Review of 'The End of Race Politics' by Coleman Hughes
Our “national conversation” about race is a nesting doll of clichés. Each time a racially charged incident makes news in America, we are reminded of the “conversation” we must have, often as an end in itself, to atone for America’s history of racism. Then come the clichés of the experts (demagogues, diversity consultants, and intellectuals) who boil down the trickiest social problem of the era to glib demands. The standard diagnosis—that every racial incident and racial disparities in general are due to America’s white-supremacy problem—is as predictable as it is useless. And the prescription is sheer posturing: Elites genuflect to ideals like diversity and equity while fighting like hell to ensure that marginally more black students go to top colleges. As Coleman Hughes points out in The End of Race Politics, the black Americans who most need meaningful interventions are left to languish where progressive elites dare not turn their attention—the quicksand of disordered neighborhoods.
Such unserious treatment belittles the problem of racial tension and pushes Americans to be flippant about solutions. That is a massive mistake, even for those who do not believe we live in a society shot through with racism. Bad race relations are the American people’s mark of Cain, threatening our nation’s self-confidence, our shared sense of destiny, and thus our investment in our future. The very belief that America is failing in its experiment in multiracial democracy is a social, economic, and security risk, because left unchecked, it is self-fulfilling. This is most apparent in the rise of Critical Race Theory. CRT has now convinced many young people that America is not worth fighting for—and may even be worth fighting against.Our challenge is therefore twofold: to make progress in working toward racial harmony, and to get Americans to believe that we are genuinely committed to that progress.
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Tal Fortgang is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He was a 2023 Sapir Fellow.
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