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Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate
Argues that dangerous ideas concerning race arise from the liberal movement that places emphasis on human differences instead of human commonalities.
341 pages, Hardcover
First published June 25, 2008
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242 people want to read
About the author
Kenan Malik
13 books63 followersIndian-born British writer, lecturer and broadcaster, trained in neurobiology and the history of science. As an academic author, his focus is on the philosophy of biology, and contemporary theories of multiculturalism, pluralism and race. These topics are core concerns in The Meaning of Race (1996), Man, Beast and Zombie (2000) and Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides Are Wrong in the Race Debate (2008).
Malik's work contains a forthright defence of the values of the 18th-century Enlightenment, which he sees as having been distorted and misunderstood in more recent political and scientific thought. He was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2010
Malik's work contains a forthright defence of the values of the 18th-century Enlightenment, which he sees as having been distorted and misunderstood in more recent political and scientific thought. He was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2010
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 15, 2017
One of the most underrated books and indeed one of the best written about this topic. Malik starts by outlining the fundamental problem. The category of race emerged from both the foolish activities of pseudoscientists and attempts by others to schematise global difference. Race is completely made up - it has not endured as an idea unchallenged, nor has it been understood in the same way all the time. Followers of racial ideology are criticised. But liberal antiracists are also criticised as Malik exposes their surrender to the exact logic they oppose. Liberal antiracism revives the idea of race in their malignant concept of 'culture' - different cultures are understood through biological descent variation and this idea has influenced the political management of difference characterised by 'multicultural' policies - creating new authorities responsible for these different 'cultures', i.e. races.
Racial ideology is exposed as a way of coming to terms with inequality between people and naturalising it. When the ideas of the Enlightenment did not yield greater equality, people of successive ages began to get despondent about them. Philosophers such as Nietzsche and former progressives such as the composer Wagner began to embrace nihilism. Teleological views of the world and its peoples were established which justified horrendous atrocities. When the ideas of racial science were completely implemented, however, by the Nazis, the effects shocked the world - the reaction destroyed its credibility altogether.
The spectre of racial ideology did not fade away completely however. It lived on in the very movement aimed at opposing racism - liberal antiracist politics. Like the post-Enlightenment racialists, antiracists - influenced by the New Left - were too disenchanted with the fading prospect of successful political emancipation. They began to embrace 'cultural diversity' - naturalising inequality and identity. They slowly retreated from universalism into particularism and relativism, influenced by postmodern attacks on the Enlightenment. This has had deleterious effects on the way we understand knowledge and truth. Objective knowledge is understood by relativists as a person's arbitrary perspective or viewpoint. Science was simply a 'local knowledge' or a 'discourse' that could be put alongside mythology or religion with equal weight in explaining the world. But for this to hold it means that liberal antiracism is also an arbitrary perspective or viewpoint and is on an equal weighting with white supremacist ideas - neither one is truer. Even evolutionary psychologists are more progressive than they are - decrying race as an illusion - but liberal antiracists, despite paying lip service to the oft-cited sociological statement that race is 'socially constructed', never end up reflecting this in their political practice.
This idea of 'epistemic charity' (as Meera Nanda calls it) has done more harm than good. It has played directly into the revival of race mysticism, irrationalism and right-wing nationalism around the world. Debates on 'cultural appropriation' and repatriation have led to the edification of new 'cultural' elite representatives, supported completely by the Left - who once used to think such ideas were reactionary. Culture is identified in a deeply conservative way as tradition to be preserved. The liberal Left has abandoned the idea of universal human rights and opened the floodgates to the justification of cultural practices such as caste discrimination, dowry killings, honor killings and genital mutilation on the basis of its spurious notions of epistemic charity.
