Beyond Diversity

In These Times has an interesting and provocative article on the failures inherent in promoting diversity over equality in this country over the last 30 years. The article, Is Diversity Enough?, is a review of a book by Walter Benn Michaels (chairman of the University of Illinois at Chicago English department), The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality.

Here is a quote that sums up the thesis of the book as near as I can tell:

As Michaels sees it, the social focus on achieving diversity diverts attention from the most fundamental injustice in our society—economic inequality. Moreover, the pursuit of diversity, especially in universities, gives legitimacy to the growing economic inequality of American society, because it protects the inheritance of economic privilege and does little to create opportunity for the poor, whether black or white.

Michaels is tough on affirmative action:

“The problem with affirmative action is not (as is often said) that it violates the principles of meritocracy,” he writes; “the problem is that it produces the illusion that we actually have a meritocracy. … Race-based affirmative action … is a kind of collective bribe rich people pay themselves for ignoring economic inequality.” If class-based affirmative action replaced racial affirmative action at Harvard, and its student body reflected the country’s income distribution, he calculates that more than half the students would be gone, most of them rich and white.

David Moberg, the author of the article, is antagonistic to many of Michaels' positions, which carry a whiff of Marxism and which also dismiss the neo-liberalism that Moberg seems to advocate for in arguing against Michaels. This makes for an interesting article.

I see some real value in what Michaels is arguing for in the area of race and diversity, but I also see some serious flaws in thinking that people would/should be motivated by social justice rather than self-interest. That isn't very realistic. And while it certainly would be great if everyone -- at birth -- had a legitimate shot at wealth, that isn't going to happen. Social Darwinism and economic Darwinism, as much as they might seem unjust to liberals, have a place -- which is not to say that they are compassionate systems.

Still, I have added this book to my wish list and will reserve final judgment until I get a chance to read it -- which should be sometime in 2010.

Tags: David Moberg, Is Diversity Enough?, Walter Benn Michaels, The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality, Diversity, affirmative action, race, economic inequality