YouSaid · the spoken record

Coleman Hughes

lines on the record: 68
first: 2024-05-01
most recent: 2024-05-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“What will I do next? Well, I'm going to keep doing my podcast. I'll probably write another book and I will continue to play music, perhaps take up a new instrument, and continue optimizing for happiness.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the truth is, if I wanted to do that, I would have done it. And vice versa, if I wanted to not do music at all and just go fully into it, I think I would have done that too. I think the truth is when I was a full-time musician gigging trombone every night, I had an itch to scratch that was not getting scratched. Like, for instance, when I was at Juilliard, I would go to the music library and try to pull out books about philosophy. And when I was at Columbia, I was always itching to get off campus and go play some music. So there are just two sides of me that both need to be fed.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Guess where other things in life value or incentivize kind of relax, open-minded, and loving attitude, things such as music, the incentives in the domain of public conversation about politics are towards nastiness in a way, towards dissatisfaction. You're supposed to point out the thing you're pissed about. In other domains in life Such as at church or with your family, you're supposed to think about the thing you are grateful for. So it's kind of Precise turning on its head of the wise lessons about how you should spend your time and attention for your own happiness inverted to maximize the kinds of the toxic things.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like to think that I optimize for. Her happiness broadly construed, not just pleasure or joy Balanced amount of that mixed with meaning. I'm definitely of the school that though I work a lot, I don't think that work is life. I would like to have a family and do all of that. And so I try to optimize for being a balanced and happy human being. And I think that's a good thing because to get to into the world I'm in with politics and debate and so forth can be taxing and toxic without balance.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like I said, I can be very Possible, for instance, for me to go to accidentally skip meals because I'm working and I don't get hungry. And it used to be very hard for me to stop or get interrupted. I've gotten a little bit better at that and become a more balanced person. But I would say, yeah, like working for long stretches of time with no break at all as opposed to what might be more common advice, which is, you know, every hour take a 20 minute break.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not at all hasn't helped me in the speaking domain one bit. What it did do, I think, is that growing up so deeply in the jazz world. Which is very diverse, multiracial, multinational. Advertised the possibility of true deep interracial friendship and interracial working with people of different cultures and not seeing anything weird about that towards a common goal and towards a common passion. And I think not everyone has that.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, born with it 100%. I mean, I've always had just an intense natural desire to focus on whatever I want to get good at to the exclusion of almost everything else.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, however, it's not really a false way to frame it. The way to frame it is that I've invested heavily in the things where my learning curve was naturally the best. So for instance, I tried to switch to trumpet when I was 17, but I was no good at it. When I started playing trombone, I got good fairly quickly. And so I invested and tripled down in the areas where I was learning fastest. I used to be very into languages. I was good, not great I ditched it completely when I was 12. So I guess I've tripled down on the areas where I have the highest natural genetic advantage as an individual.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My advice would be. Not talk about politics on the first date. In fact, I would say don't raise it at all. It will inevitably come up, but delay the time that it comes up as long as possible. You're not there to discuss politics. You're there to meet a woman that might potentially be a life partner, right? So Insofar as you go on a first date and a second date, and you begin to like each other's non political attributes. Once politics comes up and there are differences between you two, you may be surprised in her ability to tolerate those political differences once she's realized that she likes a lot of your non-political attributes. And in fact, she may surprise herself in her ability to tolerate different opinions. And you may surprise yourself.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've heard it said among the Of conspiracies in the hotep world that Beethoven is black. That's something that some people believe. I'm not putting my name to that. Yeah, I have nothing else to say about that. That's interesting though.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think one thing that makes him popular is the very fact that he was squarely within the tradition and school being a disciple of Lil Lane, the school that said the worst possible things, the most dismissive, misogynist possible things. And he was accepted and loved that school. But the route he went was to make music for women, to say things that were sweet to women, not to say that that's all he says. But he really bucked a trend. In that sense, was vulnerable to the critique that he was kind of soft and feminine, which is the greatest possible sin you would think in the rap world, but actually led to the greatest possible success.