For the Left to halt its recede into irrelevance, the politics of racial ideology must be rejected. Identity politics is based on conservative and irrational fallacies about human beings and their capacity to transform their lives. Anti-identity politics, on the other hand, with roots in the Enlightenment and Marxist Left, wishes to radically subvert tradition and emancipate people from all elite structures, including the new cultural elites. The Left, Malik concludes, must aim for the social pillars of stratification such as class, gender, race, sexuality and so forth to be abolished. This is a true politics of emancipation, not the conservative tyranny of contemporary politics of identity.
Racial ideology is exposed as a way of coming to terms with inequality between people and naturalising it. When the ideas of the Enlightenment did not yield greater equality, people of successive ages began to get despondent about them. Philosophers such as Nietzsche and former progressives such as the composer Wagner began to embrace nihilism. Teleological views of the world and its peoples were established which justified horrendous atrocities. When the ideas of racial science were completely implemented, however, by the Nazis, the effects shocked the world - the reaction destroyed its credibility altogether.
The spectre of racial ideology did not fade away completely however. It lived on in the very movement aimed at opposing racism - liberal antiracist politics. Like the post-Enlightenment racialists, antiracists - influenced by the New Left - were too disenchanted with the fading prospect of successful political emancipation. They began to embrace 'cultural diversity' - naturalising inequality and identity. They slowly retreated from universalism into particularism and relativism, influenced by postmodern attacks on the Enlightenment. This has had deleterious effects on the way we understand knowledge and truth. Objective knowledge is understood by relativists as a person's arbitrary perspective or viewpoint. Science was simply a 'local knowledge' or a 'discourse' that could be put alongside mythology or religion with equal weight in explaining the world. But for this to hold it means that liberal antiracism is also an arbitrary perspective or viewpoint and is on an equal weighting with white supremacist ideas - neither one is truer. Even evolutionary psychologists are more progressive than they are - decrying race as an illusion - but liberal antiracists, despite paying lip service to the oft-cited sociological statement that race is 'socially constructed', never end up reflecting this in their political practice.
This idea of 'epistemic charity' (as Meera Nanda calls it) has done more harm than good. It has played directly into the revival of race mysticism, irrationalism and right-wing nationalism around the world. Debates on 'cultural appropriation' and repatriation have led to the edification of new 'cultural' elite representatives, supported completely by the Left - who once used to think such ideas were reactionary. Culture is identified in a deeply conservative way as tradition to be preserved. The liberal Left has abandoned the idea of universal human rights and opened the floodgates to the justification of cultural practices such as caste discrimination, dowry killings, honor killings and genital mutilation on the basis of its spurious notions of epistemic charity.
For the Left to halt its recede into irrelevance, the politics of racial ideology must be rejected. Identity politics is based on conservative and irrational fallacies about human beings and their capacity to transform their lives. Anti-identity politics, on the other hand, with roots in the Enlightenment and Marxist Left, wishes to radically subvert tradition and emancipate people from all elite structures, including the new cultural elites. The Left, Malik concludes, must aim for the social pillars of stratification such as class, gender, race, sexuality and so forth to be abolished. This is a true politics of emancipation, not the conservative tyranny of contemporary politics of identity.
April 6, 2015
This is the second book by Malik I've read recently - the first being From Fatwa to Jihad, a look at the Rushdie affair and its consequences. That book was especially strong on the way the anti-racism movement and notions of cultural identity have changed in Britain since the 1980s, and made a strong case that left wing politics took a misguided turn in the wake of the controversy around The Satanic Verses.
Strange Fruit is Malik's previous book and looks more broadly at the way we have talked about race and culture over the centuries, and what that can tell us about our current assumptions and political debates. It's a difficult and flawed book, but well worth reading and wrestling with. Difficult not in terms of readability (the prose is easy and fluid), but because it challenges many assumptions and values that have become deeply embedded orthodoxy among anti-racist progressives. The book's flaws are various: at times Malik oversimplifies in order to make things fit his historical narrative; his characterisation of postmodernism is narrow and simplistic; he puts too much emphasis on intellectual history and the writings of philosophers, rather than trying to reconstruct the everyday assumptions and attitudes of average people in different periods; his arguments can be a little sloppy at times, and structurally the book is a bit all over the place. With numerous books and a steady flow of columns and essays, reading Malik can feel like dipping into an ongoing non-stop debate - but a fascinating and important one that more people should be having.
