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A review by lpm100
The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America by Coleman Hughes
informative
medium-paced
5.0
Book Review
"The End of Race Politics"
Coleman Hughes
"These things are not new, but bear repeating"
*******
Verdict: Recommended.
Of the book:
-6 chapters over 181 pages.
-A couple of afternoons of reading
-4 appendices (observational vs experimental studies/review of expert testimony in Brown v. Board of Education/ Why the word "post-racial" is avoided in this text/ basics of population genetics.)
*******
I read this book because I wanted an introduction to the mind of Coleman Hughes--an impressive, articulate up-and-coming conservative--who has great guests on his podcasts.
Hughes reminds me of a young Thomas Sowell --almost nothing that he states is not something that I have not read in one or another of Sowell's many books. (And if not him, then Eric Hoffer.)
To be sure, he is a disciplined thinker in the way that both of them are--And he does admit to getting feedback from many very good minds (Sam Harris / John McWhorter/Jonathan Haidt/Nile Ferguson/Douglas Murray, among many others.)
A couple of novel things that I DO get from this book are that:
1. Freedom of speech of today is NOT the same thing as free speech of two centuries ago because of the internet. It has been said that "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes," But that really is the case given that the transmission of information is almost instantaneous and does not have to go through any filters.
2. A synopsis of the series of fallacies that neo-racists commit.
a. The disparity fallacy. Racial disparities provide direct evidence of systemic racism
b. The myth of undoing the past. New acts of racial discrimination can undo the effects of past racial discrimination.
c. The myth of no progress. American side is made no progress combating racism since the Civil Rights movement.
d. The myth of inherited trauma. Black people who are alive today inherit the trauma that was inflicted on their enslaved ancestors.
e. 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.
f. The racial ad hominem. You can dismiss any claims about race and racism that white people make simply because they are white.
*******
If I had to reduce this book to two sentences, they would be something like:
1. (p.177) "If racism were eliminated from society, neoracists would be out of a job: They'd no longer have anyone or anything to accuse; their agenda would lose social relevance, and they'd no longer be able to garner the cultural power they crave. It's only by perpetuating interracial hatred - - by continuing to make old racial wounds seem fresh.... that neoracists can continue getting what they want."
2. "The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." (Mark Twain) So, I guess the radical thing maybe from the time of Reconstruction up until The Affirmative Action Era was color blindness. Now the national obsession with race has made it such that color-blindness is actually a conservative idea.
Second order thoughts/questions:
1. Given the IQ difference between whites and blacks, the latter may never achieve income parity. What are we going to do with this? Will neoracists have jobs in perpetuity?
2. It has been known for a long time that "What the intellectual craves in his innermost being is to turn the whole globe into a classroom and the world’s population into a class of docile pupils hanging onto the words of the chosen teacher." (Hoffer). My question is: Why do such people always go looking for black people as dupes? Their actions really make one believe that they have doxastic commitment to the idea that blacks are low-hanging fruit/easy prey.
3. If you have a country tear itself apart that's already very racially mixed, what does that look like? A Civil War? A bloodless divorce, like Czechoslovakia? A Chinese style decline of several centuries?
Can this be arrested? Or is it inherent? (I hope to hear some thoughts about this question in a Yascha Mounk book that I have sitting on my shelf about the same topic.)
*******
Factoids:
(128) The KKK had about 3,000 members nationwide in 2016, compared to a million a century ago. For comparison: the flat Earth society has a membership of 3,500 people.
(133) Beginning with the conquests of Muhammad, Arabs enslaved as many as 14 million Africans over a period of about a thousand years. To this day, a common colloquial word for black person in Arabic is "slave."
(112) 80% of the world's pianists are Chinese. There are many chess grandmasters from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but none from Japan.
(117) Chinese earn $1.18 on the median white dollar, while Hmong earn $0.52 - - even though they are both Asian. Asian Indians earn $1.50 for every dollar earned by white Americans, and Bengalis earn $0.65--Even though they are both South Asian Indian.
Quotes:
(132) 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 paid than unpaid.
(123) We can end current systems of injustice. We can compensate living victims of injustice. But we're not omnipotent. We can't undo the past or compensate the dead.
(176) I dread the possibility of black identity becoming tied to a rehearsed sense of victimhood.
(167) The original vision for affirmative action was forward to serve as training wheels on the path to a color blind society.
(161) Equity by fiat is merely the illusion of equity.
(158) Cycles of ethnic violence around the world show us again and again that a society doesn't overcome injustice by creating new forms of it.
(150) If we are considering wealth to be a proxy for economic power, then we must contend with the fact that the majority of Americans of every race have basically no economic power whatsoever..... How do you, as an individual, benefit from the fact that people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos belong to the same race as you?
