Pandaemonium

NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE

April 13, 2022 by Kenan Malik

. It’s out. Well, details of my forthcoming book, anyway. The book itself, Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics will be published in January by Hurst. Here’s the blurb from the Hurst brochure: Is white privilege real? Does American history begin in 1619 or 1776? Why has left-wing antisemitism grown? How racist is the working class? Who benefits most, when anti-racists speak in racial terms? . These very different questions have […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Kenan Malik, Not so Black and White

TO SAY THE UNSAYABLE

August 18, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Salman Rushdie and free speech, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 14 August 2022, under the headline “Where Salman Rushdie defied those who would silence him, today too many fear causing offence”. “A poet’s work,” one of the characters in Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses observes, is “to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.” “And if rivers of blood flow from […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: ayatollah khomeini, censorship, fatwa, free speech, islam, muslims, offence, peter mayer, salman rushdie, the satanic verses

BENEATH THE SKIN OF OUR OBSESSION WITH WHITENESS

August 11, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the contemporary obsession with whiteness, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 7 August 2022, under the headline “Beneath the skin of our obsession with whiteness lie deeper fears about our place in the world”. It is Viktor Orbán’s worst nightmare: “One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.” It is the opening line to Mohsin Hamid’s new novel The Last White Man, a line that deliberately echoes […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: critical race theory, derrick bell, franz kafka, identity politics, mohsin hamid, racism, ta-nehisi coates, the last white man, viktor orban, white identity, whiteness

THE ENDS OF EDUCATION

August 4, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the working class and the meaning of education, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 31 July 2022, under the headline “If education is all about getting a job, the humanities are left just to the rich”. “We rented a garret, for which we paid (I think) 25s a year, bought a few second-hand forms and desks, borrowed a few chairs from the people in the house, bought a shilling’s worth of coals… and started our […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Culture & Books • Tags: browne report, david runciman, diversity, education, education cuts, humanities, jonathan rose, robbins report, universities, working class

CLASS AND POWER IN CONTEMPORARY BRITAIN

July 28, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on class, power the different social meanings of “regulation”, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 24 July 2022, under the headline “Worship the rich, neglect the poor? Adam Smith’s words still capture how power works”. If you want to see how class and power operate in Britain today, look at the different ways in which “regulation” is applied to working-class people and businesses. In the one case, it is about imposing ever-tighter restrictions, making it increasingly […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Justice & Liberties • Tags: adam smith, anti-union laws, conservative party, grenfell fire, grenfell tower, strikes, trade unions

ON DIVERSITY AND ITS LIMITS

July 21, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on diversity and the Tory leadership campaign, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 17 July 2022, under the headline “Give me a pale male PM with great policies over a ‘diverse’ one reinforcing inequality”. It is not the British version of the Obama moment, when the election in 2008 of an African American to the White House appeared to mark a significant moment in American history. The magnitude of slavery in US history, the memory of […]

Categories: Britain, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: conservative party, diversity, identity politics, racism

YE ARE MANY – THEY ARE FEW

July 13, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the legacy of Percy Bysshe Shelley 200 years after his death, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 10 July 2022, under the headline “Long gone, but speaking clearly to our age – Shelley, the poet of moral and political corruption”. “Shall rank corruption pass unheeded by, Shall flattery’s voice ascend the wearied sky; And shall no patriot tear the veil away Which hides these vices from the face of day? Is public virtue dead? – […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Justice & Liberties • Tags: freedom struggles, mary shelley, peterloo, poetry, queen mab, richard holmes, romanticism, shelley, the masque of anarchy, working class

THE DRIP OF FAR RIGHT IDEAS INTO MAINSTREAM THINKING

July 6, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the seeping of far-right ideas into mainstream thinking, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 3 July 2022, under the headline “It’s not just the far right that should worry us. It’s their ideas seeping into the mainstream”. It is not often that the election of deputy speakers to a parliament can be described as portentous. The appointment last week of vice-presidents (the equivalent of deputy speakers) of the French national assembly was almost unnoticed outside […]

Categories: International, Politics • Tags: alain de benoist, communist party, douglas murray, emmanuel macron, far right, france, front national, gerald darmien, great replacement theory, immigration, marine le pen, pcf, racism, rassemblement national

