Beschreibung:
Many of us have struggled to come to terms with horrendous and tragic evils that happened to someone we know or even ourselves. It is a well-known fact that Job, whom God called "blameless and upright," 1suffered the most tragic evil resulting in complete destruction of all his life possessions including his children for no apparent just cause. Even when God decided to answer Job and his friends, He never explained why Job had to suffer such devastations but rather overwhelmed him with His sovereignty. Although God restored everything Job lost two-fold, the restoration rarely explained the justification for the tragic and moral evils that he had to endure neither did it portray God as the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God. In the same manner, how does one comfort a mother whose child has just been raped and killed or the families of the victims of a school shooting that left many children dead? How does one justify a terrorist attack like the one witnessed in this country on September 11, 2001 or the kind of genocide visited on the Tutsis by Hutu power groups in Rwanda in 1994? Is there any justification for the atrocious moral evils that are being witnessed on a daily basis worldwide? Where is God in all these? Is the notion of God as the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent Being compatible with the existence of evil?
Is white privilege real? How racist is the working class? Why has left-wing antisemitism grown? Who benefits most when anti-racists speak in racial terms?The culture wars have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. This book takes the long view, explaining the real origins of race in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings in the Enlightenment all the way to our own fractious world. In doing so, leading thinker Kenan Malik upends many assumptions underpinning todays heated debates around race, culture, whiteness and privilege.Malik interweaves this history of ideas with a parallel narrative: the story of the modern Wests long, failed struggle to escape ideas of race, leaving us with a world riven by identity politics. Through these accounts, he challenges received wisdom, revealing the forgotten history of a racialised working class, and questioning fashionable concepts like cultural appropriation.Not So Black and Whiteis both a lucid history rewriting the story of race, and an elegant polemic making an anti-racist case against the politics of identity.
Is white privilege real? How racist is the working class? Why has left-wing antisemitism grown? Who benefits most when anti-racists speak in racial terms?
The ‘culture wars’ have generated ferocious argument, but little clarity. This book takes the long view, explaining the real origins of ‘race’ in Western thought, and tracing its path from those beginnings in the Enlightenment all the way to our own fractious world. In doing so, leading thinker Kenan Malik upends many assumptions underpinning today’s heated debates around race, culture, whiteness and privilege.
Malik interweaves this history of ideas with a parallel narrative: the story of the modern West’s long, failed struggle to escape ideas of race, leaving us with a world riven by identity politics. Through these accounts, he challenges received wisdom, revealing the forgotten history of a racialised working class, and questioning fashionable concepts like cultural appropriation.
Not So Black and White is both a lucid history rewriting the story of race, and an elegant polemic making an anti-racist case against the politics of identity.