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what is behind that trend, but I have to think that the success of someone like Drake is partly because he bucks that trend. Like women love Drake. And Drake is the most popular rapper to ever exist”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, yeah, I would agree it's higher in black hip hop. I was always amused when I was in college that there was a very intense variety of feminism around, but some of those same women would go to like, say, a trippy red concert or an XXX Tentacion concert. And here, like some of the most brutally misogynist lyrics that have ever been written in any song without any contradiction. And there was a sense, I guess, this unspoken sense that if you're a black man, it's okay to say those things or that it's not really meant or that who cares. Whereas if a white artist had said the same thing, it would be, you know, there would be a bevy of articles the next day.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On average, black jazz musicians that I know are. Frankly, probably like More in the conservative Democrat domain than many people would assume. So this is not always widely talked about, but black Americans in general are the most conservative wing of the Democratic base in the sense that almost all black people vote Democrat. But there's quite a high degree of kind of social conservatism conservative viewpoints on things like immigration and so forth. And if you're white and you have those views, you go to the Republican Party. If you're black and you have those views, you probably don't go to the Republican Party. You probably just vote Democrat with a basically a conservative ideology. And that's like a third of black Americans. I would say that there's a lot of black jazz musicians that fall into that category quiet as it's kept.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Numbers, well, his racism to the extent you'd agree it's racism has always been directed at immigrants, not at black people, by and large. He passed lots of policies in his first term that on their face seem very sort of pro-Black, right? The first step act was very progressive criminal justice reform, making funding for historically black colleges automatic. These are things that had Obama done them, he'd have been lampooned by the right as playing identity politics. And in a way, that's why Trump was able to do them and Obama wasn't. So there's all of that. And then there's just the fact that Biden is a uniquely, especially weak candidate. And then there's this theory, of course, that the indictments have led to a kind of rallying around Trump from within the black community because he seems to be unfairly persecuted. And being unfairly persecuted by the criminal justice system,”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is a very tricky issue. I'm not actually sure what the trend is. So one thing is that it predates 2020. Trump got more of the black vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. So something was going on in the first term that started the trend. It could have just been the economy was great. It could have also been a Trump effect in that people on the left talk about Trump's racism as one big phenomenon, but really his problem was always with immigrants. And his denigrating comments, at least the ones that are confirmed and on the record, almost all of them were directed at immigrants, not black Americans. And black Americans are roughly as, broadly as anti-immigration as white Americans. And so the apparent paradox is that, you know, Trump is this quote-unquote racist, but black people seem to be going towards him in greater and greater...”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The young girl in the movie is kind of a person. The mom is constantly angry for no reason. The husband's like a fraud and a bit of a car salesman and a fake success. The son is an apple who only cares about himself. Steve Carell's character is Maudlin and depressed. They all have character traits that you should 100% avoid. But by the end of the movie, they have to come together around this thing that it should be totally meaningless. And then it interrupts in like a totally inappropriate kind of dance at the end. It's just a perfect film.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interstellar, I think, is Nolan's masterpiece. I'm a big fan of Nolan. Many of his movies are the same, but I think he perfected his calling it a shtick is not the right thing, but he perfected his thing with interstellar. It was just a marvelous movie in its marriage of emotionality and the humanity of Matthew McConney's character and the kind of abstract playing with time thing that Nolan likes to do. So for example, his early movie Memento, I think kind of over indexes on the fun of the playing with time without enough real raw human emotion. And I think interstellar strikes the perfect balance. Little Miss Sunshine, I would say, is a perfect film in my view. It's hard to say why, but it makes me cry almost every time I watch it. It's a story of a lot of kind of people. I guess that's one thing that's interesting about it. Basically everyone except”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, I will say probably my two favorites. I'll give you two. One would be interstellar and one would be Little Miss Sunshine.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Noam has the best bullshit detector that I know, the highest batting average of knee-jerk responses to emerging stories being correct, say, both in personal life and in the media. Knowing when people are lying without strong evidence.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've learned a lot from Noam Dorm One thing I've learned is that If you have warmth, Humor and charisma. You can get away with being a lot more quote unquote disagreeable in the psychological, in the psychologist sense than otherwise. And I've also learned that there's such a thing as a bullshit detector and some people have it in spades and others don't.