The struggle to transcend race, with Kenan Malik | The Holyoake Lecture 2022

Is white privilege real? Was the British Empire a good? Does American history begin in 1619 or 1776? Has leftwing antisemitism grown, and if so why? How should we respond both to Islamist terror and to hostility towards Muslims? What explains a movement such as Black Lives Matter? Why do we talk so much now about the ‘white working class’?
These very different questions have all emerged from today’s heated debates around race, identity and culture. The ‘culture wars’ have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. In this lecture, based on the themes of his recent book 'Not So Black and White', Kenan Malik seeks that clarity by taking the long view, explaining the real origins of ‘race’ in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings to today’s fractious world. In doing so, this lecture upends many accepted views about ‘race’, identity, whiteness, and privilege.
Leading thinker Kenan Malik interweaves three narratives: the history of the idea of race, from the Enlightenment to the present; the historical and current relationship between race and class; and his account of how we created a world riven by identity politics. Through these histories, he challenges long-standing assumptions, revealing forgotten stories of a racialised working class, and questioning fashionable concepts like cultural appropriation. And he explains how the struggles to transcend the politics of race have both proved so difficult and are central to any attempt to build a humanist society.