WELCOME TO PANDAEMONIUM
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I am a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. (That's me on the right, just in case you're wondering.) I present Analysis on BBC Radio 4 and am a panelist on The Moral Maze, also on Radio 4. My latest book From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy (Atlantic) was shortlisted for the 2010 Orwell Prize. My next book, on the history of moral thought, has not been shortlisted for anything - but then again it has also not been written.
You can find an archive of my work at kenamalik.com. I also have a photoblog, another lonely pixel, a Flickr account and a Twitter feed. This blog is just a space for random writings, readings, thoughts & scribbles.
Kenan Malik
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My essay on ‘'Rethinking the Idea of “Christian Europe”’ won the 2011 3QD Politics and Social Science Prize.
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- 'The British Army cultivated a legal environment in which massacres could safely be carried out': lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?ty… 14 hours ago
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Pandaemonium
Writings, readings, thoughts & scribbles
I am currently writing up my A level coursework about ethnic tokenism in media, especially Disney and i was hoping that you would have some views on whether or not Disney is guilty of ethnic tokenism in its recent output? Have they become more ethnically representative over time? Do they have ethnic characters in their media outputs, purely to avoid critics? I feel like your opinions are very interesting and can help me to build up a strong debate for my media studies work.
I hope you can take a few minutes to email me.
Thankyou,
Sara Khan
Sara, unfortunately I haven’t watched enough Disney to be able to speak with any authority on this. But, yes, do email me and I’ll see how I can help.
hi,
ı always like to read about philosophy, ı checked your web site and ı think that you can help me to choose some basic philosophy books to read. ı am sorry if ı am distrubing you.best regards
Email me. Easier to discuss that way.
As I approach sixty, I have become more interested in this idea of morality, I was born, no registered as a Christian, but now look to all religions. You talk of the press and the fall of certain media, but it’s this media that allows true thought and the realism of a true morality, perhaps that’s why governments still try to control, I wonder on their morality. Keep on writing, now I have found you, I will read with interest.
Thank you, Kenan Malik!
I have been called ‘racist’ quite a few times. I believe it was probable that O.J. Simpson murdered his wife. I believe languages spoken by very few people need not be preserved. I believe that, in the realm of rationality, science, technology and democracy, Western Civilization has offered us much more than any other culture. I believe children of immigrants and indigenous peoples profit much more by receiving Western-style secular education than by adhering to the traditional education of their ancestors. For all of these reasons, I have been called a ‘racist’.
I, of course, have always rejected this claim. If we understand ‘racism’ as I believe we should, namely, as a form of discrimination based upon biological traits, then by no means am I a racist. I firmly believe that ‘race’ is a meaningless concept in biology. We may classify human biological traits in countless ways, and these classification systems will not cohere. The concept of ‘race’ presupposes, so to speak, a ‘whole package’: certain type of skin color corresponds to certain type of hair texture, blood type, and so on. This, anthropologists warn us, is clearly not the case.
So, if I do not believe in the existence of races, how can I be a racist? Yet, it took me a while to realize that, not only am I not a racist, but also that usually, those who call me a ‘racist’ are much closer to racist ideas than I am. It wasn’t until I encountered the writings of Kenan Malik, that I could clearly see the proximity of racist ideas and the premises of many self-proclaimed anti-racists.
Those people who call me a ‘racist’ are, for the most part, multiculturalists and enthusiasts of identity politics. They believe that it is a terrible act of colonialism to attempt to assimilate people of different cultural background into a melting pot, and instead, they promote and celebrate cultural differences among human beings. And, in such a manner, they believe Western Civilization should not expand.
I agree that Western Civilization should not expand by force, and indeed, colonialism has a lot to repent for, precisely because of this. But, Western Civilization has some huge advantages to offer, and that is presumably the reason why a great number of people from the Third World choose to migrate to Western countries. There is great appeal in science, technology, liberalism, prosperity and democracy.
Now, enthusiasts of identity politics believe that those peoples in contact with Western Civilization should strive to conserve the culture of their ancestors: in other words, they should resist assimilation into Western values. Even the children of immigrants or indigenous people who, out of their own will, desire to adopt Western values, should be refrained from doing so. For, the argument goes, by listening to Mozart (or Brittney Spears or any other piece of Western music) and not listening to the traditional music of their ancestors, they are losing their cultural essence, and thus, are being seriously harmed- even if they do not realize so.
I had the intuition that there was something dead wrong with this argument, but I could not figure it out… until I came across Kenan Malik. His work on race and multiculturalism is twofold. On the one hand, Malik opposes the traditional racists who argue that race is a valid biological concept. On this, Malik is not very original, as there are plenty of authors who show how inconsistent the concept of ‘race’ is.
But Malik is profoundly original by showing that, inadvertently, promoters of identity politics reason along similar lines as traditional racists. Very much as traditional racists have done, identity politics assumes the existence of racial essences: somehow, the fact that a girl’s ancestors were Wayuu makes her Wayuu, and she can only be happy by living as a Wayuu. It is as if, within her biological make-up, there is a gene that codifies Wayuu behavior. And, in this sense, if such a girl chooses a Western lifestyle, she is living contrary to what her essence dictates. She may dress as a Westerner, she may speak only Indo-European languages, she may feel no cultural attachment to the Wayuu, but nevertheless, she will never be a Westerner; she will be a confused Wayuu.
This is exactly the premise of racism: cultural traits correspond to biological traits. In previous centuries, colonialist racism assumed that colonized people could never achieve high levels of Western education, because they simply did not have the biological basis for it. Something all too similar is assumed by identity politics: a Wayuu girl will never satisfactorily assume Western values, because her ancestors had another culture.
Thank you, Kenan Malik, for showing us how old racial pseudoscientists such as LeBon or Gobineau are, in a sense, closer to Will Kymlicka than we had ever thought.
Gabriel, thank you. That is very kind and generous.
Kenan, do you have any thoughts on Steven Pinker’s “Better Angels of our Nature”? As you know, it has gotten a lot of positive review in the popular press. However, I have significant reservations about his conclusions and was wondering where you stand on his overall thesis. Have you read it? Any chance you might do a review of it?