New Blasphemies
Make it official: Coleman Hughes wants you to charge him with thinking
by Heather Shayne Blakeslee
still image from “Blasphemy,” directed by Ian Pons Jewell
EXCERPT //
It’s a blessing that we’re not living in the days of Leviticus, when a sentence of blasphemy would have come with enough stones to the head to permanently relieve us of our ability to further transgress.
The culture war has been at a fever pitch the past several years, but some cool-headed critics have survived attempts to cast them as heretics and to silence their ideas, 27-year-old Coleman Hughes among them.
For the progressive left, Hughes’ blasphemies are many. He has testified in front of Congress against reparations for his generation of black Americans, and can patiently explain why he’s not afraid of being shot by cops. He has roundly criticized the work of other black intellectuals such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the seminal essay “The Case for Reparations” and the bestselling book Between the World and Me (which I have gifted to at least one girlfriend, and to my parents). Hughes has also thrown down the gauntlet to How to Be an Antiracist author Ibram X. Kendi in an open letter challenging him to a public debate, but the glove has been laying on the ground unanswered. Hughes’ satisfaction will have to come in the form of an audience that continues to grow, and through amassing other accolades, such as being named a 30-under-30 of Americans to watch by Forbes magazine.
The podcaster, writer, rapper, and Juilliard-trained jazz trombonist—who is also the direct descendent of slaves on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and is also of Puerto Rican descent—says the punishment for his blasphemies has been “severe,” but survivable. “It mostly came in the form of online abuse, and a few threats. A few very unpleasant and tense interactions with people, acquaintances—even friends,” Hughes calmly explains. It helps that he can laugh at his more anonymous haters. He’s taken to reading and reacting to the mean tweets that people send him as part of his ongoing Conversations with Coleman show.
He’s obviously having some degree of fun with this freedom, and he’s fired back at his critics with the track “Blasphemy” and a striking video for the song, set in a Congress-like venue where he’s seated to testify. Hughes raps, “I’m unapologetically from the burbs, but like Apostle Paul, I bring the word.”
The larger questions that Hughes’ provocations pose are these: What are we allowed to think about and to talk about in public as we collectively work through important, complicated issues? What philosophical frameworks are we allowed to use to understand the world, and when must we jettison frameworks that don’t serve us? And who gets to decide? //
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