In preparing to read Coleman Hughes’ The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America (Penguin Random House, 2024), I gave serious thought to setting aside any personal bias. I’ve always embraced the ideal of judging people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin—an ideal I grew up with and still hold firmly. Knowing Hughes’ work is grounded in this same principle, I approached his book with the intention of reading it as openly and objectively as possible.
Recent years have challenged that ideal. Many contemporary books and conversations on race in the West have left me feeling alienated—as if I no longer shared the same reality as others. The passionate embrace of neo-racist ideas and policies by friends and colleagues has been both frustrating and disheartening. Still, I’ve made a sincere effort to explore these new perspectives, even when they seemed eerily similar to older ideas: grouping people by race and assigning collective attributes, attitudes, or treatment based on those groupings.
My early exposure to intersectionality came through a Marxist-feminist lens, and while Critical Theory initially intrigued me with its rebellious flavor, I quickly realized that its approach inevitably undermined the principle of treating individuals as individuals. Deconstructing theories may always have its fans, and I’ve often found value in heterodox ideas—but in this case, every path seemed to lead away from non-discrimination and toward group essentialism.
Back in the early days of “Woke,” a colleague urged me to read Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility (Beacon Press, 2018). I took their recommendation seriously. On a rainy day, I sat down expecting to be intellectually challenged and perhaps even uncomfortable—something I often welcome. But the book was so poorly written that I struggled to finish it. When my colleague asked what I thought, I said this:
“A woman realizes one day that she holds significant racist opinions. Instead of looking in the mirror and dealing with her own shortcomings, she proceeds to write a book blaming her racism on the race to which she believes she belongs and the society in which she lives. She proceeds to tell the reader that if you don’t agree with her, then you are part of the problem. The book is a piece of trash and I am sad that I will never get the time I spent reading it back.”
Since then, DiAngelo has rightly been criticized as a race-grifter, profiting from a message built on guilt and self-flagellation. As someone raised Catholic, I understand the seductive power of guilt, repentance, and penance. The success of White Fragility added another evangelist to the Church of Woke—someone who travels from town to town telling white audiences how guilty they should feel, all for the price of a speaker’s fee.
Colorblindness gained real traction in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, though it has been consistently misunderstood. It never meant “not seeing color”—which is impossible—but rather refusing to treat skin color as meaningful in determining a person’s value or moral character. It asked us to let go of race as a social determinant. Group identity may be the crudest way to organize people, but it’s also the easiest path to mass manipulation.
In this climate, Hughes’ The End of Race Politics arrived at just the right moment. After years of media saturation, EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) mandates, and government policies that discriminate against whites—including those from impoverished backgrounds, as well as many Asians—public frustration was mounting. These policies aren’t just racially biased; they’re intellectually lazy. If the goal is to assist the disadvantaged, the most sensible and fair approach is to focus on economic class. But this doesn’t provide the ideological cover that race-based policies offer to those driven by resentment.
By 2023, the neo-racist movement had reached a peak. The term BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) became a standard part of institutional language, carefully constructed to sound inclusive while implicitly excluding whites. A more honest label would have been “non-white.” At the same time, the term “anti-racist” was applied to policies and ideologies that, in practice, promoted racial discrimination.
As Hughes explains:
“And why do so many people continue to be fooled by the ‘anti-racist’ label? The answer: theirs is the latest brand of bigotry to gain social approval in America, and that social approval acts as a buffer that insulates their views from scrutiny. Every society contains people who champion bigotry and the sense of power and status it gives them. They enjoy feeling superior; they enjoy righteous anger; they enjoy receiving winks and back pats from other bigots in their tribe; and they enjoy ascending the tribal hierarchy by signaling their commitment to its bigoted ideals.”
Throughout the book, Hughes guides the reader through the rise of neo-racism and its internal contradictions—particularly its claim to continue the civil rights legacy. He frequently turns to the words of Martin Luther King Jr. for clarity:
“In his last book, for instance, Dr. King defined racism as ‘a doctrine of the congenital inferiority and worthlessness of a people.’ He took for granted that people of all races could be racist toward one another. In one interview, he said that ‘black supremacy would be equally evil as white supremacy’ and that ‘the cry “black power,” whether they mean it or not, falls on the ear as racism in reverse.’ Yet neoracists reject the commonsense understanding of racism at the heart of the civil rights movement. They redefine racism so that their own brand of racism doesn’t count.”
Hughes defends colorblindness in part by comparing it to our use of the calendar:
“(Colorblindness) is not completely natural nor completely socially constructed. It’s a social construct inspired by a natural phenomenon. To take a simple example, consider the concept of a month. Months don’t exist in nature; they don’t track anything in the natural world. Nothing in the cosmos begins when February does or ends when March does. We could just as easily end March a day later and give April an extra day. Or we could get rid of March altogether and distribute its days among the remaining eleven months. On the other hand, months are clearly inspired by something that does exist in nature: the lunar cycle. It is no accident that months are similar in length to the lunar cycle, which averages 29.5 days. (The words “moon” and “month” even derive from the same root.) So what is a month? It’s not a natural phenomenon because it doesn’t track anything in the natural world with precision. Therefore, it must be a social construct. Yet unlike most social constructs, it owes its very existence and basic characteristics to a natural phenomenon.”
Critics of colorblindness often argue that race affects character because it influences life experience. But this logic is flawed. Every trait—height, gender, birthplace—shapes experience. To argue that race is determinative is to fall into the trap of racial essentialism. That’s not awareness—it’s racism.
As Hughes puts it:
“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. White supremacists and neoracists might disagree about the details (who is superior and why), but they share a common racist anatomy.”
It’s not surprising that Hughes’ message makes many uncomfortable—especially leaders, educators, and consultants who have built careers around the Woke framework. Some do so for profit, others out of sincere belief. But confronting one’s own hypocrisy is never easy.
Eventually, though, truth prevails. Contradictions are exposed. Grifters are unmasked.
The end comes for all things.