Trouble With Diversity?

In a sampler from his new book, Walter Benn Michaels argues that the left's embrace of diversity as a rallying point has undermined efforts to fight for economic equality.

"Giving priority to issues like affirmative action and committing itself to the celebration of difference, the intellectual left has responded to the increase in economic inequality by insisting on the importance of cultural identity," Michaels asserts. "So for 30 years, while the gap between the rich and the poor has grown larger, we’ve been urged to respect people’s identities -- as if the problem of poverty would be solved if we just appreciated the poor. From the economic standpoint, however, what poor people want is not to contribute to diversity but to minimize their contribution to it -- they want to stop being poor. Celebrating the diversity of American life has become the American left’s way of accepting their poverty, of accepting inequality."