Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate

Debates about race are back and they’re only getting bigger. There has recently been a massive upsurge in scientific racial research. The US government has licensed a heart drug to be used only on African Americans. A pharmaceutical company is trialling a white-only anti-hepatitis drug. Commercial companies produce DNA kits to allow individuals to trace their racial ancestry. A genetic study claims that Jews are more intelligent because their history of money lending and other financial occupations favoured genes associated with cleverness. Malik boldly argues that this rise in the science of race and the preservation of racial ideas is paradoxically due to the efforts of liberal anti-racism; a movement that demands the preservation and celebration of human difference over human commonalities. The only hope for finding the truth about race lies in exposing the irrationality in both racial science and anti-racism, and allowing science to study population differences without the distortions of political race debates, because, as Malik unflinchingly explains, races do not exist. Kenan Malik is a full time writer and broadcaster, and lives in London