A powerful new history of the idea of race, forcing us to rethink today's culture wars.

Is white privilege real? How racist is the working class? Why has left-wing antisemitism grown? Who benefits most when anti-racists speak in racial terms?

The 'culture wars' have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. This book takes the long view, explaining the real origins of 'race' in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings in the Enlightenment all the way to our own fractious world. In doing so, leading thinker Kenan Malik upends many assumptions underpinning today's heated debates around race, culture, whiteness and privilege.

Malik interweaves this history of ideas with a parallel narrative: the story of the modern West's long, failed struggle to escape ideas of race, leaving us with a world riven by identity politics. Through these accounts, he challenges received wisdom, revealing the forgotten history of a racialised working class, and questioning fashionable concepts like cultural appropriation.

Not So Black and White is both a lucid history rewriting the story of race, and an elegant polemic making an anti-racist case against the politics of identity.

About the Author

Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer, broadcaster and Observer columnist. A former Moral Maze panellist, he has presented BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves and Radio 4's Analysis. His previous books include 'The Quest for a Moral Compass', and 'From Fatwa to Jihad', which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize.

Reviews

'Provides clarity on the origins of popular beliefs and assumptions about contemporary identity politics ... Not So Black and White [is] a comprehensive and persuasive guide to thinking of ways in which we can politically organise for better living conditions for the working class on the basis of shared values of liberty, equality and justice, and fight against the oppressive capitalist force of the elite, instead of fighting against each other.'

-- The Irish Times

'[Not So Black and White] is both a history of modern racism from the invention of race in the eighteenth century to the present day, and a powerful argument for universalism and solidarity.'

-- Counterfire



Book Information
ISBN 9781787387768
Author Kenan Malik
Format Hardback
Page Count 328
Imprint C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
Publisher C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd