A “Progressive” Critique of Diversity
George W. Dent, Case-Western Reserve School of Law


Once upon a time it was liberals who decried racial discrimination, but opposition to race preferences is now labeled “conservative.” So is criticism of multiculturalism and diversity, the doctrinal siblings of race preferences. Of course, true liberals value diversity of thought and the study of non-Western civilizations. They only question the abandonment of academic and social norms and creation of an ethnic spoils system that usurps the titles of diversity and multiculturalism.

It is astonishing, then, to find a book entitled The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality by a certified leftist, Walter Benn Michaels. He asserts that, by venerating difference, even the difference between rich and poor, the diversity movement bolsters economic inequality. Because Michaels employs a Marxist class analysis, traditional liberals may dismiss him. However, his analysis invites an appealing, moderate alternative.

As Michaels notes, diversity theory fabricates a sin of classism: the problem of the poor, it holds, is not poverty but that the well-off do not honor their low-income culture. The remedy, then, is not to cure poverty but to respect the poor.

Michaels disdains the idea of identity. Racial categories have no scientific basis. Cultural categories are equally flawed. They don’t match ethnicity: some whites adopt a hip-hop lifestyle, some blacks embrace European culture. Further, the (pseudo)-progressive view of culture is contradictory. It holds that the culture of one’s identity group is essential to one’s humanity. He quotes an influential academic text: “without a racial identity, one is in danger of having no identity.” It also claims that no culture is better or worse than any other.

But if all cultures are equal, Michaels asks, why should we care what culture anyone lives or that a group is culturally assimilated? “[A]ssimilation is a false issue. . . . There is no behavior that goes with being black or being white.” (209) Michaels considers obsession with racial discrimination excessive: hard core racism “has been pushed to the margins.” (70) It also ignores the disadvantaged who belong to no victim group. As he says, most of the poor in America are white. He proposes to give poor children “an opportunity as equal as we can make it.” This would “make all the histories of victimization . . . irrelevant.” (133)

“But [he says] the greatest value of diversity . . . is in the contribution it makes to the collective fantasy that institutions like Harvard . . . are . . . meritocracies.” (85) He slights concerns about cost: what keeps “the great majority of the poor . . . out of elite universities is not their inability to pay the bill but their inability to qualify for admission in the first place.” (87)

It is easy to criticize Michaels. He is a professor of English literature (University of Chicago – Illinois), not a social scientist, as his analysis reveals. SAT scores and admissions to Harvard do correlate with wealth, but correlation is not causation. Intelligence is in large part inherited. It is not surprising, then, that the bright make more money and also have bright children who do well on the SAT. Academic performance also depends on parental care. It isn’t surprising that those with the skills and habits that succeed in the market also guide their children to do well in school. The unimportance of wealth is shown by the academic success of the children of poor immigrants (including Africans) whose parents value education.

Many will also question Michaels’s denial of the importance of culture. Multiculturalism holds that all cultures are equal and, indeed, denies the very idea of a social good; to accept it would admit that a society could have more or less of it and thus be better or worse than another society or than itself at another time. Multiculturalists also deem diversity good, so they must believe that a society that honors diversity is, cetera paribus, superior to one that does not. Of course, they also routinely denounce Western civilization as uniquely evil.

Even if all cultures are equal, it does not follow that the demise of a culture is a matter of indifference. Traditional liberals study other cultures and history (the cultures of the past) because we believe that the rich variety of human existence and an understanding of it are intrinsically good.

Michaels rightly criticizes forcing individuals into a group identity, as when college students are herded into ethnic dormitories and ethnic studies. It does not follow, though, that identity groups are just social constructs, false consciousness. It is natural and appropriate that most people favor the culture in which they were reared. Indeed, it would be nice if American students were routinely exposed to the many virtues of Western and American culture, and not just to their real and imagined vices.

Michaels does not detail a program for equal opportunity; one suspects he favors extensive taxation, redistribution, and restriction of individual freedom. However, given the importance of non-economic factors in child development, any level of redistribution would leave large academic gaps between the children of richer and poorer parents, leading to constant demands for more redistribution.

One can, however, reject this platform but still admit that America should do more to help poor children. In recent years, it seems, inequality has grown; the working poor have not progressed. If, following Michaels, we reject the racial spoils system and respect for poverty and agree the poor need help, a broad political center could agree on many measures to help poor children. To undertake such a program, though, we must first agree that poverty is a problem to be solved and not a condition to esteem, and we must end the ethnic divisions that diversity has exacerbated. Walter Michaels’s The Trouble with Diversity makes a powerful case in support of these steps.

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