Not Your Victim: How Our Obsession with Race Entraps and Divides Us

Empire and race have become the most discussed - and most problematic - subjects in political and historical discourse. It is now an unquestionable orthodoxy both in academia and in progressive political discourse that European colonial empires - particularly the British - were uniquely evil, the West's 'original sin', and that their legacy continues to underpin systemic racism, injustice, and oppression.

Marie Kawthar Daouda, a Moroccan and French academic who now lives in Britain, argues that this narrative is dangerously wrong. Weaving her personal experience with erudite reflection on history, literature, and politics, she argues that we are all heirs of complex waves of immigration, conquest, and colonization. A closer look at French and British history belies a simplistic worldview wherein all the evil in the world is the result of the peculiarly vicious nature of white, Western colonizers. Indeed, she argues, such a perspective nurtures the very prejudices it claims to fight by valorizing victimhood above individual or collective agency and by denying ethnic minorities any sense of responsibility.

A coruscating attack on the perverse solipsism, moral blindness, and historical illiteracy of 'decolonizing' progressive elites, this book upends our tired debates over colonialism, empire, and immigration. It offers a more nuanced, hopeful vision of our historical self-understanding.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Polity Press
Published: 04/07/2026
ISBN: 9781509571697
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.67h x 5.36w x 0.95d