Wow. That certainly sums it up faster, better, and with a story from experience to back it up.
But let me try to address the idea that `diversity' masks the inequalities of neoliberalism. Behind Michaels' hypocrisy, one of his other problems is that he doesn't write with enough concrete detail or use real life experience.
So, I'll try to take up the basic idea, but use concrete examples.
Here's how demands for `equality' became historically conflated with claims for `diversity'. The federal grant I worked under had goals to achieve X numbers of `disadvantaged' students enrolled. The numbers listed were the programmatic measures of success. The ratio of minority X, with X increasing against white Y was the measure of addressing un-equal or disproportionately low representation. BTW this measure system was invented and imposed on the residue of the War On Poverty programs by Donald Rumsfeld. I hated this accounting, so I just cooked my numbers. This goes to snag's comment about `representation' v. `redistribution'. My personal agenda was to get poor kids in college. I wasn't picky about which poor kids I was supposed to deal with.
The UCB administration and the federal agency could claim to be making `progress' toward `equality' in education of `under served' populations.
In this technocratic fog of war, the right to a free public education (including higher ed) got conflated with numbers that demonstrated `diversity' of the student population.
The system of conflation between diversity and equality was build into the wording of the federal policies. The words were, something like, `racial and ethnic minorities, and otherwise disadvantaged'' and ``under served populations.'' So, the game became to find the identified groups and mark up the numbers of those served under the various programs.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the university was undergoing a neoliberal top down transformation into a corporate entity, while it seemed to make `progress' in student `diversity.' The systematic fee raises and other costs, pushed the university system out of reach of any low or moderate income household, while the system transferred more and more costs onto students and families.
Okay, so I made Michaels' point (I think). The point that neoliberalism is completely compatible with a `diverse' society. I think that point can be made more easily and clearly with concrete institutional examples.
On the other hand, I am not so sure that even this apparent `diversity' is so easily managed by the neoliberal still mostly white male elites. This goes to Joanna's point about the actually existing threat.
Again we can look at UCB. At the demonstration ten days ago, most of the crowd was in fact not white. There were a lot more women in the crowd, than I remembered from long ago. The crowd was predominately asian and latino. And of these, the latinos where the more outspoken and sounded to me to be the more radical. (I take my comment back, that the students don't seem to see themselves in a larger picture. After reading and thinking more, I think they do.)
In other words, the latino students were making the argument against the neoliberalism and or corporatization of a public university. There are multiple `latino' communities here that include Central and South American countries with family ties back home. So I think there is a lot of local attention to the rise of anti-neoliberalization movements going on south of the border.
``I think I need to flesh out what disturbed me about Michael's book. There was something almost... I don't know ... that his support for anti-racism, his opposition to sexism, and so forth is superficial..'' (snag)
Please do go over the book a little, and try to post on it. I got nothing but the same sort of vague `vibe'. I think where this vibe leads is into white male identity realms of reaction.
Then getting back to Joanna again,
``What's interesting is how you [snag] and Chuck get this drift by reading something that is nominally a radical critique....''
I don't know the answer. I can't put my analytic finger on it. At a guess, we've all three been under the academic thumb of assholes like Michaels. We've all three left or been kicked out of academic circles. We all hate and fight the stupid merit system.