BY HANNAH TRACHTMAN

American liberals style themselves as defenders of the forgotten middle class. Walter Benn Michaels contends, however, that the liberal celebration of diversity has deflected attention from rising economic inequality in American life.

Michaels is right to question the fixation with diversity within the American left. But his argument in The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality—that such fixation distracts us from the fight against poverty—has weak evidence of causation. And without such evidence, his call for increased attention to poverty is hardly distinctive. Nevertheless, in his call for liberals to reexamine their perspective, Michaels makes a compelling case for equal opportunity.

American Identity: Race vs. Socioeconomic Status
Michaels, an English professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, begins by denying the existence of race, claiming that it is the product of self-perception. American society today, he believes, takes race and the victimization of racial groups too seriously: “If a black man is a man who has to ride Jim Crow,” Michaels writes in a paraphrase of the definition once provided by W.E.B. Du Bois, “now that no one has to ride Jim Crow, there is no such thing as a black man.” Moreover, he notes, the tools that we employ to celebrate racial diversity, such as “appreciation” and “respect,” cannot be applied to economic inequality. (“I love what you’ve done with your shack!”)

Michaels does not support reparations, which he argues would only decrease inequality to the extent that poverty is a result of racial discrimination. Michaels prefers the solution of equal opportunity so that talent and effort can be rewarded without bias. This “solution” is not original, but the measures Michaels advocates tend to be more extreme than standard political claptrap. For example, he advocates true equal education, in which “the quality of local schools [is not] dependent on local real estate taxes” and in which private schools do not exist.

A Questionable Linkage
Michaels underscores the triviality of racism today in comparison to poverty. His claims about Hurricane Katrina are particularly well-stated: “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.” But even if Americans did overstate the influence of racism in this situation, Michaels does not conclusively demonstrate that such overemphasis has distracted them from the issue of economic inequality. Granted, there are only so many issues that politics can take on, but racial and socioeconomic politics are not bound together in a zero-sum game of attention.

Moreover, the causal mechanism that Michaels uses to link diversity to our ignorance of inequality is unclear. Who is responsible for this causal effect? Michaels blames wealthy liberals for using diversity as a decoy to evade the sensitive topic of redistribution, but he does not demonstrate that rich liberals are in fact the culprits. Conservatives may agree that diversity distracts from the goal of economic equality, but might argue that the people who are being distracted are poor minorities themselves: If poor minorities assume racism to be the source of their poverty, they might be less inclined to help themselves economically. These questions call for closer examination than Michaels provides.

Equal Opportunity for All
Because Michaels’ causal argument is flawed, his call for liberals to concentrate more on poverty is hardly innovative. Nevertheless, he is correct in pointing out that reforms to equalize education would not only improve economic equality but would likely address racial concerns as well. This would reduce the need to fabricate diverse populations with procedures such as affirmative action. Michaels should not have to delve into fuzzy denials of race and unwarranted attacks on diversity to make his more compelling point about equal opportunity.

Whatever the weaknesses of his causal argument, Michaels, by engaging in a frank discussion of diversity, poverty, and the priorities of the American left, adds a new dimension to the case for equal opportunity. The Trouble with Diversity reminds liberals who wish to stay true to their roots to choose their battles with care. ]]>