One of Malik's key points is that left-wing and anti-racism activists have become colonised by the very racial concepts they once opposed, albeit now reframed in terms of respect for cultural diversity. This isn't some crude reactionary rant against positive discrimination (which I don't think is mentioned even once); instead, Malik's concern is with the underlying ideas and mental blueprints that shape our thinking about difference, individuality and society. At times, this critique seems on the money; at others, it feels a little forced and simplistic. Certainly, it's a difficult discussion to have, but a reader willing to examine and question deeply held positions and assumptions will get a lot out of this book, even if they end up disagreeing completely.
For me, I wonder if one of the problems with what Malik calls multiculturalism is not the wish to respect diversity, but how we define that diversity. By defining diversity almost entirely according to broad, contested, flawed and crudely constructed categories like culture, ethnicity, nationality or religion, we ignore individual diversity - within and across such groups, whereby individual people hold many conflicting beliefs, opinions, values and lifestyle preferences. Before long, we're forcing all kinds of people into the same crassly stereotyped boxes that racists have used for centuries, although now we rename them "cultures," "communities" or "faiths" and claim to be supporting them. In doing so, however, we end up suppressing those who don't fit the mold in which they've been placed, empower conservative forces who seek to define and dominate these communities and even deny individual agency and human rights to those trying to live differently. It also increases the legitimacy of good old fashioned racism, whose argument that racial identity defines and divides us into discrete separate groups now forms the basis of many progressive assumptions about "culture." Malik, in contrast, emphasises our common humanity and the right of every individual to challenge the constraints of culture and to pursue social and political progress.
At his best, Malik issues a powerful call to work for a society where everyone can live with freedom, dignity and equal rights, whatever their origin, background, parentage or colour. Whether you find its arguments inspiring or infuriating, this is a book to wrestle with, and I suspect I'll be arguing with it for some time to come.
Strange Fruit is Malik's previous book and looks more broadly at the way we have talked about race and culture over the centuries, and what that can tell us about our current assumptions and political debates. It's a difficult and flawed book, but well worth reading and wrestling with. Difficult not in terms of readability (the prose is easy and fluid), but because it challenges many assumptions and values that have become deeply embedded orthodoxy among anti-racist progressives. The book's flaws are various: at times Malik oversimplifies in order to make things fit his historical narrative; his characterisation of postmodernism is narrow and simplistic; he puts too much emphasis on intellectual history and the writings of philosophers, rather than trying to reconstruct the everyday assumptions and attitudes of average people in different periods; his arguments can be a little sloppy at times, and structurally the book is a bit all over the place. With numerous books and a steady flow of columns and essays, reading Malik can feel like dipping into an ongoing non-stop debate - but a fascinating and important one that more people should be having.
One of Malik's key points is that left-wing and anti-racism activists have become colonised by the very racial concepts they once opposed, albeit now reframed in terms of respect for cultural diversity. This isn't some crude reactionary rant against positive discrimination (which I don't think is mentioned even once); instead, Malik's concern is with the underlying ideas and mental blueprints that shape our thinking about difference, individuality and society. At times, this critique seems on the money; at others, it feels a little forced and simplistic. Certainly, it's a difficult discussion to have, but a reader willing to examine and question deeply held positions and assumptions will get a lot out of this book, even if they end up disagreeing completely.
