The Meaning of Race
Race History and Culture in Western Society
Malik, Kenan
Publisher: Macmillan Press / New York University Press
Year Published: 1996
Resource Type: Book
Cx Number: CX11750
The Meaning of Race has two key themes. First it explores the intellectual and philosophical basis of racial thinking, examining the origins and development of the concept of race from the Enlightenment to the present day. Second, it also looks at the way in which recent social and political developments - such as the end of the Cold War, the erosion of the postwar liberal consensus, and the demise of the left - have shaped our ideas about race.
The book argues that much of contemporary antiracism is rooted in the same anti-humanist philosophies of human differences that gave rise to the idea of race in the first place. Only a philosophy based on a universalist and humanist outlook, I suggest, can hope to transcend the discourse of race.
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