Kenan Malik's The Meaning Of Race

In The Meaning of Race, writer Kenan Malik states that “one of the striking aspects of the study of race is that everyone ‘knows’ what a ‘race’ is, but no one can quite define it.” Indeed for most people the definition of the word ‘race’ remains quite elusive although it is being used in everyday language, usually in the context of a physical description. For example, the Cambridge Dictionary website describes the word as “a group, especially of people, with particular similar physical characteristics, who are considered as belonging to the same type”, confirming this, Kenan Malik writes that “in popular language, race is usually synonymous with colour” (it is therefore not surprising to note that one’s race can be replaced by his skin colour,
The racial diversity of the country quickly appeared to be a problem among a major part of the British population, as the notion of white supremacy and racial purity expanded due to the influx of immigrants after the end of the Second World War. Prejudice and racism towards the newcomers (especially black people) began to take place, as P. B. Rich indicates : “The presence of black communities within Britain represents a challenge not only at the political and economic level, as cumulative evidence has revealed extensive discrimination and interracial hostility by the middle to late 1960s, but also to British society’s conception of its identity and values.” (Prospero’s Return ? : historical essays on race, culture and British society, 1994). Furthermore, this feeling of racial purity and the fear of a growing racial diversity was usually supported by the media and the government. We can mention, among others, the policy and agenda of Margaret Thatcher, Enoch Powell or even the National Front, who were all opposed to immigration, and favoured an all-white Britain. For example, in “Out of Place : Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity” (1999), Ian Baucom argues that “Powell’s strategy of disavowing blackness in order to negatively invoke a racially pure English identity draws on a long history of the reading of