For me, I wonder if one of the problems with what Malik calls multiculturalism is not the wish to respect diversity, but how we define that diversity. By defining diversity almost entirely according to broad, contested, flawed and crudely constructed categories like culture, ethnicity, nationality or religion, we ignore individual diversity - within and across such groups, whereby individual people hold many conflicting beliefs, opinions, values and lifestyle preferences. Before long, we're forcing all kinds of people into the same crassly stereotyped boxes that racists have used for centuries, although now we rename them "cultures," "communities" or "faiths" and claim to be supporting them. In doing so, however, we end up suppressing those who don't fit the mold in which they've been placed, empower conservative forces who seek to define and dominate these communities and even deny individual agency and human rights to those trying to live differently. It also increases the legitimacy of good old fashioned racism, whose argument that racial identity defines and divides us into discrete separate groups now forms the basis of many progressive assumptions about "culture." Malik, in contrast, emphasises our common humanity and the right of every individual to challenge the constraints of culture and to pursue social and political progress.
At his best, Malik issues a powerful call to work for a society where everyone can live with freedom, dignity and equal rights, whatever their origin, background, parentage or colour. Whether you find its arguments inspiring or infuriating, this is a book to wrestle with, and I suspect I'll be arguing with it for some time to come.
June 28, 2018
A great read if you can avoid the provocations.
I used this book as the base for a paper I recently wrote on the race debate. What it does is bring a necessary (and often neglected) point of view where both sides are wrong - or, to put it more bluntly; why the antiracist side of things seem to get mixed up in an equally essentialist view on the issue of race. This is also what i refer to as provocative, since Malik takes some of the far right's rethorical stands (like the absurd - or is it? - statement that it's the antirecists who are the real racists) and actually shows how the may have a point, after all.
No worries, though. Malik's not a far right advocate. Rather, he's very keen on taking a rational approach to the debate, rather than an emotional. And he show us that it's a possible road to take.
The race debate isn't about whether human races exist or not (they both do and don't, by the way), nor is is about racism. It's more about how we deal with the notion of "difference"; how we choose to explain it and what implications these explanations have on politics and everyday life.
I used this book as the base for a paper I recently wrote on the race debate. What it does is bring a necessary (and often neglected) point of view where both sides are wrong - or, to put it more bluntly; why the antiracist side of things seem to get mixed up in an equally essentialist view on the issue of race. This is also what i refer to as provocative, since Malik takes some of the far right's rethorical stands (like the absurd - or is it? - statement that it's the antirecists who are the real racists) and actually shows how the may have a point, after all.
No worries, though. Malik's not a far right advocate. Rather, he's very keen on taking a rational approach to the debate, rather than an emotional. And he show us that it's a possible road to take.
The race debate isn't about whether human races exist or not (they both do and don't, by the way), nor is is about racism. It's more about how we deal with the notion of "difference"; how we choose to explain it and what implications these explanations have on politics and everyday life.
June 18, 2019
Easily read in a matter of days, and is well written.
I first imagined Malik's thesis to go along the lines of 'the racists are wrong to associate race with behaviour and IQ' and 'the antiracists are wrong to deny the existence of race as rooted in biology'. Instead, by the end of the book it is revealed that it is Malik himself who is the antiracist: race is not a scientific, but a social construct, and that Englightenment rationalism and universalism offer a better alternative to the particularism of both the reactionary right, and that of the multiculturalists, a view consistent with present day conservatism and what is sometimes described as 'civic' nationalism. Malik positions himself at the centre, and characterises the multicultural Left as having (perhaps unconsciosusly) rejected Enlightenment values by embracing identity politics.
'Strange Fruit' presents a history of racial thought in the Western context, spanning mainly from 18th century Englightenment thinkers, through to the Romantics, and then the Darwinists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, skipping over National Socialism, and then picking up with our contemporaries Watson, Rushton, MacDonald and Salter. Also present is an in depth discussion of Kennewick Man, and the efforts of anthropologists to study the body, against the wishes of those in the Native American community who viewed it as part of their history and racial identity.
Throughout the book, Malik attempts to ridicule and deconstruct arguments that race is rooted in biology and science by pointing out the many inconsistencies in the theories presented, and biases involved in collecting and interpreting the data. The boundaries separating the races may be fuzzy, however Malik quotes the argument that since 'one cannot always be sure where a city begins and the countryside ends, it does not follow from this that the city exists only in the imagination', a point the author does not refute.
