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Kenan Malik

@kenanmalik

1 Apr

Will probably write about Race Commission Report properly for Sunday, but a few thoughts. Having spent much of the last few years questioning arguments about racial disparities, insisting that we need to think about the complex interplay of race and class… 1/

…and suggesting that the racial categories we use are often not useful in understanding many social problems we face, I might have been expected to like the Commission approach. I don’t. It’s an odd report, marrying the polemical with the empirical to the detriment of both. 2/

Much of the controversy about the report has been about the question of “institutional racism”. That seems to me to miss the real problems with it. The report seems less interested in exposing and exploring the complexities… 3/

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Kenan Malik

@kenanmalik

26 Mar

A few thoughts on the Batley school Muhammed image controversy. Since the facts are unclear, these are as much about the general issues as the case itself.

1. There is no right not to be offended. This is as true in a classroom as anywhere else. Context matters.

2. The boundaries of speech are, of course, different in a classroom than in the world outside. One is dealing with minors, building a relationship with them, encouraging them to think, and to think about issues that they may not have, or may not have wanted to.

3. There are no blasphemy laws in Britain and – despite media reports – no prohibition in Islam against depicting Muhammed. It’s a modern taboo in many Sunni strands. In Iran, there are depictions of Muhammed even in a mosque. There are many manuscripts with such depictions.

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Kenan Malik

@kenanmalik

18 Jan

https://twitter.com/Alex__1789/status/1351158107292880896

It will be interesting to see if “WEIRD” becomes the framework for defining certain sections of the population that supposedly reject “the ideals of individualism, moral consistency and the type of sequential logic used in alphabet-based writing systems”. 1/

https://twitter.com/Alex__1789/status/1351158107292880896

There is, though, a long history of seeing the “lower classes” in the same terms as non-Westerners, as fundamentally, and anthropologically, distinct from the elite. It was a central theme of nineteenth century racial thinking. 2/

In his 1883 book "The Life of the Poor", English journalist George Sims wrote of “a region that lies at our own doors… a dark continent that is within easy walking distance of the General Post Office”, a continent “as interesting as any of those newly-explored lands… 3/

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Kenan Malik

@kenanmalik

14 Dec 20

Many people have seen those horrific photos of black labourers in the Belgian Congo having hands & feet (not just theirs but their children’s too) chopped off as punishment. What I hadn't realized was that 18th century American colonies had laws authorizing similar punishment. 1/

A 1707 Virginia law authorised courts in the case of runaway slaves “to order such punishment to the said slave, either by disbembring, or any other way, not touching his life, as they in their discretion shall think fit for… terrifying others from the like practices.” 2/

As for what this entailed, this is from the records of a Virginia court in March 1708, after a complaint about a runaway slave: “It is ordered… That the said Robert Carter Esq. shall have full power according to Law to dismember the said negroes… by cutting off their toes.” 3/

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Kenan Malik

@kenanmalik

8 Aug 20

@RavinAnend

@RavinAnend @manick62 @rakibehsan @buffsoldier_96 Apologies for a slow response – I’m still under the threat of deadlines. Apologies, too, for a twitter thread that’s more like a mini-essay. Twitter, unfortunately, is not best platform for discussing issues such as this. 1/

@RavinAnend

@RavinAnend @manick62 @rakibehsan @buffsoldier_96 Before starting, can I say that @JohnAmaechi’s argument is both cogent and illuminating. Some of the abuse he has received is unwarranted. However, I also disagree with him. 2/

@RavinAnend

@RavinAnend @manick62 @rakibehsan @buffsoldier_96 @JohnAmaechi The real question to ask here is why talk of ‘white privilege’ rather than of ‘racism’? Or, from my perspective, why is it better to talk of, and challenge, racism rather than white privilege? Here’s why: 3/

Read 30 tweets

Kenan Malik

@kenanmalik

6 Aug 20

‘Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war.’ 1/

‘…Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?’ 2/

That was Leo Szilárd on the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 75 years ago. Szilárd was the Hungarian-American physicist, among the first to warn of Germany’s A bomb programme, and a central figure in the Manhattan Project. 3/

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