poor | Pandaemonium

POLICING INEQUALITIES OF RACE AND CLASS

April 27, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on the nature of American policing, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on a breakthrough vaccine for malaria.) It was published on 25 April 2021, under the headline “US policing is far less about fighting crime than controlling the poor”. ‘Lower-class culture is pathological.” So claimed American political scientist Edward Banfield in his 1970 book The Unheavenly City. For Banfield, unlike the middle class, “the lower-class person lives from moment to moment… unable […]

Categories: International, Justice & Liberties • Tags: 1033 programme, broken windows policy, derek chauvin, edward banfield, george floyd, james quinn wilson, mass incarceration, militarised policing, police killings, policing, poor, racism, thomas sowell, usa, william bratton

THE NOBLE SAVAGES OF THE WORKING CLASS

January 26, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on contradictory perceptions of the working class, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the scandal of the global distribution of Covid vaccines.) It was published on 24 January 2021, under the headline “Age-old notions of the noble savage haunt views of working-class life”. There are few things more fractured and muddled than contemporary attitudes towards working-class people. On the one hand, too many people ignore, even deny, the grim realities of […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: austerity, left behind, magic money tree, meritocracy, morality, noble savages, passing, poor, poverty, resolution foundation, rishi sunak, sam friedman, torsten bell, working class, working poor

BLAMING THE POOR

August 4, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the history of blaming the poor, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 2 August 2020, under the headline ‘Illness, obesity, racism; who gets blamed for our crises? The poor of course’. The role of government, the US political scientist Lawrence Mead wrote in his 1986 book Beyond Entitlement, is to ‘persuade [people] to blame themselves’. Mead is the godfather of workfare (schemes that make welfare benefits conditional on the claimant working) and a key proponent […]

Categories: Class, Politics • Tags: african americans, coronavirus, culture, culture of poverty, george orwell, inequality, lawrence mead, obesity, poor, poverty, racism, underserving poor, working class