AND THEN, THERE'S COLEMAN HUGHES....
Because the rock I live under is conveniently large, I had not encountered Coleman Hughes before today, when in a moment of weakness I clicked one of his YouTube videos.
I'm always gobsmacked by the phenomenon of someone from an oppressed group who seems to side with the oppressors. As a gay man, I can understand the concept of internalized homophobia; is this somehow comparable?
Not wishing to get into a kind of ad hominem attack, because he's obviously a decent, well-meaning, smart guy basking in the limelight for his moment of fame, but there was something about Hughes's bland, dispassionate resistance to the interviewer that, frankly, enraged me. And the principal reason is this:
Coleman Hughes, who grew up in the rarefied, leafy environs of historic Montclair, New Jersey, practically a dormitory community for the media stars of NYC, where the median household income in 2010 was $126,983, and a mere 2.7% of the population lives in poverty, is not the person I would first go to in order to understand the effects of systemic racism, or to whose opinions about the necessity for reparations I would defer. Yes, he's young. Boy, is he young.
He seems to be the product of that "finally, here's a smart Black guy!" program that gives cash handouts - sorry! scholarships! - so that the recipient can one day sit on some podcast and imply that those denied every economic opportunity that white people were given, from the arrival of enslaved Africans onward are just - well, you tell me, what is he implying? That everyone else could just grow up in the right environment then get a scholarship (to prove they are the exception, not the rule) and pull up their non-existent bootstraps - non-existent because, as MLK bitterly pointed out, they lack the boots?
I sense that Coleman Hughes's calm certainty and smug superiority is a kind of - just guessing, here - internalized racism that, in his mind, makes it imperative that he see himself and present himself as a cut above the noxious stereotype of the lazy, drug-dealing, violent ghetto Black.
The top of the interview - an interview that has over 100,000 views - frames the issue of "cancel culture" as real. Cancel culture seems to have missed canceling at least 99% of the YouTube videos screaming about cancel culture, so it's not really doing a very good job, is it? Cancel culture is the new right wing trope that's being groomed to replace "PC" and "SJW", which are losing traction. Being careful that what we say doesn't cause harm is not cancel culture, it's a commitment to treat people with dignity and is surely the bare minimum required of us as civilized social beings. (Just like women calling out their abusers is not a "war on men, " it's justice.) It's a good thing that people are holding their tongues around the water cooler.
I suggest that Coleman Hughes needs to leave the philosophy department some weekend, and get his hands dirty, in the trenches, figuratively speaking.
And to take a cue, as everyone on the progressive side should, from my sister and brother-in-law. They've been married 50 years - I know - yet not once have I seen them have a disagreement. Oh, they have disagreements. But they have them privately. This lets them present to the world the face of unity, because their differences have been settled.
What makes the right powerful in their insanity is their monolithic style, their appearance of absolute unity of purpose. The left needs this so much, and so much damage is done when the Coleman Hughes of the world give the Right a wedge to drive progressives apart. Maybe that's the "cancel culture" I can, unfortunately, believe in.
DR
