“The View” co-hosts butted heads with author Coleman Hughes who called for colorblindness and an end to “woke” race-based policies in his new book, “The End Of Race Policies.”
Hughes argued people should treat one another “without regard to race” and criticized the push on young people that “race is everything.” Co-host Whoopi Goldberg said these race-based policies and curriculums have been handed down to the younger generations because older adults like herself grew up without being educated on racism and being taught to view every person by race.
“I think, I don’t want to say it’s your youth, I think you have a point. But I think you need to take into consideration what people have lived through in order to understand why there has been such an appointing of very specific racial things,” Goldberg said.
“Sure, I think that’s your experience and that’s valid,” Hughes said. “As a counterpoint, when I was in fifth grade, we all watched ‘Roots’ together in public school. So these are different experiences. I think it’s also different generations, it’s also different parts of the country. We have very different cultures all living together in one country, so I’m not gonna deny that but I think I view this notion of a colorblind society, similar to the idea of a peaceful society, which is to say it’s an ideal, it’s a North Star, and the point is not that we’re never gonna get there, we’ll never touch it, but we have to know when we’re going forward and when we’re going backwards and we’re going backwards when we’re doing woke kindergarten in San Francisco.”
Co-host Sunny Hostin said his view that race has no place in the socioeconomic argument is “fundamentally flawed.” Hughes argued to tackle racial disparities in the low socioeconomic class by targeting poverty. (RELATED: ‘Real Racism Problem’: Sunny Hostin Suggests Republicans Wouldn’t Vote For ‘Someone’ Like Tim Scott)
“I think the premise is fundamentally flawed,” Hostin said. “You claim that colorblindness was the goal of the Civil Rights movement based upon Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech — content of character versus the color of skin. Bernice, Dr. King’s daughter, points out that four years after giving that speech, actually, Dr. King also said this: ‘A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for Negroes.'”
Hostin also quoted King who said the U.S. “owe” the black population due to the history of slavery. An argument broke out after Hostin accused Hughes of being used as a “pawn by the right.”
“So your argument for colorblindness, I think, is something that the right has co-opted. And so many in the black community, if I’m being honest with you, because I want to be, believe that you are being used as a pawn by the right and that you’re a charlatan of sorts,” Hostin said.
“He’s not a Republican,” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin interjected.
“Who am I being used by?” Hughes asked.
“You’ve said that you’re a conservative,” Hostin said.
“No,” Hughes pushed back.
“No you did, you actually said that on the podcast you did two weeks ago,” Hostin said.
“I said I was a conservative?” the author asked.
“Yes, you did,” Hostin said.
Hughes explained that King intended to do something “special” for the black race by passing a bill for the economically disadvantaged in his book, “Why We Can’t Wait.” He said he has not been “co-opted” by anyone and has voted for Democrats on the two occasions that he has voted, adding he would consider voting for a “non-Trump Republican.”
“I don’t think there’s any evidence I’ve been co-opted by anyone and I think that that’s an ad hominem tactic people use to not address really the important conversations we’re having here,” he said. “And I think it’s better and it would be better for everyone if we stuck to the topics rather than make it about me.”
“Yes, but I want to give the opportunity to respond to the criticism,” Hostin said.
“I appreciate it, there’s no evidence that I’ve been co-opted by anyone. I have an independent podcast, I work for CNN as an analyst, I write for the Free Press, I’m independent in all of these endeavors and no one is paying me to say what I’m saying. I’m saying it because I feel it,” Hughes said.
Hughes added race relations worsened in 2013 due to technology and social media to create an impression that racism “was on the rise.”
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