anti-racism | Pandaemonium

ON BREXIT, BORDERS, BEING OFFENSIVE (BUT NOT BEING IN A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE)

July 28, 2016 by Kenan Malik

I recently gave a long interview to Dutch journalist Marco Visscher about Brexit, migration, democracy, politics, being offensive, growing up in racist Britian, and not being in a Hollywood movie. It was published in the Belgian magazine Knack (and a shorter version in the Dutch paper Trouw). The interview has been translated from English to Dutch then (roughly) back to English, so may not read very coherently in places. I have edited it lightly. It was published in Knack under […]

Categories: Britain, Kenan Malik • Tags: anti-racism, brexit, british politics, cultural diversity, democracy, european union, free speech, immigration, left, populism, racism

AWAY WITH THE GATEKEEPERS!

April 14, 2016 by Kenan Malik

My latest column for Al Jazeera English on the the controversies over ‘cultural appropriation’ and what they reveal about the degradation of contemporary campaigns for social justice. It was published in AJE under the headline ‘The bane of cultural appropriation’. Another week, another controversy about ‘cultural appropriation’. The latest has been the furore over Justin Bieber’s dreadlocks. The Bieber furore followed similar controversies over Beyoncé’s Bollywood outfit, Kylie Jenner’s cornrows, Canadians practicing yoga, English students wearing sombreros and American students donning […]

Categories: Free Speech, Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, cultural appropriation, cultural ownership, herder, identity politics, justin bieber, racism, romanticism

WISH I KNEW HOW IT WOULD FEEL TO BE FREE

June 27, 2015 by Kenan Malik

The story of the struggle for black rights in America is intimately linked to the story of popular music. And from Ferguson to Charleston, every recent conflict, confrontation and tragedy has brought to mind a particular song. So, here is a collection of 12 songs that have acted as the soundtrack to the black struggle in America over the past century. It is largely chronological and reflects the shifts both in the struggle and in the music (as well as […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Race & Immigration • Tags: african americans, america, anti-racism, black struggle, blues, freedom struggles, hiphop, jacob lawrence, jazz, music, r'n'b, racism, soul

THE WRONG KIND OF PANIC

November 10, 2014 by Kenan Malik

As a coda to my preface to the book on European Populism and Winning the Immigration Debate, here is the talk I gave to the discussion about populism at the European Parliament last week, organised by the European Liberal Forum and Fores. The context of this discussion is not just the rise of groups such UKIP in Britain, the Front National in France, the Sweden Democrats, but also the panic about it within mainstream circles. And if there is one […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, europe, immigration, left, populism, racism, ukip, working class

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH MULTICULTURALISM?

October 16, 2014 by Kenan Malik

This is a transcript of my talk about multiculturalism that I gave to the Secularism 2014 conference in London last week. For a more detailed discussion of multiculturalism, see my Milton K Wong lecture ‘What is wrong with multiculturalism?’ or my extended essay Multiculturalism and its Discontents. Before we can discuss multiculturalism, we need to distinguish between two processes or phenomena that all too often get confused. On the one hand, the lived experience of diversity; and, on the other, […]

Categories: Multiculturalism • Tags: anti-racism, cultural diversity, equality, identity politics, multiculturalism, muslims, racism

FROM THE VAULTS: A DEBATE ON ‘WHO SPEAKS FOR ME?’

April 7, 2013 by Kenan Malik

I am away for a week, so I thought I would unearth some more old material from the vaults, this time debates in which I have been involved. This first is an exchange of letters with the human rights activist Tanuka Loha, currently the Human Right to Housing Program Director at America’s National Economic and Social Rights Initiative, on questions of race, identity and political representation. It is a debate that touches on many of the themes in the contemporary discussion […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, black, black identity, british politics, democracy, mult, muslims, racism, universalism

REACHING FOR A MORAL HIGH GROUND LONG SINCE CROWDED

November 11, 2012 by Kenan Malik

Today’s Premiership clash between Chelsea and Liverpool provides a good opportunity for me to write about something about which I have been thinking for a long time – the controversy over racism in English football. Chelsea and Liverpool are the two clubs at the heart of that controversy. Earlier this year, Luis Suarez, Liverpool’s Uruguayan forward, was banned for eight matches for calling Manchester United’s Patrice Evra a ‘negrito’. Suarez insisted that this was colloquial Spanish for ‘mate’. An FA disciplinary […]

Categories: Free Speech, Race & Immigration, Sport • Tags: anti-racism, football, hate speech, racism