Not So Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics

A new book by Kenan Malik challenges assumptions about race, culture, whiteness, and privilege, tracing the history of ideas from the Enlightenment to the present and arguing that the modern West's struggle to escape ideas of race has led to identity politics.

Format: Hardback
Length: 328 pages
Publication date: 05 January 2023
Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd

A groundbreaking new history of the concept of race that challenges our understanding of contemporary culture conflicts.
Is white privilege a genuine phenomenon? How racist is the working class? Why has left-wing antisemitism increased? Who benefits from the use of racial language by anti-racists?
The "culture wars" have sparked intense debate, yet little understanding. This book offers a long-term perspective, tracing the origins of "race" in Western thought and its evolution from the Enlightenment to our current divided world.
Leading thinker Kenan Malik upends many assumptions underlying today's heated discussions on race, culture, whiteness, and privilege.
Malik intertwines this historical narrative with a parallel one: the story of the modern West's long-failed attempt to escape notions of race, resulting in a world deeply divided by identity politics. Through these accounts, he challenges prevailing wisdom, revealing the forgotten history of a racialized working class and questioning popular concepts like cultural appropriation.
Not So Black and White is a comprehensive history that rewrites the story of race and presents a compelling anti-racist argument against identity politics.

Weight: 752g
Dimension: 167 x 242 x 40 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781787387768