, Hughes, now 27, has emerged as something of an oddity in the tense national conversation about how race should be a factor in public policy: He is a young black conservative, who maintains (in his writings , a podcast and YouTube channel with about 173,000 subscribers, that schools have taught students of their generation to obsess over their racial identity, while blocking arguments that challenge their worldview.
Hughes is not the first black thinker to reject progressive politics or criticize the educational establishment. But unlike most of his conservative mentors, Hughes is young enough to have been raised in the same pedagogy they criticize.
In its New bookIn his book “The End of Racial Politics: Making the Case for a Colorblind America,” out Feb. 6, Hughes recounts what it was like growing up in the liberal enclave of Montclair, New Jersey, and then heading to Columbia. places that, he said, were obsessed with affinity groups, diversity, equity and inclusion programs, microaggressions, and “white privilege.”
Use these stories to defend a colorblind society.
The goal is not to avoid noticing race, which he says is impossible. (In fact, he admonishes people who say things like “I don’t see color” and asks them to use phrases like “I try to treat people without regard to race.”)
“The goal of colorblindness,” he writes, “is to consciously ignore race as a reason to treat individuals differently and as a category on which to base public policy.”
Mr. Hughes says the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired his views and often repeats a memorable line from the “I Have a Dream” speech: that one day, children “will not be judged by the color of their skin.” but by the content of his character.”
His arguments have infuriated his critics, who say he ignores the deep racial inequalities that plague American society, in everything from schools to income to housing. And, they say, it intentionally misrepresents the speech of Dr. King, who also protested persistent segregation, police brutality and black poverty.
“Even those who are still well off continue to experience racism.” saying Monnica Williams, psychologist, in an online discussion in which Mr Hughes participated.
Hughes, in turn, has a harsh assessment of progressives, who he says see American society in terms of whites and non-whites, with whites as historical oppressors. In his book he calls them “neoracists.”
“Neoracists,” he writes, “are the most likely to insist that someone of European ancestry should not open a Mexican restaurant.”
In an interview, Hughes said that his views on color blindness were gaining wider acceptance. But he sees a long way to go toward realizing a university culture where unorthodox opinions, left or right, are not harshly repressed.
“I agree that cancel culture has peaked,” he said. “But saying something peaked and then declined doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in a very good place.”
In his book, Hughes describes his first encounters with diversity programs. As a middle school student, his high school sent him to a three-day conference for students of color, where he heard terms like “white privilege” and “intersectionality” for the first time. There was an atmosphere of “suffocating conformism,” he writes, and dissent was strongly discouraged.
At Columbia, he was baffled by students who complained about being surrounded by white supremacy. He found the campus to be “one of the most progressive and non-racist environments on Earth.”
Why, he asks, did “these children seem more pessimistic about the state of American race relations than my grandparents (who lived through segregation)?”
He joined some like-minded students and teachers, such as John McWhorter, who said he considered Mr. Hughes like a son. (Mr. McWhorter also writes for the New York Times Opinion section.) Christian González, a college friend, said his experiences sometimes felt disorienting, and some students occasionally accused him of advocating white supremacy. .
“It’s hard to swim against the current like that when 80 percent of the people around you have different points of view,” said González, who is now a doctoral student. “You might start to think you’re crazy.”
Kmele Foster, a 43-year-old libertarian-leaning political commentator, became friends with Hughes after seeing some of his work online. He said black conservatives of his generation had much less to deal with than Hughes.
“I suspect,” Foster said, “that Coleman, coming into a polarized environment in college where he was more explicitly frowned upon for having his views, was probably better prepared for what was coming his way.”
Hughes said he began writing for the conservative website. quillette after Columbia’s student newspaper was not interested in publishing his op-eds.
He described feeling social punishment and, at times, isolation. There was a time, for example, when he matched with a classmate on Tinder only to be rejected once she discovered his writing. “Just before the appointment,” she recalled, “she said to me, ‘I just read your Quillette article. I could never go on a date with someone who doesn’t believe racism exists.’”
“It’s not even close to what I said,” he added. “It’s also not something I would ever say.”
His Quillette articles, however, caught the attention of Republicans in the House. Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee. Some of Hughes’ friends advised him not to testify, arguing that accepting an invitation from House Republicans was a bad look.
Despite palpable hostility from some in the audience, Mr. Hughes sat calmly throughout the hearing, occasionally drinking from a bottle of water. But the boos unsettled him, he said.
“People were shouting ‘shame!’ “I looked at him as he walked out the door,” said Thomas Chatterton Williams, a friend and writer who shares many of Hughes’ views on race. “Coleman is a really hard guy to shake, but I know he didn’t feel good about it.”
Hughes channeled the experience into music. Hughes, who briefly studied at Juilliard before enrolling at Columbia, raps under the stage name Coldxman and plays jazz trombone. After the hearing, he wrote a song called “Blasphemy” that was released last year on his album “Amor Fati,” a Latin phrase meaning “love for one’s destiny.” In one verse, he says: “Mark me from thinking and put me in prison, serving sentence by the written sentences.”
Joined the right Manhattan Institute as a fellow and continued to write occasionally for Quillette. Giving up a more prominent professional career as a commentator (such as signing up as a columnist at a major publication or joining a cable news channel as a contributor), he began his own podcastConversations with Coleman.
That independence helps protect you from repercussions.
Being alone means “there is no employer to attack if you don’t like Mr. Coleman’s position,” said Mr. Williams, the writer. “There is no university to complain to, no newspaper to tweet angrily at.”
But that doesn’t mean it’s accepted. Hughes said the most disconcerting episode had to do with his talk last year at the annual Ted Conference.
In his 10-minute presentation, Hughes, who comes from a middle-class family, called for public policies to help people based on their income, which he called “the best way to lower the temperature of long-term tribal conflict.” “. .”
The audience was mostly positive, but a handful of critics, including members of Ted’s staff, complained that the talk had been disturbing, harmful and inaccurate, even though the organization had fact-checked it.
Some employees started an internal campaign to prevent Mr. Hughes’ talk from being promoted, according to accounts provided by Mr. Hughes and Ted director Chris Anderson.
As a result, Anderson said, the talk was not initially included on Ted’s most popular podcast. Ted also buried the presentation on his website, until several months later, when a prominent Ted Circuit speaker, Tim Urban, pointed it out.
And Mr. Anderson asked Mr. Hughes to participate in a debate with Jamelle Bouie, columnist for the New York Times, the same one in which psychologist Williams participated, so that Ted could have a contrary perspective.
“It was very much a interlocutor veto situation,” Hughes said. “I said, ‘Okay, okay. I will do this additional debate, even if you don’t force anyone else to do it.’”
Hughes said he would not attend this year’s Ted conference.
Foster, the political commentator, says these kinds of experiences can affect people, even those with the thickest skin: “It can still be quite painful for people to suggest that when you take a position, it’s some kind of betrayal of your ‘ people.'”
