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Not So Black and White

A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics

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Not So Black and White

By: Kenan Malik
Narrated by: Homer Todiwala
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Summary

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.

©2023 Kenan Malik (P)2023 W.F.Howes Ltd Colonialism & Post-Colonialism Politics & Government Racism & Discrimination Social Sciences Discrimination Social justice Colonial Period Socialism Africa Capitalism
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This is an important and fascinating book, full of thought-provoking and challenging material. It's not always straightforward, but if you engage it will educate and open your mind on the question of race. Malik is deeply knowledgeable and his argument compelling.

The reading of the book is atrocious. It seems the guy can barely speak English at times. His voice is odd anyway, veering between a weird kind of estuary English pronunciation at times to ridiculously over the top pronunciation of French and other foreign names. He doesn't know how to pronounce lots of words and clearly didn't bother to find out, quite frequently getting it wrong in a way that can be quite jarring. Not ideal



Excellent book. Terrible reading.

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For all who are concerned about current trends in politics, the forgetting of economic justice, the polarisation of many Western nations, and loss of shared values, this is an invaluable and useful analysis.

Very perceptive and insightful analysis

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The book contains chapter after chapter of very harrowing US and European history yet a history most of us already knew. It then concludes with something we also already knew. As much as I admire Kenan, I feel this book doesn’t really cover the class / race matter nearly enough.

Never really hits the spot

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