or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
Express Checkout with PayPhrase
What's this? | Create PayPhrase
Sorry!
More Buying Choices
62 used & new from $1.95

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality
 
 
Tell the Publisher!
I’d like to read this book on Kindle

Don’t have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here.
 
  

The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: United States, Jim Crow, The Trouble (more...)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)

List Price: $15.00
Price: $10.20 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $4.80 (32%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

36 new from $1.96 26 used from $1.95

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
  Hardcover, Bargain Price $7.76 $6.94 $6.17
  Paperback $10.20 $1.96 $1.95

Frequently Bought Together

The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality + A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines + Isaac Newton
Price For All Three: $30.44

Show availability and shipping details

  • This item: The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality by Walter Benn Michaels

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • Isaac Newton by Kenneth Baker

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details


Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton

by Kenneth Baker
4.3 out of 5 stars (79)  $10.20
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail: A Play

The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail: A Play

by Jerome Lawrence
4.6 out of 5 stars (21)  $8.00
Newton's Darkness: Two Dramatic Views

Newton's Darkness: Two Dramatic Views

by Carl Djerassi
Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

by Charles Seife
3.9 out of 5 stars (142)  $9.75
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

by Ira Katznelson
4.1 out of 5 stars (14)  $11.53
Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

In this cogent jeremiad, which is certain to be controversial, Michaels diagnoses America's love of diversity as one of our greatest problems. Not only does it reinforce ideas of racial essentialism that it claims to repudiate; it obscures the crevasse between rich and poor. Michaels, a scholar of American literature, suggests that the growth of economic inequality over the past few decades is the result of a deeply ingrained and unchallenged class structure. Scrutinizing current events and religion, he argues that our fixation with the "phantasm" of race promotes identity over ideology, and he rejects the idea that meritocracy prevails in America's elite universities. A believer in the power of progressive politics, he calls for a debate in which class, rather than identity, would be at the fore.
Copyright © 2006 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


Review

"A rarity in the forum of American political debate--closely reasoned, genuinely impassioned call to revive a politics of economic justice." -- --The New York Observer

"Bracing... its greatest virtue is the tenacity and precision with which Michaels dissects out muddled ideas about race and inequality." -- --The Nation

"Michaels has written a bracing polemic that should quicken the debate over what diversity really means, or should mean, in academia and beyond." -- --Andrew Delbanco, The New York Review of Books

"Michaels is at his best when he is running his chainsaw through other people's cant... A captivating read and necessary provocation." -- --Los Angeles Times

"Potent and disturbing... elegant and literary, The Trouble With Diversity bites and bites deep." -- --Toronto Globe and Mail

"This is a different line, and there's a touch of genius about it." -- --The Economist.com --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Holt Paperbacks; 1st edition (July 24, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0805083316
  • ISBN-13: 978-0805083316
  • Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #383,093 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

More About the Author

Walter Benn Michaels
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Visit Amazon's Walter Benn Michaels Page

Inside This Book (learn more)

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality
93% buy the item featured on this page:
The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality 3.5 out of 5 stars (17)
$10.20
Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights
3% buy
Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights 4.2 out of 5 stars (26)
$10.85
Diversity: Leaders Not Labels: A New Plan for a the 21st Century
1% buy
Diversity: Leaders Not Labels: A New Plan for a the 21st Century 4.8 out of 5 stars (4)
$19.71
The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History
1% buy
The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History 5.0 out of 5 stars (2)
$19.95

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

 

Customer Reviews

17 Reviews
5 star:
 (5)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Draws sharp distinctions, November 29, 2006
This book is aimed at drawing distinctions between subjective matters of identity and objective matters of income and beliefs. Each identity is as good as any other, but being poor is worse than being rich. Michaels accuses the left of having lost its focus on objective equality, to the point of glorifying poverty.

Treating poverty as a matter of identity is, according to Michaels, a pernicious strategy for willfully ignoring the problem that increasingly many people are increasingly poor, and have less and less opportunity to move out of poverty. Moreover, by fighting battles of identity -- WalMart and Wall Street women each making some percent less than the men -- we may ignore the fact that all the WalMart workers make a hundredth of what the Wall Street workers make. He does not argue against fighting injustices of identity so much as argue for prioritizing and looking at the problems in perspective.

The book draws sharp distinctions between the kinds of arguments that make sense for identities and those that make sense for wealth and ideology. It is a call to action in addressing "equality of opportunity" for everyone (the American Dream), hand in hand with reducing economic disparity.

