>
> Man, I just don't get this. Michaels' point that I think is worth making
> over & over is that the enlightened wing of the bourgeoisie is totally on
> board with diversity, and uses it as a prop to legitimate economically. A
> race- and gender-neutral capitalism, with little else changed, is the
> reigning ideal of the Ford Foundation and much of the Dem Party.
>
Er, Doug, diversity ≠ a "race- and gender-neutral capitalism". The liberal bourgeoisie might aspire, one day, toward this chimerical version of capitalism in labour is not colour-coded or gender-stratified, but it is realistic enough not to actually attempt to achieve this. To do so would be to drive up the costs of labour considerably and deprive the ruling class (including that wing allied with the Democratic Party) of a very important method of social control. It would at the very least involve a substantial redistribution of wealth. Because the liberal bourgeoisie is disinclined to seriously attack, eg, the mountainous rates of black poverty and unemployment, and the continued de facto segregation of education systems, even the formal anti-racism of this gang tends to wilt under the slightest pressure - how do they explain the endurance of massive inequalities, police repression, imprisonment, etc. when they consider the system to be fundamentally meritocratic? They can either refer to the sustained effect of bad racist ideas in some quarters, or they can blame African Americans for their condition - exactly what Obama and his allies do.
'Diversity' is what we get in the indefinite interim between the present and the promised land of a non-racist, non-sexist capitalism: the spectacular incorporation of some women and African Americans into upper middle class positions.
-- Richard Seymour Writer and blogger Email: leninstombblog at googlemail.com Website: http://www.leninology.blogspot.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/leninology Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Seymour_(writer) Book: http://www.versobooks.com/books/nopqrs/s-titles/seymour_r_the_liberal_defense_of_murder.shtml