Kenan Malik at Birmingham Book Festival

Last Thursday Birmingham Book Festival played host to Kenan Malik, journalist and author of Strange Fruit: Why both sides are wrong in the race debate. I went along with my colleague Nad (Nadeem Shabir), an exceptionally open-minded and inquiring individual who is consistently good company. Kenan ran through a number of key arguments, some of which have been covered in earlier works such as The meaning of race. One such key argument is that 85% of human difference occurs between individuals in a single population, whereas only 30% of difference occurs between so-called racial groups. Such arguments and findings have helped to demolish racial theories particularly in the post-war period, and have led to an understanding that in fact there is no evidence of race existing (between different groups of humans) in terms of clearly delineated characteristics.

Kenan then turned his attention to the politics of anti-racism, pointing out that when he was a young anti-racist activist, "black identity" was seen in political or cultural terms, rather than in terms of race itself. It was thus seen in opposition to "white" - acknowledging a broad commonality of being non-white and therefore being subjected to racism in the UK and elsewhere. Whereas in my experience, it is now common for Asians to refer to themselves as "brown", and in fact, referring Asians as blacks now seems to jar slightly.

For me there were two really important arguments that Kenan made, both of which clarified stuff that I've been turning around in my mind.

The first of these was around multi-culturalism - Kenan put forth the idea that the politics of multi-culturalism actually undermine multi-culturalism as a lived experience. In the road where I live - Burnaston Road, Hall Green, Birmingham - there is, I would say, an exceptionally good mix of ethnic groups. Crucially, this is a very dynamic mix, and as the groups intermingle, we learn more about each other and start to change as a result. This can only be a good thing, and is one of the finest aspects of Birmingham life. However Kenan argued that what multi-cultural politics does is to preserve those groups in aspic, emphasising the differences over the universality, and slowing down the process of assimilation as a result.

The second argument that really chimed with me was around differences between France and the UK with respect to racial policies. France has very different approach to the UK: it demands in quite an inflexible way that its immigrants assimilate immediately and simply become French. Although this avoids the problems attached to a more multi-cultural approach as described above, the problem is that this ignores the reality of racism. I knew as soon as I heard this argument on Thursday, that I was going to be able to hold it in my head and use it as a tool to apply to other situations, such as people arguing that gays should stop "going on about it".

Strange fruit - food for thought.