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remember, there's this meme of the self hating black person. I recall as a kid looking in the mirror and being very happy at what I saw, being very happy that I was black and thinking that Had I been white, that it just would look wrong. So I remember having frankly high racial self-esteem as a kid, and I knew that's not where my opinions were coming from.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say overrated in the sense that. Really don't like his idea. I remember almost being offended at the idea of the colonized mind, the idea that a colonized people, that the colonization sort of infects the mind in a way that a colonized person must constantly interrogate whether they are parroting the words of the colonizer or whether they're actually holding their beliefs in good faith. I remember rejecting that in a very knee-jerk way because it is so easily used as a way of shutting down a person like myself. And I knew from introspection that my own views were not coming from a kind of like love of whiteness or white supremacy or something. In fact, I remember as a kid.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will go overrated only because I think it's been played to death on airplanes. I think in some way the worst thing that could have happened to it is for it to become the anthem of whichever airline it's the anthem for.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say overrated as a commentator. Perhaps it's because he's often writing about things that are within my pet purview and because we may have. Disagreements that are kind of small in the big picture, but seem large to me, he's much more likely to jump to racism as an explanation for phenomena in the media. I do think in the same way that some people have probably given me some false praise for being young or have sort of, you know, that's added to their opinion of me. I think the fact that he's Kareem Abdul Jabbar and a former basketball player who happens to have this other skill might lead people to rate his output in that other domain somewhat more highly.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. However, Eminem made a very important mark in the sense that I don't think you could find a single great rapper from the past 20 years that doesn't cite M&M as an influence, especially early Eminem. All of the great black rappers would absolutely give him his due in the lineage, whereas almost no one would cite the Beastie Boys.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Underrated based on how much time I spend there. Though a lot of that time is admittedly spent at the comedy seller, it's an amazing, culturally vibrant place. There's still great music. There's great comedy. And there is a really beautiful cacophony that goes on there. Yeah, I wouldn't trade that for anything. It's beautiful.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of correcting giving me a mulligan on certain things because I'm younger and I don't like even the intimation of false praise. So there's that. However, I don't think it's a racial issue. In fact, I would probably it's the opposite in the sense. I hear many more people complaining that black children are viewed as older than they, in fact, are, like the case of Tamir Rice, who is 12, but actually did come across as much older than 12. So in other words, you know, teenagers being seen as adults is probably the bigger issue.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think that it's a racial issue. So, for example, when I started playing with the Mingus band, which is on most nights a majority black band, it certainly was in those days, I would always be introduced as young, even up to the point when I was like 24. And I guess it was a relative thing because most guys in the band were older. But there was just this general phenomenon of youth worship that I do dislike about. I don't know if it's American culture or if this is the same everywhere. I don't really like that we put 17-year-old activists on TV if their school was shot up. I think it's a disservice to them. And to that extent, I don't really like being praised because I'm young because there's a part of me that worries that people are.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The biggest things stopping many black people and people of color in general from agreeing with me publicly is not that they disagree with me privately. It's that they They don't want to tolerate those same feelings of discomfort from the white conservatives who will agree with them. And so I've made the choice that I'm willing to tolerate that discomfort. And I think that's the right decision.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People who wouldn't otherwise come to the views that I have are coming to it not reluctantly, but knowing the counter arguments against it and taking them seriously, taking, for instance, just the fact and kind of sanctity of the legacy of racism in black culture as a meme, taking all of that seriously and nevertheless coming to the opinion that basically the dominant narrative on race is importantly wrong sits better for me than someone that takes it reflexively and without fully appreciating the counter-arguments. So to the extent that white conservatives over index on that way of engaging with me, it does make me uncomfortable. However, If I had stopped doing things that made me uncomfortable, I just never would have gotten to where I am right now. And I think that is one of the...”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I feel that sometimes. I feel a kind of undeveloped discomfort and inarticulable discomfort with some of the people that like me. I couldn't exactly say why, but yes, it does come from some sense that the opinion is unearned or that what is an opinion I've come to with great emotional weight and frankly psychological wrestling is an opinion that they've come to reflectively. That doesn't sit well with me. In some sense, I would prefer. Makes me feel better about my message if I feel”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It becomes difficult to believe that there are deep dividing lines between groups of people because your immediate context says otherwise the two people that are most important, your parents have formed the deepest union any two people can form. And so it belies the notion that would want to tell you that there are important divisions between the races. So insofar as that's a part of my experience, I think it's possibly influenced me.