The Trouble With Diversity

by John Holbo on October 2, 2006

At the Valve we’re hosting a book event discussion of Walter Benn Michaels’ The Trouble With Diversity [amazon]. You can read a sample chapter at TAP and are cordially invited to attend.

In my post I discuss, in passing, Michael Lind’s Up From Conservatism (1996) – his notion of the ‘overclass’ – and so I happened to notice that he has a new book out just yesterday: The American Way of Strategy [amazon]. I haven’t seen much advance discussion of it. I’d be curious to hear about it.

Doesn’t float your boat? I’ll try to come up with more comic book jokes for later.

{ 2 comments }

1

abb1 10.04.06 at 5:57 am

Couldn’t agree more with Mr. Michaels: all this fetishism around racial and ethnic diversity is stupid, tasteless and counterproductive (it sounds like this is what Michaels is saying, right?). Typical example of false consciousness.

2

TSC 10.04.06 at 2:55 pm

It’s hard to imagine a more compelling thesis at this moment in time than that made by Michaels: economic inequality is more pressing in most of our lives than cultural/racial diversity. The simplicity of the thesis makes it all the more difficult to take down. And if you’re wondering whether the either/or way of putting it compromises the argument, you would be mistaken. The War on Poverty has been left behind — far behind — while the War on Racism has suceeded rather well. I have a dream that maybe some readers share: intellectuals would sit around talking about distribution of wealth rather than the cultural agency of marginalized people. The way to take someone out of the margins in this society is to pay them higher wages.

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