Bringing An End To Race Politics - Coleman Hughes

What do you think about the state of race in America now? What's your meteorological weather report?

Yeah, so, you know, the reason I wrote this book, uh, is that this idea of colorblindness, which means you try to treat people without regard to race. I see obviously that you're a quote unquote "white guy." You see that I'm a quote unquote "Black guy," but I'm gonna treat you like Chris Williamson, knowing everything I know about you as an individual, and I ask you to treat me like Coleman Hughes, knowing everything you know about me. And we don't regard, we don't give weight to each other's races when we treat each other. And my book is, is advocating not just for that, but also advocating for getting race out of public policy. In America, we have all kinds of policies that use racial discrimination, uh, explicitly. And people have various reasons for this, to fight racism, to combat the legacy of slavery, and so forth. And in my book, I wanna argue instead for a colorblind philosophy. Let's get race out of public policy. If we want to correct for disadvantages, let's do that on the base of s- basis of socioeconomics and class. And, uh, uh, i- in my view, this is a much healthier path towards the ideal of a colorblind society. It used to be, you know, common sense on the left and in liberal circles that that's what you wanted to do. In, in the mid '60s, you had Martin Luther King writing t- and speaking to, to this effect, but in the past 50 years, and particularly in the past 10 with the explosion of Black Lives Matter, social justice, wokeness, DEI, critical race theory, whatever you wanna call it, this idea of colorblindness has come under attack as naive at best or as white supremacist, uh, uh, uh, at worst. So, so in the book here, I really try to rescue this idea of colorblindness because I think it's the, uh, the wisest way to actually navigate a multiracial, multiethnic society in the long run.

Explain to me the difference between being colorblind and not seeing race, 'cause that kinda became a meme. "I don't see race-"

Right.

... became a meme. What, is there a difference?

I think there's a huge difference because the truth is, we all see race, right? When someone says, "I don't see race," I understand what they're getting at, but it's actually a lie. It's not true. I could... You know, e- everyone watching this can see that you're white and that, that I'm not, right? So when people say, "I don't see race," they're putting up a very convenient target for the critics of colorblindness to say, "Look, they're just being naive. They're pretending not to see race." Uh, uh, and it allows people to dismiss the deeper philosophy of colorblindness without giving it a fair consideration. So in my book, I, I advocate that people just stop saying that. It, it gives enemies of colorblindness far too easy a target. What you should say instead is, "I try to treat people without regard to race." Now, that doesn't roll off the tongue quite as quickly, but it's, it's, it's much closer to the truth. It's more accurate. And so, um, you know, I think we should all admit that we see ra- race, all admit that we are theoretically capable of being raci- racist. All of us are. So this is not a book that's telling you to be naive or to pretend that racism doesn't exist. It's a book that says we should treat people without regard to race, both in our personal lives and in our public policy.