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My name is Richard Hames, and you're listening to Navara FM.

This is the second episode of a special series on Navara FM, focused on the topic of class.

For a long time, it was a common idea on the left that class was the only major division of the world that leftists should think about.

Although those days are mercifully largely behind us, the exact way that class intersects with the other ways in which people are divided up in the world, like race and gender, is still widely discussed.

Ken and Malik is a writer whose work has covered an enormous terrain.

From the philosophy of biology, through to contemporary theories of multiculturalism, pluralism, and race.

And his recent work is no less expansive, culminating in his book Not So Black and White.

In this episode of Navara FM, hosted by cultural critic Julia Jakes, and writer and editor John Merrick.

Ken intakes us on a history tour, to explain the relationship between race and class, distinguishing between the radical and the liberal enlightenment as he does so.

He argues that in history, class divisions are not cleanly separated out from racial ones, but interwoven together to justify systems of brutality.

But he is not just focused on the past. Malik points to a seeming paradox of contemporary society, in which racism is widely abhorred.

And yet, there seems an ever greater urge to put people into specific racial categories.

How do we get here?

And how did the catch all category of culture come to replace both race and class, as common ways to understand the divisions of society?

Hello, I'm John Merrick, and I'm Julia Jakes, and you're listening to Navara FM.

I guess this week is Ken and Malik, who is a writer, a lecturer.

Broadcasting and observer columnist, his previous books included Quest for a Moral Compass, and from Fatwa to G-Head.

And we interviewed him about his current book, which came out at the start of this year, Not So Black and White.

And the book is a history of identity politics, and how, in a sense, identity politics came to dominate the political imaginary of both the left and the right.

Obviously, this series is about class and we're thinking through questions of class and what class means, and how do we think about class and the left.

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