Strange Fruit:
Why both sides
are wrong
in the race debate
by Kenan Malik
Posted on 06/27/2008 11:53:07 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Take, for instance, this one: "The human race is too young for it to have evolved into distinct species-like units." No, it isn't, and Malik provides good, if not overwhelming, reasons why not. Or this one: "Distinctions between races are arbitrary." No, they aren't. In a famous experiment in 2002, a computer program was able to "blindly" sort genetic data from individuals around the world into five populations that were nearly identical to the traditional races...
The middle section of Malik's book recaps his cultural history of the European concept of race, covered in his book The Meaning of Race (Macmillan, 1996). In my view, this history is much less benign than Malik suggests - just read Louis XIV's 1685 Code Noir, which set out the rules for slaves and masters in the French West Indies. Still, Malik loves Enlightenment thinkers and their faith in universal reason, and he fears that western civilisation is increasingly mired in anti-reason. Maybe, maybe not, but three cheers for Malik's rationalism.
The final part of the book takes up the cudgels against identity politics and multiculturalism. Malik condemns uncritical respect for everybody, and thinks that our enthusiasm for diversity is a refashioned racism. A more generous and constant theme of his work is that we need a purified 18th-century universalism, one that is sensitive to the realities of history and of peoples. And lots of logic and scientific method.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Strange Fruit:
Why both sides
are wrong
in the race debate
by Kenan Malik
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Where would it sort Obama?
;’)
Here’s another review of this book that says Malik’s premise is that race is a social construct:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10187
What am I reading wrong? Which review is accurate?
Or Tiger?
I don’t know, haven’t read the book yet. :’)
Wow, that other review is an op-ed, and a review of more than one book. Looks like the author of that review didn’t read it.
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