On James Watson's 2007 comments about race and IQ, Malik rejects the notion that black employees display lower intelligence, as seen by their colleagues. One could ask, 'what would prompt people to believe such a thing', and then conduct anonymous interviews on the subject in an attempt to answer the question. Malik never questions why, for hundreds of years, the black race has been consistently viewed as the most backward. Why did some theorisers not put Asians or Native Americans in that place instead at some place and time in history?
On the question of Jewish intellectual performance and success being a more acceptable topic of discussion than the lesser intellect of blacks, one reason not postulated by the author is that this explanation could be used to refute theories of Jewish ethnic nepotism and collective behaviour - the 'genetic argument' becomes accepted as the 'politically correct' alternative.
Malik rejects Rushton's theories on racial differences as 'preposterous' and 'cartoonish'. What may seem cartoonish to the author might indeed reflect something closer to reality than his own beliefs. Malik's critique of Rushton is superficial: to counter Rushton's claim that blacks are most likely to pursue an 'r' reproductive strategy (many offpsring with low investment parenting), he quotes the statistic that the white birthrate in 1800 stands at more than double the black birthrate in 1980, even though he does concede that the white birthrate in 1980 was indeed lower than the black one. No other historical statistics are given, no analysis of economic factors affecting birthrate, and no comment on differential levels of parental investment between the races. Put simply, in trying to refute Rushton, the author cherry picks.
Malik also draws a false conclusion from Cosmides and Tooby's statement: 'Race exists in the minds of human beings. But geneticists have failed to discover objective patterns in the world that could easily explain the racial categories that seem so perceptually obvious to adults', that race is an illusion found only in the mind. To give a fairer interpretation, 'race exists in the human mind, but current scientific research on genetics cannot yet explain the origins of the distinctions between the races that many find so obvious'.
Malik's argument against race can summed up as: 'on the one hand, fundamental differences between the races are often observed by people, but on the other hand the science behind this is sketchy, therefore race cannot be scientific and exists only as a social construct'.
Probably the most glaring omission in 'Strange Fruit' is the double standard present in contemporary Western multicultural society, in that one group (the majority, whites) are discouraged from forming a group identity, whereas minorities non-whites) are encouraged, or at least not discouraged to do so. Multiculturalism evidently makes no room for white pride, however all other ethnic prides are allowed. Non-whites immigrate in large numbers to the West, whereas the reverse is not so. Insofar as speech and opinion goes, politically incorrect white males are of course going to attract more social opprobrium than their multicultural counterparts. Instead of being a set of phenomena worthy of discussion, the double standards are only hinted at in the book.
In modern multiracial societies where race based immigration quotas are consigned to history, it would be politically untenable to publicly acknowledge the reality of race even if it were validated by the scientific method once and for all. As Malik closes the door on the possibility of race realism, he cannot broach the topic of what the political ramifications would be if the science were, in the future, settled in its favour. ‘Do science and truth guide policy in our society, or does politics?’ would have been a question worthy of a whole chapter in the book.
A quote from p. 246 sums up the race debate tellingly: 'neither work (Arthur Jensen's paper nor 'The Bell Curve') has had a major impact on the way that either academics or lay people think about the relationship between race and intelligence. If you already believed that intelligence was racially distributed, then Jensen and 'The Bell Curve' would have confirmed your suspicions. If you already rejected the idea that blacks were disadvantaged because they were naturally less intelligent, then you were unlikely to have been persuaded otherwise by either work'. And much the same can be said of 'Strange Fruit'.
