Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics by Kenan Malik provides clarity on the origins of popular beliefs and assumptions about contemporary identity politics, which have become ubiquitous in heated debates on racism, cultural appropriation and white privilege.
There are plenty of valuable insights in Malik’s lively polemic against modern identity politics, which warns of the danger of “appropriating racial thinking even for the cause of equal rights”. Throughout the book, Malik ardently defends the values of 18th-century Enlightenment tradition and argues that many existing political and social inequalities are better tackled and confronted through “the prism of class than of race”. He diagnoses the contemporary sociopolitical landscape with an obsession with race, and prescribes a social movement for radical universalism.
The book’s overarching narrative of how race was created relies on the work of European Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant, Diderot and Herder; the latter figure is integral to Malik’s central thesis. The idea of radical enlightenment was created by philosophers in Europe during the late 17th century as a continuation of the movement towards secularism framed by the core belief that “to be human meant to have power and capacity to be the master of one’s own destiny independently of divine intervention”.
As Europe grew more prosperous on the back of colonialism and slavery, at the same time the “concept of race and reality of racial categories gradually took hold”. By the 19th century, race and racial categories had become an ideological tool used to justify subjecting “slaves, free blacks, women and working people” to inhuman labour practices, mass genocides and transatlantic slavery for the sake of maintaining cultural purity and economic profit.
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Malik points out the arbitrariness of the racial classification systems, in both Europe and America, “‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ were categories defined by property, respectability and class as much as by skin colour”. In light of this brutal history, Malik asks how could race possibly be used today by those “occupied with eradicating colonial ideas and systemic racism”?
Malik’s stylistic choice of restricting a personal narrative to the introduction mirrors his argument for the value of detaching racial identity from class politics. The book begins with his assertion that “if it was racism that drew me to politics, it was politics that made me see beyond the narrow confines of racism”. He confirms that he found solidarity with those who shared his values and political vision, even without a “common ethnicity or culture”.
We can glean valuable lessons from Malik’s impassioned call for a radical universal politic that fosters working-class solidarity instead of focusing on the colour of a person’s skin
He offers a brief biography revealing the relentless violence he endured growing up in Britain in the 1970s, “having to defend [himself] against racists”, being “beaten up because of [his] skin colour” and organisation against “street violence, police brutality and racist deportations”. He explains how the experience led him to discover Enlightenment ideas through political campaigns and foregrounds it as his primary influence for striving towards the establishment of a politic that fosters the development of “cross-racial working-class unity”.
At a time in Ireland when cultural divisions seem to be on the rise, we can glean valuable lessons from Malik’s impassioned call for a radical universal politic that fosters working-class solidarity instead of focusing on the colour of a person’s skin or what continent they come from. The protest over the temporary housing of up to 100 asylum seekers from Somalia, Afghanistan and Nigeria in East Wall last month was a shock to the community, and some locals were keen to express dissent with the protesters’ complaints and separate themselves from the negative connotation that came with the far-right takeover of the protests.
The complex intersection of race and class history offered in Not So Black and White provides 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.
Similar books to to Not So Black and White include Orientalism by Edward W Said, which offers compelling considerations on the history and nature of western attitudes towards the East, and Optimism Over Despair by Noam Chomsky, a convincing, brief discussion on modern conflicts, that encourages fortitude in the face of our global political crisis.
