Author Archives: Kenan Malik

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

NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE

April 13, 2022 by Kenan Malik

. Here are details of my new book, Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics, bublished by Hurst and available from the usual places. In Britain: Bookshop, Waterstones, Book Depository, Blackwell’s, Amazon, Foyle’s, etc. Or, in America Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Powell’s, Amazon, Tattered Cover, Schuler. Or Australia: Angus & Robertson, Amazon, Dymocks. Or, best of all, order it at your local independent bookshop. This is the blurb from the Hurst brochure: […]

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

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

SOLIDARITY, IDENTITY AND “PEOPLE LIKE US”

March 9, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on what the responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine tells us about the ways in which we think about solidarity, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 6 March 2022, under the headline “The people of Ukraine need our solidarity. But not just because they’re ‘like us’”. In 1857, the English poet and Chartist leader Ernest Jones wrote a series of articles in The People’s Paper about the “Indian Mutiny” of that year. It was, he observed, no “mutiny” but […]

Categories: History, International, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-slav racism, ernest jones, europe, european union, fortress europe, freedom struggles, identity politics, racism, refugees, russia, russian invasion, slavs, solidarity, ukraine, ukraine war, vladimir putin

COVID AND FREEDOM: TRIVIALISED AND TRIBALISED

March 2, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on restoring freedoms post-covid, was my Observer column this week. It was published 27 February 2022, under the headline “‘Freedom day’ was no leap into the light. For that we must set aside tribalism”. There was a certain irony that “freedom day” – the name given by some to the removal on Thursday of the last official Covid restrictions in England – was also the day that Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine. For two years, as the virus has wreaked havoc and […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties, Politics • Tags: canada, covid 19, covid restrictions, freedom, freedom convoy, freedom day, ottawa, trust

NOT JUST A BLACK AND WHITE ISSUE

February 9, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the controversy over Whoopi Goldberg’s comments about race and the Holocaust, was my Observer column this week. It was published 6 February 2022, under the headline “Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust remarks drew on a misguided idea of racism”. “This is white people doing it to white people, so y’all gonna fight amongst yourselves.” Whoopi Goldberg’s comments on ABC’s The View about the Holocaust being not “about race” but “white on white” violence that exposed “man’s inhumanity to man” has drawn a slew of condemnation. […]

Categories: History, Race & Immigration • Tags: holocaust, jews, jim crow, nazism, nuremberg laws, race, racism, usa, white privilege, whiteness, whoopi goldberg

FORGETTING THE LESSONS OF FREE SPEECH STRUGGLES

February 2, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the history of free speech and the lessons we are in danger of forgetting, was my Observer column this week. It was published 30 January 2022, under the headline “Freedom of speech was too hard won to be cavalier now about censorship”. If the great campaigners for free speech of the past, such as Baruch Spinoza or Mary Wollstonecraft or Frederick Douglass, were alive today, “they would surely declare the 21st century an unprecedented golden age”. So suggests Jacob […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: antisemitism, censorship, charlie hebdo, der sturmer, eleanor roosevelt, free speech, hate speech, jacob mchangama, nazism, social justice, the satanic verses, weimar republic

THE POVERTY OF MORALISM

January 26, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on poverty and social policy, was my Observer column this week. It was published 23 January 2022, under the headline “Poor people face a perfect storm. Let no one tell you it’s their own fault”. Terry Pratchett understood why most social policies fail. In his book Men At Arms, one of the characters, Samuel Vines, put forward his “‘boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness”. “The reason that the rich were so rich,” Vines observed, “was because they managed to spend less money.” […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: cost of living crisis, inflation, jack monroe, poverty, samuel vimes, terry pratchett, undeserving poor, universal credit

CONTESTING FREEDOM AND “WHITE FREEDOM”

January 4, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the historian Tyler Stovall and the idea of “white freedom”, was my Observer column this week. It was published 2 January 2022, under the headline “We talk a lot about freedom – but not enough about whose freedom is at stake”. “For me, history is the record not only of how things change, but how people make things change, how they act individually and collectively to create a better world.” So wrote American historian Tyler Stovall about his approach to his […]

Categories: Culture & Books, History, Justice & Liberties • Tags: abraham lincoln, enlightenment, france, freedom, freedom struggles, french colonialism, french revolution, kant, liberalism, putney debates, race, race and class, radical enlightenment, tyler stovall, white freedom, whiteness

CRICKET AND THE CRAVING FOR A QUICK FIX

December 30, 2021 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debacle of English Test cricket, was my Observer column this week. It was published 26 December 2021, under the headline “The thrills! The spills! No wonder we’re losing the drama of the epic encounter”. (Oh, and if you don’t already know, England were humiliated in Melbourne.) Perhaps I won’t have woken up this morning to the sound of clattering England wickets in the Boxing Day heat of Melbourne. Perhaps, by the time you read this, England will have […]

Categories: Sport • Tags: australia, ben stokes, cricket, england, formula one, indian premier league, lewis hamilton, max verstappen, miracle of istanbul, muhammad ali, rumble in the jungle, t20, test cricket, the ashes