The Fatal Contradiction of the Race Grifters | Coleman Hughes

I mean often in life we think we're doing one thing for one reason, but we're actually doing it for a totally different reason. Often that other reason is unflattering. Um, you know, we claim to be doing something out of moral concern, but it's very quickly revealed with two seconds of thought to be coming from envy or revenge. I mean, this is like human psychology one-on-one, is that sometimes we're even blind to our own pretexts.

So more and more, I think about political projects as pretextual. Uh, because the contradictions, you know, so often reveal themselves. So for example, um, Ibram Kendi is, you know, his whole book is about equal results and the idea that, you know, if black people are 13% of the population, black people should be 13% of people in prison and no more, 133% of the wealth, 13% of the teachers, 133% of the nurses, 13% of every single domain. He is apparently very consistent about this, and, um, and that's his worldview.

Okay, so putting that to the side, take it at face value. Why is it that someone like him and the people he disagrees with have never once, and I really mean never once, highlighted all the domains in which white Americans are underrepresented in good things or are overrepresented in bad things? So, for example, suicide—no small issue—white Americans much more likely to die of suicide than black Americans. Um, in my alcoholism too; alcoholism and drunk driving. In my book, I list nine different diseases that white people are more likely to die of.

Now, is my point that white people are on the whole worse off than black people? No, that’s a total—it’s nothing to do with what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that if your philosophy at a deep level were about equal results for equal races, then you would expect someone like him to highlight those disparities as well, right, if it were about disparity as such.

Now, understanding that so much of human behavior is a pretext for more base motives, what does it tell you that they only ever care about the disparities that black people are on the worst end of? I think that the whole equity campaign is a pretext for what is at base just, you know, black and brown identity politics. That’s all it is. It’s my group; it’s I like my group and I want us to advance to equal or even greater than other groups.

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When we’re speaking about pretexts, like there are layers of pretext and I think it’s—and I'm interested in your view—I'm going to make a case that I like my group better because that's to my advantage. And I can cover that advantage by claiming, um, what would you say, moral superiority as an avatar of my racial community. That's right. So it's like, yeah, it's my race first, but not really. It's me.

See, I see this with the activist types all the time. It’s like the trans community—well, first of all, no it’s not a community by any stretch of the imagination, by any standards. And you're actually not a representative; you just happen to be a member of that group and no one's given you the power to do the negotiating or the speaking on behalf of your community. And you're clearly doing it only for your own narcissistic advantage.

You know, and this is a very complicated thing to sort through, right? Because that rejoinder could be thrown back at either of us. You know, I could say, well, the reason that you're promoting color-blindness is because you have a book and now you're on this podcast; you're, you know, sawing the fiddle with regards to the sales of your book and it’s all about you. It’s a very dismal worldview to assume that all human motivation can be boiled down to, you know, narrow self-aggrandizement.

I certainly don't think it's true in any regard, but it's definitely the case that much of what we see that's political is a pretext for something that's deeper. And at the deepest levels too, I think it's not only self-aggrandizement that's at the root of, let's say, the demand for equity, it's also an envy and resentment that's rapacious beyond comprehension. There’s no satisfying that demand.

I mean, all you have to do is think about it technically for a minute. It’s like okay, apart from the issues you brought up, right, which is that there are all sorts of situations like the feminists never complain about the dir of women in bricklaying, for example. It's always the SE sweet, and so you just see that everywhere. It’s like okay, well how black do you have to be before the equity distribution kicks in? Like, and what are we going to do? Are we going to—are we going to DNA test everyone? I think my wife is 3% African-American; I can't remember if that's the case, it's something like that.

So she’s more black than Elizabeth Warren was Native American when she claimed to be Native American. Well, there you—there you—there. Well, but you know, that begs the question: is this a genetic identity? And if it's not a genetic identity, well, is it one you can just adopt? That’s the Rachel—what was her name? Donel doelle? Yeah, problem—doelle, doelle, right, right. It’s like, well if it's not, if it’s racial, is it genetic? And if it's not genetic, is it cultural?

And of course the leftists insist that everything is cultural, so how the hell do you define black? And the answer is, well it doesn't matter because that’s not the issue, right? The fact that that leads to all sorts of logical contradictions and could never be implemented is completely irrelevant to the power game that’s being played. No. And so how do you know? How do you know? Let’s take that apart. You can ask me too: like, how do you know that you're not doing exactly what you accuse, in some ways you accuse D'Angelo and Kendi of doing?

Like, you know, you've been successful for quite a long time, and you've been successful in part because you focused on racial issues. Now, so that’s what the harshest of critics could say, and I'm sure that sort of thing has been said to you. How do you personally—it’s very worthwhile to be attuned to your own shortcomings, absolutely, and to not—you know, note that there's good rationale for your—there's always a rationalization at hand to put a moral gloss on your comparative success.

It’s like what do you think in check that helps you stay on the straight narrow path? Yep, so I think the only way you can really tell, uh, from the outside is whether someone sticks to their positions when it doesn't benefit them. And this is what you can say, I mean this is what separates someone like Bernie Sanders, he’s the quintessential example of this, from many people that hold his position.

Whatever you want to say about Bernie Sanders, he could be a total, total Satan in your worldview—he was saying all of the things he was saying today when it benefited him not at all. When really all—decades ago he was just such an outlier that he really saw very little benefit politically from what he was saying, and he just continued saying it, right? Whereas, you know, virtually, you know, someone like Kamala Harris—nobody knows what she actually thinks because she has flip-flopped on every issue. Just in the past month she was against the death penalty, then she was for it, and then she, you know, so she seems much more like an empty vessel who will say whatever she has to say to get to the next rung.

And many politicians are like that. I don’t mean to single out Kamala Harris, but you know, what I can say for myself, and I think any of my close friends would vouch for this, is before I had any public profile—before I was a writer of any kind—I was my friends, by talking about these same issues when all it did was like get me a reputation for being the, uh, well frankly at Columbia got me a reputation for being some kind of right-winger, which I never have been. So when it was only really a minus in my life, I still represented what I believed 100%.

And of course from the outside, there’s no way to verify that, but it’s true. So well, there’s some—there are some ways of verifying that because you know, we could look into the details of your autobiographical history and I think you have put your finger on something that’s relevant. I mean, one of the ways we do evaluate people for their moral propriety and reliability is their consistency during times of distress.