Deserves 6 stars and to be read by everyone. ( )

Once in a while I come across a book that makes me pause and rethink an entire concept. Last year that book was When Sex Goes to School and since reading it I have a much more open opinion and understanding perception of the liberal/conservative debate about sex education that extends to life in general. This time it was Strange Fruit by Kenan Malik. The more I read, the more fascinated I became. Race, although real, is more of a concept than a scientific fact. What this means for science and politics runs deep.

What is race? Is it genetic? Is it cultural? Is it biological? Is it just a figment of our imaginations? Malik delves into all of these subjects with a great amount of research into each. The first two chapters deal with race on a genetic level. Chapters three through seven examine race historically. The last three chapters discuss contemporary views of race.

First, Malik shows that race is not a product of genes or biology. While you can “kind-of” put people into groups of races based on genetics and biology, it is really a messy way to divide up populations. Nor are races composed strictly of geographic origins. To use race in a scientific sense means that we have to use mutable, social definitions of identity, not something that scientists particularly espouse.

Historically, the concept of race is rather new. While people have always recognized the variations in skin color, it was not until the Enlightenment and the rise of rationalism that humans were divided into “races.” Empiricism and measurement created the concept of racial types, although there was much debate about how many races there were and the attributes of each. Scientific categorization created racial categories, however unfixed and mutable.

Now, there were two camps in the Enlightenment. The first were radical philosophes that viewed all of humanity as equal and saw little need for racial categorization. The more mainstream Enlightenment thinkers focused on toleration and acceptance of race because all humans are equal. Malik ends chapter four stating, “The debate about race ... is not so much about the facts of human diversity as about how we should understand such facts. Enlightenment views on human nature shapes the philosophes’ ideas about human variety and made them reluctant to interpret such variety in racial terms.”

With the nineteenth century, Romanticism came about as a reaction to the Enlightenment. The Romantics were of the idea that humans have an innate, unchanging inner essence that bound communities together. Although each human group was technically equal, the more widespread use of racial and ethnic categories had the effect of creating rank. Interestingly, and counter to what the Enlightenment thinkers had hoped, science and reason in this climate were viewed as the cause of humanity’s problems rather than the solution. “Against this background, many have come to accept that the roots of racial science lie within the scientific method itself.”

What came next was the rise of a cultural view of the world based on the racial view before it. “Romanticism was born in the late eighteenth century, partly out of the fear of the radical change and instability unleashed by the Enlightenment, and in particular by the French Revolution, and partly also out of the desire for the safe anchor of ancient traditions and established authority. In the late twentieth century, it was the fading of the possibilities of social transformation that led many radicals, albeit unwittingly, back to a Romantic view of the world.” Presently, we have taken the idea of culture and added race into it. Now we have diversity and multiculturalism. In order to preserve one’s culture, is the prevention of others from entering your culture justified? How do you know where one culture ends and another begins?

In eastern Washington, not far from where I currently reside, an ancient skeleton was found in a river bed. He was named Kennewick Man. Based on preliminary examinations, he appeared to be of European descent, but after carbon-dating he was found to be over 9000 years old. Both Native American tribes and scientists claimed the skeleton and a battle ensued that continues to this day. Native Americans believe they have a right to the skeleton because he came from their culture based on his geographic location. Scientists believe they have a right to the skeleton because of the scientific knowledge that can be gained. They each claimed him as part of their culture. Today’s views of culture and the importance of culture for social cohesion “lie at the heart of the modern pluralist view of culture and knowledge and, by creating a fixation with identity, have helped resurrect ideas of racial difference in a new form.” It is now not uncommon to treat people differently because of their race and/or culture.

Kenan Malik writes heavily and holds no punches. His level of understanding is deep and his method of conveying ideas is profound. He writes systematically and comprehensively. His level of intelligence on the topic is palatable, yet he writes so the reader will understand. His final thoughts are touching, and I couldn’t agree more. I hope for a time when universal humanism reigns, and individuals are seen as more than just an embodiment of racial concepts, when we can view our identities more broadly. Our identities, cultures, races and genders should not have the effect of pigeon-holing us; they should break down barriers that harbor and sustain stereotypes. If our current views of race, culture and difference are too rigid, the opposite of what we had hoped for may happen. I quote Malik at length:

“Historically, antiracists challenged both the practice of racism and the process of racialisation; that is, both the practice of discriminating against people by virtue of their race and the insistence that an individual can be defined by the race to which he or she belongs. They did not ignore racism but they recognised that fighting racism meant treating everybody equally despite their differences, not differently because of them. This was the essence of universalism.

“Today’s antiracists continually confuse the edict ‘You can’t fight racism if you ignore racial divisions’ with the demand ‘You can only fight racism by celebrating racial identity’. As the rise of the politics of difference has turned the assertion of group identity into a progressive demand, so racialisation is no longer viewed as a purely negative phenomenon. The consequence has been the resurrection of racial ideas and the imprisonment of people within their cultural identities. Challenging the politics of difference has become as important today as challenging racism. This does not mean ignoring the reality of race but seeking rather to transcend the politics of difference, whether promoted by racists or antiracists.

“The concept of race is irrational. The practice of antiracism has become so. We need to challenge both, in the name of humanism and of reason.”

Malik sets out to define a middle ground between the 'race realists' (essentially respectable racists, who argue that there are immutable genetic differences between racial groups that ensure a hierarchy of aptitudes and intelligence) and the diehard antiracists, who believe that even acknowledging that black people appear to be better sprinters than white people is tantamount to the reintroduction of slavery. He makes a good job of it as well; his arguments are detailed and intelligent, but not so technical as to discourage non-scientists.

Essentially, though, this isn't a book about race as such; its central message is a defence of Enlightenment ideals of reason, science and free speech, against bigots on one side and cultural relativists on the other. My only regret is that I don't think it will change many people's minds; the best hope is that it will give comfort to those who hang on to reason in an increasingly stupid world. ( )