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This is on point. I'm Magna Chakrabardi. Coleman Hughes traces his

ancestry back to an enslaved man who was forced to work on Thomas Jefferson's

Montecello Plantation.

His grandfather was a highly educated black man who was told not to apply for a management

job because white colleagues would resent working for him.

Hughes' father is black.

His mother was Puerto Rican who hailed from the South Bronx in New York.

So does all that give you a pretty good understanding of who Coleman Hughes is?

Well, Hughes himself would say, with absolute certainty, no. Telling you the story about the color of his No.

Telling you the story about the color of his skin tells you next to nothing about who he is,

Hughes would say.

In fact, I believe he'd say that by beginning today's show with a racial description,

we've fallen hard into what he calls the pernicious intellectual trap that claims

race is the most salient fact about any American.

In fact Coleman Hughes would go farther.

He says there are influential public intellectuals who've written and advocated persuasively for social and

racial justice in America. Hughes has no bone to pick with that, but he says

...