Jan Kjellin reviewed Strange Fruit by Kenan Malik
Review of 'Strange Fruit' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A great read if you can avoid the provocations.
I used this book as the base for a paper I recently wrote on the race debate. What it does is bring a necessary (and often neglected) point of view where both sides are wrong - or, to put it more bluntly; why the antiracist side of things seem to get mixed up in an equally essentialist view on the issue of race. This is also what i refer to as provocative, since Malik takes some of the far right's rethorical stands (like the absurd - or is it? - statement that it's the antirecists who are the real racists) and actually shows how the may have a point, after all.
No worries, though. Malik's not a far right advocate. Rather, he's very keen on taking a rational approach to the debate, rather than an emotional. And he show us that …
A great read if you can avoid the provocations.
I used this book as the base for a paper I recently wrote on the race debate. What it does is bring a necessary (and often neglected) point of view where both sides are wrong - or, to put it more bluntly; why the antiracist side of things seem to get mixed up in an equally essentialist view on the issue of race. This is also what i refer to as provocative, since Malik takes some of the far right's rethorical stands (like the absurd - or is it? - statement that it's the antirecists who are the real racists) and actually shows how the may have a point, after all.
No worries, though. Malik's not a far right advocate. Rather, he's very keen on taking a rational approach to the debate, rather than an emotional. And he show us that it's a possible road to take.
The race debate isn't about whether human races exist or not (they both do and don't, by the way), nor is is about racism. It's more about how we deal with the notion of "difference"; how we choose to explain it and what implications these explanations have on politics and everyday life.