I first imagined Malik's thesis to go along the lines of 'the racists are wrong to associate race with behaviour and IQ' and 'the antiracists are wrong to deny the existence of race as rooted in biology'. Instead, by the end of the book it is revealed that it is Malik himself who is the antiracist: race is not a scientific, but a social construct, and that Englightenment rationalism and universalism offer a better alternative to the particularism of both the reactionary right, and that of the multiculturalists, a view consistent with present day conservatism and what is sometimes described as 'civic' nationalism. Malik positions himself at the centre, and characterises the multicultural Left as having (perhaps unconsciosusly) rejected Enlightenment values by embracing identity politics.
'Strange Fruit' presents a history of racial thought in the Western context, spanning mainly from 18th century Englightenment thinkers, through to the Romantics, and then the Darwinists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, skipping over National Socialism, and then picking up with our contemporaries Watson, Rushton, MacDonald and Salter. Also present is an in depth discussion of Kennewick Man, and the efforts of anthropologists to study the body, against the wishes of those in the Native American community who viewed it as part of their history and racial identity.
Throughout the book, Malik attempts to ridicule and deconstruct arguments that race is rooted in biology and science by pointing out the many inconsistencies in the theories presented, and biases involved in collecting and interpreting the data. The boundaries separating the races may be fuzzy, however Malik quotes the argument that since 'one cannot always be sure where a city begins and the countryside ends, it does not follow from this that the city exists only in the imagination', a point the author does not refute.
On James Watson's 2007 comments about race and IQ, Malik rejects the notion that black employees display lower intelligence, as seen by their colleagues. One could ask, 'what would prompt people to believe such a thing', and then conduct anonymous interviews on the subject in an attempt to answer the question. Malik never questions why, for hundreds of years, the black race has been consistently viewed as the most backward. Why did some theorisers not put Asians or Native Americans in that place instead at some place and time in history?
On the question of Jewish intellectual performance and success being a more acceptable topic of discussion than the lesser intellect of blacks, one reason not postulated by the author is that this explanation could be used to refute theories of Jewish ethnic nepotism and collective behaviour - the 'genetic argument' becomes accepted as the 'politically correct' alternative.
Malik rejects Rushton's theories on racial differences as 'preposterous' and 'cartoonish'. What may seem cartoonish to the author might indeed reflect something closer to reality than his own beliefs. Malik's critique of Rushton is superficial: to counter Rushton's claim that blacks are most likely to pursue an 'r' reproductive strategy (many offpsring with low investment parenting), he quotes the statistic that the white birthrate in 1800 stands at more than double the black birthrate in 1980, even though he does concede that the white birthrate in 1980 was indeed lower than the black one. No other historical statistics are given, no analysis of economic factors affecting birthrate, and no comment on differential levels of parental investment between the races. Put simply, in trying to refute Rushton, the author cherry picks.
Malik also draws a false conclusion from Cosmides and Tooby's statement: 'Race exists in the minds of human beings. But geneticists have failed to discover objective patterns in the world that could easily explain the racial categories that seem so perceptually obvious to adults', that race is an illusion found only in the mind. To give a fairer interpretation, 'race exists in the human mind, but current scientific research on genetics cannot yet explain the origins of the distinctions between the races that many find so obvious'.
Malik's argument against race can summed up as: 'on the one hand, fundamental differences between the races are often observed by people, but on the other hand the science behind this is sketchy, therefore race cannot be scientific and exists only as a social construct'.
Probably the most glaring omission in 'Strange Fruit' is the double standard present in contemporary Western multicultural society, in that one group (the majority, whites) are discouraged from forming a group identity, whereas minorities non-whites) are encouraged, or at least not discouraged to do so. Multiculturalism evidently makes no room for white pride, however all other ethnic prides are allowed. Non-whites immigrate in large numbers to the West, whereas the reverse is not so. Insofar as speech and opinion goes, politically incorrect white males are of course going to attract more social opprobrium than their multicultural counterparts. Instead of being a set of phenomena worthy of discussion, the double standards are only hinted at in the book.