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Good question Think there may be something to the idea that kids who are Products of interracial unions are more drawn towards the idea that race isn't all that important. Because if you grow up in a scenario, especially if you grow up with two happy, loving parents as I did, who are clearly of different races and different cultures and so forth, my mother grew up speaking Spanish and my dad was as American as you could get.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the kinds of neighborhoods where a black teen might be accused of this kind of thing and so forth. And is that partly because I have a certain look, even if I dress shabbily, I have kind of a certain vaguely non-threatening look. Although for some reason it's enough to make employees at TED feel unsafe. But not deli owners in Harlem. I think there's something to that, absolutely.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think probably, yes, it's interesting. Our friend Noah, who was also on this podcast, said the same thing. He said, if I had a look that was more threatening for lack of a better word, that I might have a different black experience than the one that I have, and that it's not, you know, we often reduce things to race that aren't all racial, right? Like whether I can say There's only one time I've ever been accused of stealing something from a store that I did not in fact steal, which is often talked about as a ubiquitous experience for black men. Black people in general Only happened once. I've been living in New York for 10 years and I buy a lot of stuff from Delhi's. And I've lived in Harlem and I've lived above Harlem and Hamilton Heights.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know that attitudes towards lookism have, and that leads me to believe that lookism might be something more like closer to a constant, whereas attitudes towards race are fairly influenceable by, let's say, those of us who are in the marketplace of ideas. I don't want to exaggerate our influence as a whole profession, but I would feel somewhat silly trying to budge variables that might not be very budgeable.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, locism is another one where I would feel it's not that I don't think it's an injustice of some kind. It's that I would feel silly spending very much time trying to Budge that particular variable because I don't think it's that budgeable. Not saying it's not movable at all, but I would argue that, for instance, in my view, attitudes towards racism have changed pretty dramatically in the past 50 years, in the past hundred, certainly.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, like you know that there's a bomb in Times Square and you've only got two seconds and you have to decide between the guy that looks like a terrorist and looks like the race of most terrorists you know okay well I'm not gonna fault you for paying attention to race in that particular corner case in most of our life situations we're in the other three quadrants of situations that are either low stakes high information low stakes low information or low stakes low information Or did I get all three? I might have messed that up, but you get the point. We're meeting friends at coffee shops. We're introducing each other and so forth in scenarios where we can learn about each other. And the moment we have that race falls away as a very useful proxy.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On not treating them differently, right? Not treating them differently where the different treatment might amount to some kind of injustice. I wouldn't insist on treating deliberately obtuse about the differences between people with a different mental competencies like autism or depression or God forbid schizophrenia, right? Schizophrenia blindness is just being obtuse, right? The problem is that schizophrenia is actually a perfect proxy for having a different mind. That's definitionally that's what it is. Whereas a person's race is not a very good proxy for having a different mind at all. And it's certainly not a good proxy the moment you have more information about them, right? The only situations where it might be a good proxy, if you picture a quadrant with like stakes and information. So if you're in the quadrant that's high stakes and low information.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I guess the model operates in the following way. If I meet two people of a different culture, I'm not going to treat them differently. In other words, let's say to dissect out the variables, I've got an Ethiopian and a Black American, same race, totally different cultures. And they're both applying to work at my podcast. I'm neither going to consider their race nor their culture if they're editing my podcast, say, right? I really only care about their competence there. The sense in which you might not be culture blind is I wouldn't fault the Ethiopian guy for saying, look, I want an Ethiopian wife and I like Indira better than I like barbecue. In that sense, I allow him his non-culture blindness. And I don't make him feel guilty in the sense that I don't make you feel guilty when you feel a bit more, bit of something for Ireland. But I would still insist.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To treat people with, say, different personality conditions or genders or so forth, things that are frankly less malleable to begin with.