cultural appropriation | Pandaemonium

FROM EQUAL RIGHTS TO STAYING IN YOUR LANE

September 24, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on racial categories and social identities, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the Labour Party’s proposal to ban pregnant women from discovering the sex of their unborn child). It was published in the Observer, 23 September 2018, under the headline ‘Racial equality once meant tearing down barriers, not doing a DNA test’. Until about five years ago, Ralph Taylor did not consider himself black. He lived as a white […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: ancestry, anti-racism, cultural appropriation, equality, genealogy, genetic testing, identity politics, race, racial categories, racism, stay in your lane

THE ART & POLITICS OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

December 8, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The latest issue of Art Review carries, under the headline ‘The truth about “cultural appropriation”‘, an edited version of my recent talk on cultural appropriation at London’s Rich Mix. Here is an extract: One of the key arguments of many such critics is that one speaks through one’s identity; that one speaks, as writer Nesrine Malik has put it, ‘as a’: ‘as a woman’, ‘as a Muslim’, ‘as an immigrant’. And those who are not ‘as a’ must take their cue […]

Categories: Culture & Books • Tags: amiri baraka, cultural appropriation, culture, dana schutz, emmett till, henry taylor, identity politics, kamila shamsie, racism

APPROPRIATING CONFUSION

September 20, 2017 by Kenan Malik

The radical magazine Current Affairs recently published an essay by Briahna Joy Gray critical of critics of the concept of ‘cultural appropriation’. Gray was particularly disparaging of an essay that I had published in the New York Times. I enjoy Current Affairs, and it often carries insightful articles. I thought, however, that Gray’s piece, while raising some important points, was confused and tendentious in its criticisms. Current Affairs refused me a reply; I did not need a right of reply, the editor Nathan Robinson […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: adolph reed, chris ofili, chuck berry, cultural appropriation, dana schutz, elvis presley, inequality, mf husain, racism

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION AND SECULAR BLASPHEMY

July 9, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This is the full version of the article I wrote last month for the New York Times on controversies over ‘cultural appropriation’ . (I cannot publish my NYT articles on Pandaemonium until the month after they are published in the newspaper.) It was originally published on 14 June under the headline ‘In defence of cultural appropriation’. The article has drawn much attention (and much hostility). I hope to write a proper response to the criticism soon. The images are all […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Justice & Liberties, Race & Immigration • Tags: anti-racism, blasphemy, chuck berry, cultural appropriation, cultural ownership, dana schutz, elvis presley, emmett till, identity politics, racism, rushdie affair, the satanic verses

GILROY AND REED ON RACE, CLASS & CULTURE

July 6, 2017 by Kenan Malik

I have written much recently on questions of race and culture, as reflected through issues ranging from adoption to cultural appropriation to patriotism to diversity to identity. The common theme has been the way that those who call themselves ‘progressive’ or ‘anti-racist’ often draw upon ideas that are deeply regressive and rooted in racial ways of thinking; and that the consequences of identity politics and of concepts such as cultural appropriation is to bring about not social justice but the empowerment […]

Categories: Justice & Liberties, Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: adolph reed, anti-racism, black culture, black identity, class politics, cultural appropriation, hip hop, identity politics, paul gilroy, race, racism

HOW CULTURE CAME TO APPROPRIATE RACE

July 2, 2017 by Kenan Malik

A slightly shorter version of this essay was published in the Observer, 2 July 2017, under the headline ‘We need to rethink the way we imagine race and culture’. Last week, Sandeep and Reena Mander were denied the chance to adopt a child. It was not because their local council, Windsor and Maidenhead, thought that they would not have provided a loving family home. Nor because there were no children to adopt. It is rather that the Manders are of […]

Categories: Politics, Race & Immigration • Tags: adoption, cultural appropriation, culture, dana schutz, identity politics, immigration, katie perry, left, muslims, new right, paul gilroy, racism, rape, stolen generations, transracial adoption

IN DEFENCE OF CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

June 15, 2017 by Kenan Malik

An excerpt from my latest column for the New York Times, on the debate about ‘cultural appropriation’: The accusation of cultural appropriation is a secular version of the charge of blasphemy. It is the insistence that certain beliefs and images are so important to particular cultures that they may not appropriated by others. This is most clearly seen in the debate about Ms Schutz’s painting, Open Casket. . In 1955, Emmett Till’s mother urged the publication of photographs of her son’s […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Justice & Liberties • Tags: anti-racism, blasphemy, cultural appropriation, dana schutz, emmett till, racism

WHO IS APPROPRIATING WHAT?

September 14, 2016 by Kenan Malik

Last week the novelist Lionel Shriver gave the keynote address at the Brisbane Writers Festival. It did not go well. She addressed the question of ‘Fiction and identity politics’ (apparently the organizers had originally asked her to talk about ‘community and belonging’, but she had submitted to them a different topic), providing a robust critique of identity politics and of the idea of ‘cultural appropriation’. Beginning with a story about colleges attempting to ban the wearing of sombreros as an […]

Categories: Culture & Books, Free Speech • Tags: cultural appropriation, cultural ownership, free speech, herder, identity politics, immigration, lionel shriver, racism, romanticism

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