Kenan Malik’s ‘Not So Black & White’ Dissected

This is the first of two films on this penetrating and determinedly fearless book. This opening film I’ve called ‘The invention of race’ and it will be followed by a second named ‘Transcending Race’.

This 1st film has 2 sections, each of which has 3 parts. The 1st section I’ve named the invention of race and its 1st part is called positioning Malik and his argument. This locates his thesis in his personal experience of both Racism and a tradition of politics emphasising solidarity and universalism. From this comes the two central concerns of the book. the 1st as race, where it came from and how it works, and the 2nd as how to best transcend race, where he critiques identity politics and reasserts the radical Enlightenment as better resourced to meet the evils of racism.

The 2nd part, the invention of race, begins by setting out the context for the invention of race as the rapid changes experienced by Europe and America generated by modernity in general and the enlightenment, the scientific revolution, capitalism, and industrialisation in particular. This tumult of change generated a mix of on one hand, confidence and optimism, and on the other fear and pessimism. And it was this fear and pessimism that produced the psychic forces receptive to the idea of race, which emerged from the convergence of two distinct paths. These were a so-called scientific path – premised on the classification of the natural world, and a cultural path premised on the philosophy of Johan Herder.

The 3rd part, ‘race as power and politics, identifies Imperialism as the political context of race, the development of racial thinking as a powerful political instrument (to control Europe’s lower orders and justify the exploitation of non-European peoples) and the struggle to claim white identity as one of its many political conflicts.

The 2nd section I’ve named ‘The tangled legacy of race’ where I bring together a number of themes sketched out by Malik, beginning with its 1st part called ‘The racialisation of existing oppressions and old hatreds’. Here, Malik shows how both American slavery and pre modern hatred towards Jews, where both racialised, transformed and deepened by the invention of race.

The 2nd part, named / Mass killing and genocide addresses the relationship between the holocaust and various forms of colonial atrocities to argue that the holocaust might be seen as a depravity built upon a series of depravities, whereby colonialism set the template for mass murder and genocide. In particular, it looks at the attempt to exterminate the Herrero and Nama people as the first singular desire to annihilate a whole people, anticipating the Nazi death camps.

And finally, the 3rd part called ‘White supremacy’ looks at how, white supremacy as the legacy of American slavery, was re-established and reconstituted following the abolition of slavery. Here, the American experience serves both as a case study in the machinery of white supremacy and as a way to set out the context for the next film examining the Black political response, and what can be gleaned from it in thinking about how best to confront racism today.

Видео Kenan Malik’s ‘Not So Black & White’ Dissected канала Bernard Tannett