I wouldn't agree with his solutions, but he gets the statement of the problem exactly right

books:

	• The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality Walter Benn Michaels Holt Paperbacks, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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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, the hiding of poverty. The book analyzes, with astute insight, this problem or "trouble" resulting from the focus on diversity politics. On that score, the author is very persuasive. The problem is the absence of any well presented solution to the problem. This may have been intentional, a deliberate decision by the author to focus on uncovering and analyzing the problem, perhaps with a limited goal of raising awareness. In fact, I think the author may not be very qualified to present a proposed solution, having neither economic expertise nor experience working with the poor. Liberal individualism, as is increasingly common today and obviously a failure in terms of addressing injustice does not seem to result in coherent or effective policies any more that conservative approaches. Perhaps the author found trying to find a political solution akin to trying to lift oneself by the bootstraps.

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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. He makes his point in a funny and engaging (if self-indulgent) way. But his jabs lose their force under the weight of repetition. By mid-book the reader -- at least this reader -- has read enough.

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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. "Celebrating diversity . . .is now our way of accepting inequality."

Michaels doesn't spend much time talking about his suggested solutions to the problems, but based on what he reveals, I would strongly disagree with most of his solutions anyway. He has, however, framed the arguments exactly right, and with a slyly sarcastic wit belying his income ($175k) and occupation ("tenured radical" English professor at expensive private university).

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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. It is RESOURCE (healthcare and education) redistribution.

Real estate taxes fund schools - so wealthy suburbs have better public schools than low income neighborhoods. How does an individual parent solve this? Move to the better neighborhood!

Healthcare is ones own responsibility. The actual cost of this for a mediam income family of 4 is 10-20% of income (depending on who you listen to). How does a family deal with this? Suck it up and pay!

In both cases policies for the provision of what are normally considered to be public goods have been outsourced to the marketplace in the US.
If you believe that education and health are the ticket to a better life, then you have no choice but to agree w/ WBM that this is effectively not avaialble to those in the lowest quintile in the US.

US society papers over this by harping on diversity.

The studies showing that social mobility in the US is the LOWEST among OECD nations confirms this.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

?A withering examination of how the celebration of cultural and ethnic difference obscures our yawning economic divide . . . This is a refreshing, angry, and important book.? ?The Atlantic Monthly Acclaimed as ?eloquent? (Chicago Tribune), ?cogent? (The New Yorker), and ?impossible to disagree with? (The Washington Post); excoriated as a ?wildly implausible? product of ?the ?shock and awe? school of political argument? (Slate), The Trouble with Diversity argues that our enthusiastic celebration of ?difference? masks our neglect of the difference that really matters?the one between rich and poor. A magnificent skewer of pieties, Walter Benn Michaels takes on the many manifestations of our devotion?from affirmative action, to the worship of multiculturalism, to the obsession with heritage and identity?demonstrating that diversity offers a false vision of social justice, one that conveniently costs us nothing. In a daring break with both the left and the right, he calls for less attention to the illusory distinction of culture and more attention to the real discrepancies of class and wealth.

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