The Trouble with Diversity

How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality

Walter Benn Michaels

A Metropolitan/Holt Paperbacks Book

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“A withering examination of how the celebration of cultural and ethnic difference obscures our yawning economic divide . . .   This is a refreshing, angry, and important book.” —The Atlantic Monthly
 
Acclaimed as “eloquent” (Chicago Tribune), “cogent” (The New Yorker), and “impossible to disagree with” (The Washington Post); excoriated as a “wildly implausible” product of “the ‘shock and awe’ school of political argument” (Slate), The Trouble with Diversity argues that our enthusiastic celebration of “difference” masks our neglect of the difference that really matters—the one between rich and poor. A magnificent skewer of pieties, Walter Benn Michaels takes on the many manifestations of our devotion—from affirmative action, to the worship of multiculturalism, to the obsession with heritage and identity—demonstrating that diversity offers a false vision of social justice, one that conveniently costs us nothing. In a daring break with both the left and the right, he calls for less attention to the illusory distinction of culture and more attention to the real discrepancies of class and wealth.

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Introduction 
The rich are different from you and me” is a famous remark supposedly made by F. Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway, although what made it famous—or at least made Hemingway famously repeat it—was not the remark itself but Hemingway’s reply: “Yes, they have more money.” In other words, the point of the story, as Hemingway told it, was that the rich really aren’t very different from you and me. Fitzgerald’s mistake, he thought, was that he mythologized or sentimentalized the rich, treating them as if they were a different kind of person instead of the same kind of person

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Cris  rated it  
Mar 11, 2010
When you say racism, are you sure you don't mean inequality? This stretches across and beyond races. The Right calls him a comunist. The Left calls him a racist. Michaels poses an intriguing argument. But makes me feel frustrated and helpless. I guess that's what it means to provoke. ...more
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Becky  rated it  
Jul 24, 2009
I started the first 50 pages absolutely hating this book, but came to really love it. Michaels deconstructs this notion that "identity" is an "equal playing ground" and argues that the melting pot politics and "cultural diversity" does an excellent job of glossing over ...more
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Mquin  rated it  
Apr 18, 2009
This is a controversial journalistically-styled work meant to incite disagreement and thought regarding the American obssession with diversity, culture, and identity. I did not question MIchael's ingenuity but disagreed with many of his arguments (as to be expected of an opinion piece). He basical ...more
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About the Author

Walter Benn Michaels

Walter Benn Michaels is a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “One of the most influential Americanists of his generation” (The Chronicle of Higher Education), he is the author of Our America and has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Boston Globe, and n+1. He lives in Chicago.

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The Trouble with Diversity
How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality
Walter Benn Michaels

Trade Paperback

Trade Paperback
Henry Holt and Co.
A Metropolitan/Holt Paperbacks Book
July 2007
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780805083316
ISBN10: 0805083316
5 x 7 15/16 inches, 256 pages
$16.00
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Hardcover
Henry Holt and Co.
Metropolitan Books
October 2006
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780805078411
ISBN10: 080507841X
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 256 pages
$23.00
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