[lbo-talk] more "who"

wrobert at uci.edu wrobert at uci.edu
Sun Nov 1 13:41:12 PST 2009


Doug, if you want a critique of diversity, they're kinda dime a dozen at this point going back quite a while now, a lot of them produced by people working within the framework of critical race and feminism, and they don't fall into the pitfalls that Michaels does (which shaq has pointed out again and again, through a fairly serious analysis of the man's actual writing.) Hell, Tim Wise has written a few polemics criticizing both the concept of diversity and the concept of tolerance.

On a different topic, the question of foundations seems to be one of the issues that seems to be haunting this conversation. There's actually a book looking at the way that foundations become a useful way of neutralizing radical politics through its funding structures.

This might be another way of approaching the problem, one that is a bit more productive perhaps. (Unfortunately, the book, The Revolution will not be funded (or something like that) isn't actually all that good, but it does link this conversation around 'diversity' to an institutional framework.)

A third issue, I'm not sure how the battle around WBAI links into this conversation. I'm not denying that the politics of race aren't being used to do some fairly horrifying things in the situation (a lot of it caught up in the structures of ressentiment that Wendy Brown discusses) but I am not sure what it has to do with the issues of diversity and neo-liberalism as discussed by Michaels.)

robert wood
>
> 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. A lot of "left" discourse still refuses to take this on
> board.
>
> Doug
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