In today’s America, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s hope that black people might be judged by “the content of their character” is increasingly dismissed as quaint or even inconvenient. The new idea is to pose an eternal opposition between “whiteness” and “blackness,” to the point that even a quick Google search for the term “colorblindness” will reveal how casually that notion is dismissed. Once a widely held ideal, disregard for racial differences has now come to seem naïve and even callous to many who equate it with unconcern about the injustices of racist bias.
In The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America, essayist and podcaster Coleman Hughes issues a call to heed King’s counsel instead. King’s radical positions on economics and foreign policy notwithstanding, Hughes observes that much of what is considered higher wisdom on race relations today would surely have perplexed and dismayed King—as it did Hughes himself, currently 28, during some of his formative experiences in the 2010s.
Read Full Article »