The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality 1st Edition

by Walter Benn Michaels (Author)

27 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0805078411

ISBN-10: 080507841X

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A brilliant assault on our obsession with every difference except the one that really matters--the difference between rich and poor

If there's one thing Americans agree on, it's the value of diversity. Our corporations vie for slots in the Diversity Top 50, our universities brag about minority recruiting, and every month is Somebody's History Month. But in this provocative new book, Walter Benn Michaels argues that our enthusiastic celebration of "difference" masks our neglect of America's vast and growing economic divide. Affirmative action in schools has not made them more open, it's just guaranteed that the rich kids come in the appropriate colors. Diversity training in the workplace has not raised anybody's salary (except maybe the diversity trainers') but it has guaranteed that when your job is outsourced, your culture will be treated with respect.

With lacerating prose and exhilarating wit, Michaels takes on the many manifestations of our devotion to diversity, from companies apologizing for slavery, to a college president explaining why there aren't more women math professors, to the codes of conduct in the new "humane corporations." Looking at the books we read, the TV shows we watch, and the lawsuits we bring, Michaels shows that diversity has become everyone's sacred cow precisely because it offers a false vision of social justice, one that conveniently costs us nothing. The Trouble with Diversity urges us to start thinking about real justice, about equality instead of diversity. Attacking both the right and the left, it will be the most controversial political book of the year.

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

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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.
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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

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Product Details

Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (October 3, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 080507841X
ISBN-13: 978-0805078411
Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 1 x 8.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #174,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #216 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Class
- #218 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Political Economy
- #319 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Specific Demographics > Ethnic Studies

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3.6 out of 5 stars

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Saying What Needs To Be Said

By Amazon Customer on April 28, 2011

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

The number one thing you need to keep in mind as you read my review is this: politically, I consider myself to be an "Independent" who leans way more to the left than to the right. O.K. Full steam ahead.

This is a topic that has interested me off and on for some time, coming from a background where I've seen the hardcore "diversity" rhetoric being force-fed in college classrooms across the country. You can't so much as throw a stone across a college campus without hitting something tagged with the diversity/multicultural label. It really has gotten to the point of mild insanity. And it is to the author's credit that he was willing to write a book that surely caused him no small amount of discomfort. In today's world, badmouthing "diversity" is akin to dangling a baby over a balcony. Everyone thinks diversity is just dandy... especially "radical" liberals making lots of money and living in fat houses far away from any "real" diversity. I was reminded of one of my professors in graduate school who lived in a fat house in the Berkeley Hills, probably worth over a million dollars (or more). Another professor, talking about him in a very serious tone, called him "a hardcore communist." It struck me as absurd. If he was really a hardcore communist, how could he ever justify his lifestyle of sipping drinks on the sunny patio of his million dollar home while beggars live off of peanuts just a few blocks away!

But this is what academics will try to sell you. And, again to the author's credit, he calls out his colleagues... big time!

If you have any sort of brain that has not been completely zombified by the "diversity" rhetoric being shoved in your face 24/7, you will have to agree with the basic tenets of this book.Read more ›

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Draws sharp distinctions

By Gregory Marton on November 29, 2006

Format: Hardcover

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.

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I buy the argument; you should buy the book.

By Joseph M. Powers on October 31, 2006

Format: Hardcover

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.

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A much needed analysis

By Drew Hunkins on August 19, 2015

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

In general, a middle class young black girl has an easier go of it than a poor young white boy.

Class inequality is indeed the overriding determinant of one's ultimate position in life, it always has been. Those who argue that this is myopic or reductionist are typically the type who built lucrative academic or media careers intellectualizing and pontificating on every nuance under the sun except class and class struggle. This is something the American media are especially adept at doing.

The obscene class inequality that manifests itself today should be of paramount concern. No amount of sophistry and intellectualizing can negate or wash over the harsh disadvantages the poor and struggling working class of all colors are forced to deal with from birth to the grave.

Quite simply Michaels delivers with this searing class analysis that fills up the pages of Trouble with Diversity.

Blacks as a demographic cohort experience the sting of class disadvantage and class struggle because many of them are mired in the lower economic strata due to historical racism, redlining, economic exploitation, pitiful wages, white flight, rent gouging landlords, insecure jobs, and un and underemployment. These are the primary reasons blacks find themselves in the lower rungs of the economic ladder. As Michaels offers in the book, policies that target inequality and wages would do much to lift all boats, including struggling whites as well as blacks.

Feel good diversity rhetoric, identity programs and seminars don’t really get to the root of what’s troubling the American socio-economic reality. Only a full throttle attack on the top one percent will deliver the goods.Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Five Stars

VERY GOOD

Published 22 months ago by S Brown

What is behind racism in America

Good read, this book challenges conventional beliefs about racism in America. Michaels makes the argument that race is arbitrary. Read more

Published on December 9, 2014 by Ange

It’s Economics That Really Counts, Not Identity

Michaels skewers the excesses of identity politics, saying that economics comes first. As a friend of mine said: “I did not need people's respect or sympathy when I was on the... Read more

Published on November 4, 2014 by Dick_Burkhart

Earnest, vertiginous, simplistic

I don't know what it's worth to review a book so long after its publication. Basically it's a hipster deconstructivist neo-Marxist attempt at revealing false consciousness about... Read more

Published on November 10, 2013 by Peter Cohee

Classism Is NOT the Only Difference that Matters

Michaels' thesis is that racism was socially constructed in order to obscure the effects of classism. Read more

Published on July 20, 2013 by Maia Burns

says what needs to be said but unfortunately will accomplish nothing

The corruptions of neoliberalism and globalization and growing economic inequality in the US became evident during the eighties under Reagan. Read more

Published on June 18, 2013 by Richard Nash Creel

love

very good condition, loved it., needed it and the price was nice, could not ask for more. Will buy again

Published on December 21, 2012 by Moziah

How we learned to love privilege and ignore white supremacy

In his book, Literature professor Walter Benn Michaels argues that "our" attention to diversity masks the greater problem of economic equity. Read more

Published on February 23, 2012 by KGB

The Trouble with Diversity

The title really made some eyeballs pop out at work, but I found it an interesting read with some well thought out points.

Published on December 1, 2010 by PipeFighter

Worth Every Page

This is a book that makes you think. It makes you want to think- about equality and class in particular. Read more

Published on June 21, 2010 by SilverStepAlice