IN DEFENCE OF STRIKES

June 29, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the importance of trade unions and the right to strike, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 27 June 2022, under the headline “Enemy within? Hardly… most people see why we need unions prepared to strike”. The Tories love the working class. So long as workers can help them win red wall seats. So long as they can paint them as “socially conservative” and use them as alibis for legislation hostile to immigrants or welfare claimants. So […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Justice & Liberties • Tags: british politics, conservative party, inequality, labour party, levelling up, mick lynch, rail strikes, rmt, strikes, tony blair, trade unions, working class

FANTASY FEARS AND REAL ISSUES

June 22, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on machine sentience and the real problems with AI, was my Observer column on 19 June 2022. It was published under the headline “Forget sentience… the worry is that AI copies human bias”. ‘I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” So claimed a Google software program, creating a bizarre controversy over the past week in AI circles and beyond. The programme is called LaMDA, an acronym for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, a project run by […]

Categories: Philosophy & Ethics, Science & Technology • Tags: ai bias, artificial intelligence, blake lemoine, facial recognition, google, lamda, predictive policing, privacy, sentience, surveillance, timnit gebru

OFFENDING THE GATEKEEPERS

June 15, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on attempts to ban the film The Lady of Heaven, was my Observer column on 12 June 2022. It was published under the headline “Film bans are less about offence, more ‘community leaders’ showing who’s boss”. “Birmingham will not tolerate the disrespect of our Prophet… You will have repercussions for your actions.” So claimed a leader of a Muslim protest against the film The Lady of Heaven. There were similar protests in cities from Bradford to London. Fear of “repercussions” led the cinema chain […]

Categories: Atheism & Religion, Britain, Free Speech • Tags: censorship, charlie hebdo, fatimah, free speech, gatekeepers, gurpreet kaur bhatti, hanif kureishi, hudud, islam, mf husain, muslims, offence, roshan muhammad sakih, salman rushdie, sharia, shia, sunni, the lady of heaven

THE UBERISATION OF BRITAIN

May 4, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on labour insecurity in Britain, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 1 May 2022, under the headline “In the name of job flexibility, ‘Uberisation’ is spreading its tentacles across society”. In the late 18th century, as the impact of the Industrial Revolution bit into the lives of the nascent working class, the high cost of fuel, one study notes, “forced inhabitants of many southern regions to abandon home cooking”. Fuel costs were much greater in the south […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: anti-union laws, fire and rehire, gig economy, labour insecurity, labour market, margaret thatcher, new labour, p&o, poverty, thatcherism, tony blair, trade unions, uberisation, working class

IMMIGRATION POLICIES AND REDRAWING BORDERS

April 28, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on how Western immigration policies are undermining the sovereignty of poorer nations, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 24 April 2022, under the headline “In this new age of empire, the west has no need to conquer. Money and coercion do the job”. Where is America’s southern border? Look on a map and you can see the line where America ends and Mexico begins, a line along part of which Donald Trump tried to build his […]

Categories: International, Race & Immigration • Tags: deportation, empire of borders, european union, immigration controls, immigration policy, imperialism, rwanda, sovereignty, usa

SEX, GENDER AND SPORT

April 6, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about transgender athletes in sport, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 3 April 2022, under the headline “From pool to track: disputes over trans athletes mustn’t make everyone a loser”. If you want a case study of how not to handle the question of transgender athletes in sport, look to the treatment of British cyclist Emily Bridges. As a talented male junior, Bridges won three silver medals at national championships and seemed destined […]

Categories: Sport, Women • Tags: emily bridges, gender, joanna harper, lia thomas, sex-based categories, testosterone, trans rights, transgender, transgender athletes, transphobia, women's rights

SOVEREIGNTY NOT JUST WHEN IT IS POLITICALLY CONVENIENT

March 30, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the British denial of sovereignty , was my Observer column this week. It was published on 27 March 2022, under the headline “As the imperial ties are being cast aside, a royal tour was always going to be a farce”. Sovereignty, we are told, matters. It matters in Ukraine. It matters in Brexit. And, for some, the freedom afforded by sovereignty in the one instance is analogous to that afforded in the other. Many of those who celebrate sovereignty against […]

Categories: Britain, International • Tags: british commonwealth, british empire, caribbean, caroline elkins, chagos islands, john stuart mill, kemi badenoch, nigel biggar, royal family, sovereignty, windrush scandal