September 8, 2013
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Not the ideal messenger, but a necessary message
A review of The Trouble with Diversity by Walter Benn Michaels
JDN 2456543 PDT 19:54.
Walter Benn Michaels is really not the best person to be addressing the philosophical, political, and economic issues involved in identity politics: After all, his PhD is in English and he’s best known as a literary theorist. His writing style is competent, but sometimes a bit verbose and repetitive. He does not appear to have learned that brevity is the soul of wit(though to be fair, that is a lesson I’ve never learned very well myself). Worst of all, he acknowledges the support of Stanley Fish, who is insane.
Still, his basic message is sound, and much-needed: Identity politics is a dead end. Dividing people up into genders, sexual orientations, ages, and worst of all "races" and "cultures" (which, as he rightly points out, are scientifically nonsensical categories) does not advance the goal of social justice. It is at best orthogonal and at worst a dangerous distraction.
Indeed, Michaels writes as if he thinks that this might be intentional, some kind of right-wing conspiracy to make us all talk about diversity so that we ignore economic injustice. I find that unlikely; while certainly there are many people who don’t want us talking about economic injustice, I don’t think that they are the ones largely responsible for advocating diversity. No, I think diversity and identity politics were well-intentioned projects of social justice that took on a life of their own, accidentally triggering a deep human instinct for tribalism that overrode our (evolutionarily much more recent) rational principles of justice.
Michaels is apparently one of a select few, myself included, who realize just how divisive identity politics really is. Most LGBT people I’ve talked to strongly disagreed with what I said about Lavender Graduation, though disabled people I’ve talked were mixed on their responses to what I said about the disability community. Yet the more I think about it, the more I stand by what I said; the goal of equality is not to have me acknowledged as special for being bisexual, it’s to be left alone because being bisexual doesn’t matter. It’s not to being respected for the diversity my migraines create; it’s to cure my migraines.
And there is something I like about the style of the book; Michaels has a way of making the truth obvious, making it seem like we should have understood these things long ago. Examples follow.
If you, like me, have long felt that diversity is overrated or maybe even a totally wrong approach; if you have recognized how nonsensical the categories of "race" and "culture" are only to be rebuffed for being an anti-liberal bigot; if you have tried to find solutions to the global problems of poverty and inequality only to be told that feminist solidarity or "black power" is more important—this book is probably worth reading. And on the other hand, if you think we’re all insane, and obviously diversity is wonderful, and we should respect and cherish "the black experience" and "Asian culture", this book is definitely worth reading. Some of the "differences" you are talking about aren’t even real, and those that are real (like gender and sexual orientation) aren’t particularly worth celebrating.
Page 15, on how the ultimate goal of social justice must be a world where differences simply don’t matter: "An important issue of social justice hangs on not discriminating against people because of their hair color or their skin color or their sexuality. No issue of social justice hangs on appreciating hair color diversity; no issue of social justice hangs on appreciating racial or cultural diversity."
Page 43, on why the idea of "black culture" is nonsensical: "The problem is that
the minute we call black culture black, […] in order for a sentence like ‘Some white people are really into black culture’ to
make sense, we have to have a definition of white and black people that is completely independent of their culture."
Probably my favorite, on page 81: "Although no remark is more common in American public life than the observation that we don’t like to talk about race, no remark—as our self-description and the very existence of these [diversity] rankings suggest—is more false. […] In fact, we love to talk about race." We clearly do, don’t we?
This one on page 88 hit home because I am an upper-middle-class recipient of several merit scholarships, but I can’t really disagree with it: "Another way you can put it is that where need-based scholarships give money to the poor, merit-based scholarships give money to the rich."
Page 122, in reference to companies apologizing for their past involvements in slavery and the Holocaust: "Apologizing for something you didn’t do to people to whom you didn’t do it (in fact, to whom it wasn’t done) is something of a growth industry." We think of this as perfectly normal, yet Michaels is quite right that with a bit of thought it’s baffling. "Chase" was supportive of the Nazis? But it has completely different staff and management now; what is this "Chase" of which you speak?
On page 126, Michaels points out how we have it exactly backward; we think apologies make sense and restitution doesn’t, when quite the opposite is the case. "[…] the people who did the bad things can’t be punished. But their descendants can give back the money they should never have had. Apologies are irrelevant, but restitution is not."
Page 136: "The majority of Americans, for instance, think there should be no inheritance tax, that is, they think that hard work and ability should make no difference whatsoever when it comes to distributing the billions of dollars that change hands from one generation to another."
On page 139, he captures something I’ve been trying to explain to economists for years; people aren’t being irrational just because their being altruistic; indeed, it doesn’t even follow that they are irrational just because their beliefs are wrong. "And there really isn’t any contradiction in thinking that it is more important to stop abortion than it is to further your economic interests."
Page 140: "The real contradiction is between our support for equal opportunity and our support for all the things that make our opportunities unequal." (Or, I might add, opposition to things that would make opportunities more equal, like welfare, food stamps, basic income, and socialized medicine.)
This passage on page 144 reminded me most of all of Johnathan Haidt and why I hate him: "[…] they also prefer to understand our political differences as differences in identity rather than ideology, as differences in who we are rather than what we believe."
He makes a lot of really good points about how the "crisis" of disappearing languages and cultures is really not a serious problem; after all, people are giving up these languages and cultures voluntarily for the most part. Even when that isn’t the case, the coercion is wrong, but why is it bad the "lose" the "culture"? And why are we focusing on these issues instead of the much larger problem of poverty and economic inequality? "[…] the disappearance of languages is a victimless crime. The disappearance of jobs isn’t."
Michaels is hard to pin down as liberal or conservative; in some sense he’s far left, but he often disagrees with standard liberal positions. He supports affirmative action only as a "better than nothing" system that should be replaced by income-based reforms, and I concur.
He also has some bad things to say about both liberals and conservatives, like on page 173: "And when people do want to have the debate (when they want to talk about inequality instead of identity) they are criticized by the right as too ideological and by the left as insufficiently sensitive to the importance of race, sex, gender, et cetera—that is, as too ideological."
He brilliantly takes down the sort of mealy-mouthed religious relativism that Dr. Hoffman spouted. On page 174: "Only someone who doesn’t believe in any religion can take that view that all religions may be plausible considered equal and that their differences can be appreciated." On page 177: "And since politics to some degree involves your beliefs—you run for office in part by expressing and arguing for them; you govern more or less according to them—it can make no sense to say that religion should be kept out of the public square." I also made a similar point in "Is Secularism Sustainable?" Secularism effectively depends upon believing in atheism, but not being willing to make atheism your national policy.
This is my second-favorite, on page 189: "While the debate over whether America should be Christian is a step in the right direction, a debate over whether America should continue to worship at the altar of the free market would be better still."
