Coleman Hughes and Ben Shapiro talk about how the Left has moved away from MLK’s dream of a colorblind society to promote race-based policies

Coleman Hughes, a Columbia University grad and host of the “Conversations with Coleman” podcast, joined Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro on the “Sunday Special” this week to discuss his new book, “The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America.”

Hughes, who has also testified before Congress warning against pursuing racial reparations, told Shapiro that liberals who were largely behind Martin Luther King Jr.’s argument for a colorblind society have “abandoned” that idea to pursue race-based policies.

“The Left’s argument for most of my childhood and most of my teenage years with regard to race was the old MLK argument, which is that you were supposed to see people as individuals without reference primarily to their racial group,” Shapiro said.

“And then it seems like the Left has shifted away from that MLK message and now has embraced much more racial politics as a mechanism for electoral and political success. So when you talk a little bit about [colorblindness], why do you think it is that this has now become more associated with ‘the Right,’ even though it was never historically a Right-wing argument?” the Daily Wire host asked.

“Yeah, my childhood mirrored yours in that sense,” Hughes replied. “I grew up in a liberal town. I think I met one Republican my whole life as a kid, and everyone took for granted that Martin Luther King’s famous speech and his now cliched phrase, ‘Judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.’ Everyone took that for granted as the obvious way to think about race.”

WATCH ‘THE BEN SHAPIRO SHOW SUNDAY SPECIAL’ WITH COLEMAN HUGHES

The author added that Dr. King’s argument that was taken for granted was first abandoned during race riots in the late 1960s and 1970s and then again during the George Floyd riots of 2020.

“There’s always been a fringe among academics, elite intellectuals. The Critical Race Theory fringe, which since the ‘70s and ‘80s, has said that ‘actually the civil rights movement was wrong. They didn’t go far enough. And we have to think about race all the time. American society is fundamentally racist.’

Hughes added that “liberals abandoned this idea [colorblindness] during the race riots, very similar to what happened during George Floyd, where you had every politician trying to outdo the other to show how much they cared about racism and implementing race-based policies everywhere from, you know, Microsoft to like a local town ordinance.”

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases