>
> But it's becoming less and less so, especially on the gender end. There's
> a large black professional class now, women all over the professions too -
> and a considerable black political class as well. Intra-black income
> distribution is more unequal than intra-white. Of course, reality is a lot
> less identity-neutral than propaganda, but there's some truth to the
> propaganda.
>
But that's exactly what you would expect: intra-black income distribution would of course be more unequal than intra-white income distribution, because while a thin layer of African Americans are being inducted into the caste, the majority are being left in disproportionate numbers among the poor, the unemployed, the low-waged, the de-skilled, the imprisoned, etc.
Not sure what you mean by not actually attempting to achieve this, since big
> capital supports affirmative action politically and practices it
> aggressively within their own human resource departments.
Big capital is not making any efforts whatsoever to create a "race- and gender-neutral capitalism". That's just not on the cards, as it would coterminously involve an attack on class inequality (contra Michaels). What you refer to is precisely the kind of 'diversity' programme that makes no systematic attack on racial or gender inequality, leaving the vast majority of African Americans and women, esp. 'women of colour', in an oppressed and/or hyper-exploited condition.
By the way, I agree with the critique of diversity that enjoins people to integrate class into their analysis. You can't talk meaningfully about racial and gender politics unless you can speak of the way in which their characteristics are overdetermined by class. It is just that class and race etc are not competing issues: they are contiguous. To speak of race, eg, is to talk about a way of structuring accumulation, wages, consumption etc., and therefore of class. Capitalism seems to work quite well with labour markets stratified by race, gender, nation, religion, identity and so on. Since such 'idenitities' are quite fungible, it is possible that the axes of oppression will change, but I don't see where this idea that big capital wants to abolish all of these forms of oppression is coming from.
> I live in a neighborhood where it's more real than spectacular. Should I
> tell my neighbors that they're phantasms?
>
The spectacle isn't a phantasm, though. It is social reality mediated through images. Put crudely, the image of black and female professionals is mediating a social reality in which structural racial and gender inequality has hardly altered.
But yes, tell your neighbours I said they're phantasms, and they are officially pwned.
-- 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