(145) Neo racists depict black people as being emotionally fragile - - almost like children.
"The End of Race Politics"
Coleman Hughes
"These things are not new, but bear repeating"
*******
Verdict: Recommended.
Of the book:
-6 chapters over 181 pages.
-A couple of afternoons of reading
-4 appendices (observational vs experimental studies/review of expert testimony in Brown v. Board of Education/ Why the word "post-racial" is avoided in this text/ basics of population genetics.)
*******
I read this book because I wanted an introduction to the mind of Coleman Hughes--an impressive, articulate up-and-coming conservative--who has great guests on his podcasts.
Hughes reminds me of a young Thomas Sowell --almost nothing that he states is not something that I have not read in one or another of Sowell's many books. (And if not him, then Eric Hoffer.)
To be sure, he is a disciplined thinker in the way that both of them are--And he does admit to getting feedback from many very good minds (Sam Harris / John McWhorter/Jonathan Haidt/Nile Ferguson/Douglas Murray, among many others.)
A couple of novel things that I DO get from this book are that:
1. Freedom of speech of today is NOT the same thing as free speech of two centuries ago because of the internet. It has been said that "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes," But that really is the case given that the transmission of information is almost instantaneous and does not have to go through any filters.
2. A synopsis of the series of fallacies that neo-racists commit.
a. The disparity fallacy. Racial disparities provide direct evidence of systemic racism
b. The myth of undoing the past. New acts of racial discrimination can undo the effects of past racial discrimination.
c. The myth of no progress. American side is made no progress combating racism since the Civil Rights movement.
d. The myth of inherited trauma. Black people who are alive today inherit the trauma that was inflicted on their enslaved ancestors.
e. 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.
f. The racial ad hominem. You can dismiss any claims about race and racism that white people make simply because they are white.
*******
If I had to reduce this book to two sentences, they would be something like:
1. (p.177) "If racism were eliminated from society, neoracists would be out of a job: They'd no longer have anyone or anything to accuse; their agenda would lose social relevance, and they'd no longer be able to garner the cultural power they crave. It's only by perpetuating interracial hatred - - by continuing to make old racial wounds seem fresh.... that neoracists can continue getting what they want."
2. "The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them." (Mark Twain) So, I guess the radical thing maybe from the time of Reconstruction up until The Affirmative Action Era was color blindness. Now the national obsession with race has made it such that color-blindness is actually a conservative idea.
Second order thoughts/questions:
1. Given the IQ difference between whites and blacks, the latter may never achieve income parity. What are we going to do with this? Will neoracists have jobs in perpetuity?
2. It has been known for a long time that "What the intellectual craves in his innermost being is to turn the whole globe into a classroom and the world’s population into a class of docile pupils hanging onto the words of the chosen teacher." (Hoffer). My question is: Why do such people always go looking for black people as dupes? Their actions really make one believe that they have doxastic commitment to the idea that blacks are low-hanging fruit/easy prey.
3. If you have a country tear itself apart that's already very racially mixed, what does that look like? A Civil War? A bloodless divorce, like Czechoslovakia? A Chinese style decline of several centuries?
Can this be arrested? Or is it inherent? (I hope to hear some thoughts about this question in a Yascha Mounk book that I have sitting on my shelf about the same topic.)
*******
Factoids:
(128) The KKK had about 3,000 members nationwide in 2016, compared to a million a century ago. For comparison: the flat Earth society has a membership of 3,500 people.
(133) Beginning with the conquests of Muhammad, Arabs enslaved as many as 14 million Africans over a period of about a thousand years. To this day, a common colloquial word for black person in Arabic is "slave."
(112) 80% of the world's pianists are Chinese. There are many chess grandmasters from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, but none from Japan.
(117) Chinese earn $1.18 on the median white dollar, while Hmong earn $0.52 - - even though they are both Asian. Asian Indians earn $1.50 for every dollar earned by white Americans, and Bengalis earn $0.65--Even though they are both South Asian Indian.
Quotes:
(132) 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 paid than unpaid.
(123) We can end current systems of injustice. We can compensate living victims of injustice. But we're not omnipotent. We can't undo the past or compensate the dead.
(176) I dread the possibility of black identity becoming tied to a rehearsed sense of victimhood.
(167) The original vision for affirmative action was forward to serve as training wheels on the path to a color blind society.
(161) Equity by fiat is merely the illusion of equity.
(158) Cycles of ethnic violence around the world show us again and again that a society doesn't overcome injustice by creating new forms of it.
(150) If we are considering wealth to be a proxy for economic power, then we must contend with the fact that the majority of Americans of every race have basically no economic power whatsoever..... How do you, as an individual, benefit from the fact that people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos belong to the same race as you?
(145) Neo racists depict black people as being emotionally fragile - - almost like children.