It... means that in a society without any racial discrimination, there would
still have been poor people who couldn't find their way out of New Orleans.
Whereas in a society without poor people (even a racist society without poor
people), there wouldn't have been.
I picked up this book partially because of my recent obsession with the global economic repercusions of unfettered capitalism and partially because it (the book) looked rather combative. I've always been one to judge the literal book by its cover, and this one appealed to me, with its three multi-colored lambs and jarring red-fonted title. In addition to the front cover, the back cover carried loud red blurbs singing the praises of this "bracing polemic." (If you haven't noticed already, I'm also needlessly obsessed with blurbs.) So here I was, ready to find out what was wrong with diversity.
Michaels' point is actually quite simple: we (and by "we" he means everyone, liberal and conservative) spend so much time celebrating diversity, trumpeting culture, and crusading against racism and sexism that we've completely ignored the ungoing struggles between the classes. In his introduction, he brings out figures with which we've become relatively familiar, showing that the gap between those making the most money in our country and those making the least money has progressively increased over the last fifty years. Far from becoming a society less separated by material wealth, we are in fact becoming more segregated.
The problem, Michaels argues, is not simply that we're ignoring this trend but that we are using needless crusades for diversity as a means to ignore it. Chapter by chapter, he discusses race, culture, gender, and religion, showing (sometimes strongly, sometimes tenuously) that each is simply a means of 1) distracting us from the more pressing issue of economic inequality and 2) convincing us that economic equality either does not exist or can be "solved" as easily as we've solved, say, racism and sexism.
Michaels asserts that the way we've begun to solve problems of this nature involves a celebration of diversity, identity, and culture. We (as a country) recognize that one race is not intrinsically better than another or one sex or one culture is not intrinsically better, in other words saying that we are all welcome to our particular identities. The problem, he says, in applying this model to economic equality is that hardly anyone truly recognizes that being poor is as good as being rich. No one wants to stay poor. Poverty is not an identity, as race, gender, or culture may be; rather, it's an economic situation. He likens this approach to Marx's critique of religion, except that where for Marx, religion was the opiate of the masses, now culture is the opiate of the masses:
New forms of "ancient" identities are being invented every day. And the
function of all of them is to provide people with ways of thinking about
themselves that have as little as possible to do with either their material
circumstances or their political ideals.... Economically, [culture] redescribes
the material difference between people (I have more, you have less, too bad for
you) as cultural difference (I have mine, you have yours, it's all good).
When I started the book, I expected it to read very much like other books I've read recently: identify the problem by making a claim, support that claim with evidence, and then suggest solutions for the problem. Rather, Michaels uses a more classical structure of argument, building premise upon premise until he smacks you with his conclusions. Often, these conclusions are fascinating; just as often, I had to retrace the line of argument to see how he ended up where he did.
This detailed method of arguing left me wondering when he'd make his point sometimes, but what I found most interesting were the few glaring moments when Michaels really failed to support an assertion. For instance, one of his major reasons for needing to focus on economic inequality rather than racial inequality is that racism and racial inequality are things of the past, twentieth century problems. Indeed, he makes the point several times that most of us in this world are not racist, and although he takes pains to point out that even though some few individuals might be racist, our society as a whole is not. His support for this incredible statement seems to be the obsession our society has with struggling against racism - that because we are so concerned with eliminating racial inequality, racism does not exist. Meh. I don't buy it.
In the end, what makes this book unique is not its central premise (many people have identified economic inequality as a pressing issue) but the way in which it is written and the connections it attempts to make. Some of these connections are still, to me, tenuous, though well-observed. Despite enjoying the book, I felt a little bit like the victim of sophistry, if well-intentioned sophistry. Still, it's a short read (barely 200 pages), and if you've got the patience to get through Michaels nearly exhausting style of argument, it's worth a look.
No comments:
Post a Comment