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That race really is whatever you think about its constructed nature, it's much more socially constructed than all of these other categories, right? Autism is just, there's no, if we have autistic people in a thousand years, they're going to have the same symptoms that they did a thousand years ago. The classic differences between men and women today are quite similar to what they were 50 years ago, and there will be differences between men and women in 100 years. But race is not really like that. What we think of as a racial difference is heavily influenced by culture. And in that sense, they're intertwined. But I think, so I think it's much more fertile ground for progress to advocate that people treat those of different races without regard to their race.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't think we should be autism blind. I think insofar as you know, someone has a totally different communication style. You know that they don't read facial expressions well. It makes sense to take that into account in all of your interactions and communications with them. And for instance, I don't argue that we should be genderblind because at least not in the same sense we should be trying to be race blind because there really just are important differences between men and women that shouldn't be ignored, right? You shouldn't treat anyone worse, but I also wouldn't necessarily treat my brother and my sister and my mother and my father the same in every possible conversation or scenario, right? So it's not about a hierarchy of treatment. It's simply non-identical treatment, right? But my point about race, I think.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would argue race and culture are fairly distinct. The fact that America right now arguably the most bitter kind of difference is between Two different white cultures, right? I think was it David French who wrote the piece about the great white culture war, something like that a few years back Where you have sort of white Americans of a blue culture and white Americans of a red culture, some who grew up with 50 guns thinking it's normal and some who literally couldn't tell you the difference between a shotgun and a rifle, looking at each other and feeling really all of the sociological kind of feelings of tribal hatred towards one another, but are totally of the same race. I think that kind of underscores the difference between race and culture.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Too hard a distinction for some people to draw. It's not a hard one for me to draw. And so maybe I falsely assume it's realistic to advocate other people draw it, but that seems to me a sensible place to draw the line given we have to draw it somewhere between everyone's irrational individual with no attachments whatsoever and any and all expressions of racial and group pride are okay.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there again, I would underscore the distinction between race and culture. I don't think anyone should feel bad about the inevitable fact that we have more cultural attachments to the things that we know and the places we're from and the foods we grew up with and the music we grew up with. That's all inevitable. And I even don't begrudge someone saying, look, I'm Jewish. I would frankly prefer to live in a Jewish community. I would prefer to marry a Jewish person and so forth. All of those kinds of feelings, I would argue, are inevitable and you shouldn't fight within yourself. However, I think there should be a strong firewall between saying all of those things and saying, you know, the state ought to treat my group special because of this, that, or another reason. And like I said, that might be.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't think you should feel bad about thinking that way. And I think that I know much more about Puerto Rico than I would if I weren't one-half Puerto Rican. I know much more about it than I know about the Dominican Republic, say. However, I would ask you a question. I would turn it around. I would ask you, if you were to write an MR post about some issue in Irish or Scottish politics, do you think you would analyze them differently? Or do you think you would put that little feeling to the side”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's right. I think they're compatible in the sense that. You can sort of push for the soft version of something and the harder version of something, if not at literally the same time than by turns. What I've sort of been arguing for is a kind of firewall between the cultural versions you're talking about and the political aspects. But I think you're right that in practice, they may bleed into each other, they might correlate very highly. Maybe I Coleman Hughes have no problem separating the fact that I grew up with black and Puerto Rican music and have a special attachment to it. Also have a special attachment to Puerto Rican food, for instance. I have no problem separating that aspect of me from a demand that the state treat me and my racial group differently, or a political program based on race broadly. But it might be the case that for many people, those are just kind of one and the same or they draw on the same impulse.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and maybe I'd argue it may not be culture blind, though it probably is colorblind in the sense that Black Americans don't just represent a race. That's what a black American would have in common. That's what I would have in common with someone from Ethiopia is that we're broadly of the same quote-unquote race. We are not at all of the same culture. And so to the extent that there is something called African American culture. Which has had many wonderful products, including jazz and hip hop. I'm perfectly willing to concede that that's a cultural product in the same way that, say, country music is like a product of broadly southern culture.”
2024-05-01 · Conversations with Tyler · Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source