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Coleman Hughes on the New Racism Coleman Hughes

Published

11 months ago

February 13, 2024

An anti-segregation demonstration in 1961. (Photo by Bettmann via Getty Images)

My book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America, is about our turning away from a central idea that animated the work of the great civil rights leaders of the twentieth century: color blindness. The principle of color blindness does not mean that we pretend we don’t recognize race. The definition I espouse is that we should treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives.

But our society keeps failing to enshrine color blindness as its guiding ethos. It is this ongoing failure that has allowed state-sanctioned racism to emerge again and again in new and different forms—most recently through the movement I call neoracism.

Neoracists and white supremacists are both committed to different flavors of race supremacy. They both deny our common humanity. They both deny that all races are created equal. They both agree that some races are superior to others, and they both agree that not all people deserve to be treated equally in society. The animating feeling behind neoracism is that people of color are morally superior to white people—that people of color are better at being good people. That’s at the core. The truth, which should be obvious, is that no race is morally superior to any other.

Martin Luther King never wavered on the importance of our common humanity and the goal of transcending race. Nor did he waver on his preference for class-based policy over race-based policy.

Today’s neoracists sound nothing like Dr. King yet they claim his mantle. They enjoy the moral authority of being seen as the carriers of his legacy while simultaneously betraying the very ideals that he stood for. It is the rise of this race consciousness that’s turned elite American institutions into neoracist strongholds.

I will lay out here some of the reasons I think neoracism is a detrimental ideology that undermines social progress and that harms black people in specific ways. First, I will illustrate this with a story about my paternal grandfather.

Warren Hughes was born to a poor family in segregated Washington, D.C., in 1933. After receiving a degree in engineering from Ohio State University (one of the few blacks in those days to receive such a degree) 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.

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.

My grandfather accepted this advice and concentrated on his technical expertise, and while he was recognized for his excellence, after ten years he began to be frustrated when white managers, people who were not as skilled or experienced as he was, were placed over him. When it was about to happen again, he decided to finally ask for a management job.

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 continued to believe the advice given by his 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 experiences would have given him ample reason to believe this story.

Just as there is a danger in not recognizing and 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 antiblack racism in society is to reduce every black person’s incentive to reach higher.

Neoracism is a dangerous ideology that seeks to ignore and subvert reality.

Neoracism takes grains of truth and builds them into a powerfully seductive narrative. The neoracist narrative is this:

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Porn Is Inevitable River Page

Published

1 minute ago

January 15, 2025

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American lawmakers are about to determine the future of pornography, or they’re trying, at least. In recent years, nineteen states—most of them Republican-led—have passed legislation that requires any site with a significant amount of adult content to prove all its users are over 18. Most recently, on New Year’s Day, a new law called HB 3 took effect in my home state of Florida, where porn sites now face fines of up to $50,000 for every violation. But this week, such laws could be found unconstitutional.

This is all thanks to the Free Speech Coalition, a sort of NRA for pornographers, which has sued Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, a religious hard-liner, over that state’s age verification law. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear FSC’s case, which argues that these porn laws undermine free speech, infringe on privacy, and hurt American companies, while doing nothing to block foreign and fringe sites that don’t comply with U.S. laws.

The rationale behind the laws is understandable: Studies have shown that pornography consumption by teenagers can lead to misogynistic attitudes and increased sexual aggression. It’s also linked to mental health problems and increased rates of unsafe sex. More to the point, most parents are uncomfortable with the idea of their children having access to terabytes worth of hardcore pornography at the touch of a button.

But these laws are fundamentally pointless. First etched into mammoth tusks 40,000 years ago, porn predates the written word. It is inevitable—and in the internet age, infinitely accessible—even in places where so-called “porn bans” have been enacted.

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I Joined TikTok Refugees on RedNote. Here’s What It’s Like. River Page

Published

2 minutes ago

January 15, 2025

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On Sunday, if the Biden administration gets its way, the third of American adults who use TikTok could abruptly be deprived of the social media app. And over the past several days, self-described “TikTok refugees” have been flocking to another Chinese app called RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu, which roughly translates to “little red book” (as in, Mao’s). It’s not clear who started the trend, but it’s undeniable: RedNote surged to the top of both Apple and Android’s app stores. Taylor Lorenz, the uber-progressive internet commentator, described it as “the hottest new social app in America!!”

Unlike TikTok, RedNote, which started in Shanghai in 2013 and has over 300 million active monthly users, is an unmistakably Chinese app. When you first open it to sign up, you’re greeted by a wall of Mandarin. The terms and conditions are also in Mandarin: For all I know, I could have just signed over my 401(k) to Xi Jinping himself. And while TikTok is banned in its native China, RedNote is available to the 1.4 billion people living there, and who make up the majority of its userbase. When you log on, you are greeted with a feed nearly identical to TikTok’s, an endless scroll of photos and short-form videos—and they are overwhelmingly in Chinese. And unlike some social media sites such as X, there is no button to auto-translate text.

President Biden signed a bill last spring that would ban TikTok if its Beijing-based parent company doesn’t sell the app to a U.S. buyer. Ever since then, Zoomers have been sardonically bidding farewell to the Chinese spies assigned to monitor their online activities. “It’s been real, my Chinese friend,” one posted. Another imagined “trying to reconnect with my Chinese spy on the dark web” after a TikTok ban, “cuz I never felt more seen and understood than I did with him.” The joke has carried over to RedNote, with some Americans posting that they’re looking for their “new Chinese spy.”

The Chinese users on RedNote seem bemused by these TikTok refugees, asking questions like: “Why are you here? Is it because your TikTok has been banned?”