Product Description

The debate about race is back - and with a vengeance. In the past, scientific ideas of race reflected political ideas of inferiority and superiority, whereas today it reflects contemporary notions of diversity. Malik challenges both sides of the race debate, controversially revealing that it is not through the scientific study of human differences but through our political obsession with identity and diversity that racial ideas are once more catching fire. Weaving together politics, history, science, and philosophy, "Strange Fruit" discusses issues ranging from the science of skull measurement to the politics of the Holocaust; from diabetes rates among Hispanics to the fate of the Elgin Marbles; from the genetics of altruism to the struggle for Aboriginal rights; and, from the successes of Human Genome Project to the failures of multiculturalism. Huge in its reach and powerful in its grasp, the book uproots the conventional ways of thinking about race, science, and identity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #156775 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Review
"Society changes, science moves on, but race remains the most uneasy and confused of topics. Cutting through the confusion, Kenan Malik's lucid and vivid account is essential reading for anybody who wants to think sensibly about race and human diversity." Marek Kohn, Journalist and author of The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science "Stripping away layers of pseudo-science and taken-for-granted prejudices, paying no dues to political correctness, he has written a penetrating critique." Adam Kuper, Professor of Anthropology, Brunel University, London "Kenan Malik delivers a withering critique of what he sees as the racial view of the world. In doing so his arguments are a challenge to all those who seek to better understand the continuing debates about race and racism in our changing global environment." John Solomos, Head of the Sociology Department, City University, London and author of Race and Racism in Britain (2003)

Adam Kuper, Professor of Anthropology, Brunel University, London
"Stripping away layers of pseudo-science and taken-for-granted prejudices, paying no dues to political correctness, he has written a penetrating critique."

Marek Kohn, Journalist and author of The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science
"Society changes, science moves on, but race remains the most uneasy and confused of topics. Cutting through the confusion, Kenan Malik's lucid and vivid account is essential reading for anybody who wants to think sensibly about race and human diversity."

Customer Reviews

A third way
Malik begins with a discussion of race from a biological point of view. He clearly tends towards the fashionable viewpoint that race is not a valid biological concept, and seems to wish to perpetuate Lewontin's Fallacy. Although Malik demonstrates that there are indeed immense and apparently insurmountable difficulties in defining exactly what 'race' is, I don't feel that his argument that as a result the concept is invalid is conclusive. Just because we are unable to define such a concept rigorously doesn't mean that such categories can't exist at all, even in some fuzzy or naive sense. It feels a little like saying that life does not exist, because we haven't been able to agree upon a rigorous definition of what life is. Life clearly does exist, despite our failure to define it.

Malik progresses onto a discussion of European racism during the empire building and colonial period. One important part of his treatment which I think still has great relevance today, is how Europeans of the time had a tendency to treat black people who took part in the norms of European society as equals. Dress like us, speak like us, behave like us, we treat you exactly like one of us. What people call "racism" is actually more often "culturalism" as it were, and I think that this is very much the case in modern society.

Moving from the past to the present, Malik analyses the anti-racist movements of the modern day, and demonstrates how things have swung to the opposite pole entirely. Whereas 'racist' imperialist Europe allowed other races to become one of them by behaving like them, contemporary politically correct anti-racist movements do exactly the opposite. They do not even permit black people to behave like white people; on the contrary it is about white people telling black people how they must behave and actually confining them within a certain image - and a white person's image at that - of what they should be like. Rem acu tetigisti, Mr Malik!

Essential reading, and an important voice for a third way in the race debate.

Should be read by every politician and journalist
This is the best book I have read covering a wide range of arguments concerning race. Malik reveals deep flaws in the arguments of both the race deniers and the race warriers. Rather than dismiss the concept out of hand he shows what the limits of its applicability should be. There are differences, for example, in the responsiveness of different human groups to different medicines. Even here, however he warns that these differences are not quite what they are usually thought to be. Thus sickle cell anaemia is not a black problem since the majority of blacks do not suffer from it. Furthermore some whites have the problem. Malik piles up a lot of detail on such issues and shows that only careful analysis which is not driven by dogmatic concepts of race (for or against).
The middle section of the book details the changing approaches to race since the Englightenment and should convince anyone who think that goodies and badies can be lined up by their response to simple questions that things are far more complicated than they imagine.
Finally in the last part of the book Malik shows who simplistic anti-racism has resulted in policies that reinforce racist views and inter-community problems.
The book is well researched and carefully argued. It should be read by every politician an journalist who is in any way concerned with issues of race.