This is an important social commentary, clearly and engagingly written, and exposing one of the great hidden weaknesses of politics in the United States. You may or may not be convinced, but reading it will broaden your view and sharpen your perspective.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
21 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars I buy the argument; you should buy the book., October 31, 2006
By Joseph M. Powers (South Bend, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Prof. Michaels most persuasive point is that our society has neglected the laudable goal of striving for socio-economic diversity in our institutions in favor of emphasizing other classes of diversity. He relies on strong rhetorical skills to make this, and most of his points. He does not focus on the detailed statistics that would be necessary to convince many professional social scientists, but the prospective audience for this extended op-ed piece is more the general reader, who may be provoked into finding their own numbers to butress their arguments. The writing style is necessarily polemical, and it is likely that all readers will find some things with which to disagree. However, in contrast to other critics of modern implementations of diversity, the present author likely otherwise shares many views with advocates of diversity. Even those who take issue with Michaels' conclusions will find his ideas worth considering. His closest intellectual bedfellow is Thomas Franks, to whom considerable reference is made, along with a host of other timely sources (who may be dated in a few years!). I found the short book easily digestible in two hour-long evening readings.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Runs out of Steam, May 16, 2007
By Stewart Teaze (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
The main idea is that too much focus on diversity has allowed the schools/press/government to take their focus off the more critical issue of levelling the ECONOMIC playing field, rather than the absurd and meaningless "diversity" playing filed, which plays into the elite/rich right's (and left's) hands.

I agree with the author that too much focus is put on race (the author makes the point that race really "shouldn't matter", and may not even really exist); indeed there are some interesting views made on Plessy vs. Ferguson. However, towards the end of the book, when the author branches out to say that the USA's language, and culture (and, by extrapolation, borders) "don't matter" either and shouldn't be the subject of any argument, it became clear that the author had already run out of useful subject matter in this relatively small book.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars The Trouble with Walter Benn Michaels
Walter Benn Michaels makes the rather simplistic argument that the problem of inequity is simply "exploitation," it is all economic class. Read more
Published 1 month ago by MC Teach

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading on a key political topic
The main thesis of the book is that liberals' emphasis on diversity has undermined our attempts to address economic inequality. Read more
Published 1 month ago by P. J. Cafaro

5.0 out of 5 stars I wouldn't agree with his solutions, but he gets the statement of the problem exactly right
Short and cogent argument that the current "neoliberal" emphasis on diversity (of race, culture, language, or religion) devalues economic equality and real political progress... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Todd Stockslager

3.0 out of 5 stars an article would have sufficed
The author's thesis is an important one: the American celebration of diversity masks, and may be designed to mask, increasing economic inequality and decreasing social mobility... Read more
Published on October 27, 2007 by Fibonacci

3.0 out of 5 stars Part I to The Trouble with Injustice
I think this is an excellent and highly original, even brilliant, analysis of how special interest/identity group politics result in increased acceptance of economic injustice,... Read more
Published on September 22, 2007 by seeker

1.0 out of 5 stars Literature professor tackles Big Problem
This is one of the dumbest books I've not finished reading. A professor of American Literature with a family income of $250,000 tackles the Big Problem: Economic Inequality is... Read more
Published on August 23, 2007 by Reader

4.0 out of 5 stars Resource distribution, not income distribution
This book has been analyzed extensively. So I'll be brief:

WBM's suggestion to ameliorate income disparity is NOT income redistribution. Read more
Published on May 22, 2007 by Kalenjin

3.0 out of 5 stars Readable, sometimes Brilliant, but Glib
This is an engaging, sometimes brilliant, book that is also deeply flawed. It is wonderfully well written. Read more
Published on February 4, 2007 by R. Stone

4.0 out of 5 stars Diversity derails traditional Left program
In this relatively short, yet at times long-winded, obscure, and repetitious book, the author addresses the folding of the controversial subjects of race and racism into the... Read more
Published on January 18, 2007 by J. Grattan

5.0 out of 5 stars The Problem of Legalizing Diversity
Using acerbic wit to discuss the problems that have resulted from social engineering through the laws, Professor Michaels proposes the thesis that the problems with American... Read more
Published on January 7, 2007 by John Matlock

Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
Very interesting book indeed, but what should we do? 0 June 2007
See all discussions...  
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 

Search Customer Discussions
   



So You'd Like to...


Create a guide

Product Information from the Amapedia Community

Beta (What's this?)


Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject

 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.


Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.