In modern multiracial societies where race based immigration quotas are consigned to history, it would be politically untenable to publicly acknowledge the reality of race even if it were validated by the scientific method once and for all. As Malik closes the door on the possibility of race realism, he cannot broach the topic of what the political ramifications would be if the science were, in the future, settled in its favour. ‘Do science and truth guide policy in our society, or does politics?’ would have been a question worthy of a whole chapter in the book.
A quote from p. 246 sums up the race debate tellingly: 'neither work (Arthur Jensen's paper nor 'The Bell Curve') has had a major impact on the way that either academics or lay people think about the relationship between race and intelligence. If you already believed that intelligence was racially distributed, then Jensen and 'The Bell Curve' would have confirmed your suspicions. If you already rejected the idea that blacks were disadvantaged because they were naturally less intelligent, then you were unlikely to have been persuaded otherwise by either work'. And much the same can be said of 'Strange Fruit'.
March 18, 2018
Kenan Malik reviews the fascinating, scary and winding ways that race thinking has mutated during the last 500 or so years in the primarily Western debate. The book is 10 years old but has lost none of its urgency and timeliness. If anything, its arguments are needed more than ever. First he debunks the popular postmodern myth that Enlightenment thinking was basically racist. Then he describes how a complex interplay of Romantic thought, pre-Darwinian notions and other influences created the overtly racist science of eugenics. Today, the postcolonial movement proposes "respect" for other cultures. Malik shows how this entails taking up some of the same arguments that were used to buttress older conservative and fascist ideas of race. It is a development that is as ironic as it is tragic. Those supportive of the aspirations of Enlightenment universalism must confront this double-pronged attack.
July 3, 2022
Deserves 6 stars and to be read by everyone.
January 3, 2011
One of the best non-fiction books I've read. Unlike a few other non-fiction books from the past decade, this is not a magazine article expanded into a book. Instead its a work in which Malik, a professor and broadcaster, integrates sociology, biology, history of science, psychology, medicine and ethics into a treatise on the problems with racism and antiracism. There are many good reviews out there already on amazon and various newspapers, so I won't summarize the book here. Malik's site links to all of those reviews. My only quibble is that Malik vacillates between saying race is irrational and race is a fuzzy biological concept. Both cannot be true simultaneously.
I especially enjoyed his critique of antiracism, or the movement to treat cultural or racial diversity as an enforceable virtue. I have long thought that it is natural for some languages and cultures to die, so it is not "tragic" when one is lost, although it is poignant if you are around to witness it during your lifetime. Furthermore, it is patronizing to assume you know what is best for people in a tribal culture when you tell them their culture should be preserved. Malik touches on these and other issues.
I especially enjoyed his critique of antiracism, or the movement to treat cultural or racial diversity as an enforceable virtue. I have long thought that it is natural for some languages and cultures to die, so it is not "tragic" when one is lost, although it is poignant if you are around to witness it during your lifetime. Furthermore, it is patronizing to assume you know what is best for people in a tribal culture when you tell them their culture should be preserved. Malik touches on these and other issues.
May 29, 2013
A solid defense of Enlightenment ideas about race and social class, tackling revisionist tendencies arising out of the Frankfurt School of pop-psychoanalysis and pseudo-history. Malik carefully charts the history of racial thinking from its Enlightment ideals of human universalism, within which "races" were the mutable result of a people's environment, through to the Romantic backlash that sought to establish a pseudo-scientific basis for racial differences and which gave birth to the modern conception of "race". He also does an excellent job unraveling the academic mess that has engulfed the question of whether or not races exist in any salient biological sense, defending the use of race in medical diagnosis while cautioning against its overuse.
January 6, 2013
Very good discussion of today's confused/messed up racial and cultural discussion. He points out how today's multiculturalism has perversely ended up imprisoning people within their cultural identities and strengthening racial arguments via identity politics. Cheer for reason and humanism!
April 17, 2014
After two dismal books, this was a good read. The writer makes a compelling argument, well-referenced, lucid and useful.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews