“The View” just can’t seem to take a break from looking bad in viral clips.
Writer and author Coleman Hughes made a guest appearance on the TV show this week to promote his new book, “The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America.”
In a 10-minute clip making the rounds on X, Hughes defends his position on “The View” in advocating for policies that help the needy not on the basis of race, but on socioeconomic status.
“So my overall argument is that class, socioeconomics, is a better proxy for disadvantage. We all want to help the disadvantaged, and the question is, how do we identify them, right? The default right now in a lot of areas of policy is to use black and Hispanic identity as a proxy for disadvantage, and my argument is that you actually get a better picture of who needs help by looking at socioeconomics and income,” Hughes said in the video clip.
You can watch it below.
• @coldxman‘s appearance on The View
“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” pic.twitter.com/sFFWv42MHU
— Jules Terpak (@julesterpak) March 27, 2024
Let’s be fair to most co-hosts of the show: The conversation was fairly civil and contained some good constructive criticism that Hughes addressed well.
The exception is Sunny Hostin.
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“Your argument that race has no place in that (socioeconomic) equation is really fundamentally flawed,” Hostin told Hughes.
The two proceeded to dispute the true meaning of Dr. Martin Luther King’s words. Hughes was the first to invoke his name in saying, “What Martin Luther King wrote in his book “Why We Can’t Wait“ is … we need a bill of rights for the disadvantaged, and he said yes we should address racial inequality, yes we should address the legacy of slavery, but the way to do that is on the basis of class, and that will disproportionately target blacks and Hispanics because they’re disproportionately poor, but it will be doing so in a way that also helps the white poor in a way that addresses poverty as the thing to be addressed.”
Hostin proceeded to hammer home her “fundamentally flawed” depiction in claiming: “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 concluded from this quote and others in the clip that, “So rather than class, he did write about that earlier on, right before his death (in 1968), he made the argument for racial equality and racial reparations, and 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.”
Putting aside the fact that Hostin circumvented addressing Hughes’ argument by questioning his character and motives — questions that are irrelevant and proof that she has no argument — Hughes did feel the need to clarify her use of King’s words in saying:
“The quote that you just pointed out about doing something special for the negro, that’s from the book “Why We Can’t Wait” that I just mentioned, a couple of paragraphs later he lays out exactly what that something special was, and it was the bill of rights for the disadvantaged, a broad class-based policy.”
Hostin said in response: “He also says you must include race,” a purported quote Hughes corrected her for.
Hughes does two things in the video clip. He corrects Hostin regarding King’s words and proves he knows his sources better than she does, making her look foolish after she called herself “a student of Dr. King.”
Then Hughes addressed the “black community.“
This really is a facade Hostin is hiding behind in questioning Hughes’ motives.
“There’s no evidence that I’ve been co-opted by anyone,” he said. … “No one is paying me to say what I’m saying. I’m saying it because I feel it.”
While Hughes disputes his label of being a conservative by calling himself an independent, he has positions that conservatives would agree with. You hear the audience applaud him on several occasions.
Hostin embarrassed herself at times. For example, she misquoted King, according to Hughes, and she didn’t even have the courage to own up to her own argument. In the end, you realize that “The View” sounds foolish when its audience cheers for a conservative position.
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