He's very good at what he does and I understand why he appeals/panders to certain people, I just find it to be a very forced, sloppy style.
I don't understand what you mean. I think his style is pretty well organized and straightforward, regardless of whether you agree with his point of view. I agree that he's predictable, if that's what you mean by "forced."
Good commentary, in my opinion, attempts to convince the reader to adjust their opinion on a subject, or at least bring a new perspective and make people think about things differently. I've read like three of Hughes' pieces, and he honestly seems to only try to accomplish two things with his writing:
1) Speak for the whites who are thinking "I've been thinking this for years, but if I wrote this I'd be called a racist!"
2) Trigger the libs (also applies to #1)
And I think his writing is sloppy because he pretty much only argues strawmen, (typically a generic "progressive") and he consistently cherry-picks quotes without any context - he doesn't research to truly understand his subject, he's just looking for quotes that would most likely trigger the libs. Like he pulled a "people won't say black power or white power" quote from this speech:
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/where-do-we-go-here-address-delivered-eleventh-annual-sclc-conventionIn the exact same speech King talks about protesting businesses for not hiring enough blacks or advertising in black newspapers or using black banks. Is this not identity politics?
In Cleveland, Ohio, a group of ministers have formed an Operation Breadbasket through our program there and have moved against a major dairy company. Their requests include jobs, advertising in Negro newspapers, and depositing funds in Negro financial institutions. This effort resulted in something marvelous. I went to Cleveland just last week to sign the agreement with Sealtest. We went to get the facts about their employment; we discovered that they had 442 employees and only forty-three were Negroes, yet the Negro population of Cleveland is thirty-five percent of the total population. They refused to give us all of the information that we requested, and we said in substance, "Mr. Sealtest, we're sorry. We aren't going to burn your store down. We aren't going to throw any bricks in the window. But we are going to put picket signs around and we are going to put leaflets out and we are going to our pulpits and tell them not to sell Sealtest products, and not to purchase Sealtest products.".....
We also said to Sealtest, "The problem that we face is that the ghetto is a domestic colony that's constantly drained without being replenished. And you are always telling us to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps, and yet we are being robbed every day. Put something back in the ghetto." So along with our demand for jobs, we said, "We also demand that you put money in the Negro savings and loan association and that you take ads, advertise, in the Cleveland Call & Post, the Negro newspaper." So along with the new jobs, Sealtest has now deposited thousands of dollars in the Negro bank of Cleveland and has already started taking ads in the Negro newspaper in that city. This is the power of Operation Breadbasket.
Also someone linked to this in the comments, where King basically makes a case for reparations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NNvzVCVhIM&feature=youtu.behttps://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/dyson-may.html