First of all, the idea that you can dismiss race as a social construction because race, itself, is not biologically real shows a staggering lack of understanding of what social construction means. Basically, at least in the interview, he says that social constructionists are wrong about race because social constuctionists who look at the how the fiction of race is real in its consequences because actors believe race is real are right... Furthermore, while he is also right that there has been a significant decline in the virility of personal racism and ever more important issues associated with post-personal institutional and structural racism, I can tell you that my students - black and white - continue to live racially segregated lives and continue to be taught and believe ass-backwards stuff about racialized others (particularly those they don't know who are poorer and urban/Northern and/or rural/Southern than them.)
Second, he can't have it all three ways. He can't simultaneously argue against liberal efforts to, at least, get oppressed minorities into government programs at levels proportionate to their percentage among eligible populations _and_ argue that "we" should treat race - at least in the present - as a secondary characteristic of class _and_ expect that anyone advocating for poor people residing in racially segregated rural and urban areas is going to believe that he's doing anything other than telling them that they don't understand what or who they are working for. I have a feeling he's not done much talking to people who work on these issues daily at the level of the street. Most of the one's I know know who their enemy is but also know what it is that is possible to do these days, and what isn't.
Third, while I completely accept the idea that some - maybe even the majority - of neoliberal business sector folks are using the issue of diversity as a trope for class and a means to deflect critique away from class, it is assholic to claim that this is the reason the majority of the people on the ground working on racial issues among the poor and powerless are doing so to prop up neoliberalism. All he had to do was point out that there are unintended consequences to such work and he could make this point into a teachable one... but he basically conflates the purposes of neoliberal elites and community organizers/social workers (I'll leave the wankerdom of many in the academy aside - too many stories about the Race and Class seminar I took as a grad student...). Most of these folks are well aware of the argument that Malcolm, Martin and any number of Panthers were killed soon after or largely because they were talking and agitating about class as much if not more than race.
When I talk to the oppressed minority kids coming out of Detroit I have no problem convincing the majority of them that what's up with Detroit, or Flint, or Cleveland or... - esp. given the growth of the African-American middle class since 1964 - is more about class inequality and structural racism than personal racism. Furthermore, William Julius Wilson's arguments were obviously the core of all of the presentations made to us - as new MSU faculty - in the late late 90s during an extended tour of the, then fairly new, urban Cooperative Extension offices in Detroit.
The neoliberal/social justice conflation also comes out in his discussion of immigration. He speaks of the 1965(?) Immigration Bill as if it was the first major piece of neoliberal legislation because it basically eliminated racial/national quotas in favor of selecting the best, most talented and most resource rich immigrants wherever they came from and then argues that "we" - whoever that is - are therefore incredibly accepting of professional immigrants AND illegal Central American immigrants - because both are good (and necessary) for the economy. The appropriate question, fundamentally, is "What do you mean 'we' white man?" It may be that neoliberals want the best, brightest and richest from abroad and understand the importance of illegals, but that doesn't mean all the kids and parents who believe their kids should have gotten into UofM, UCLA, UCB, MIT, Penn, and so on down the line appreciate being outcompeted or that domestic day laborers and retail workers in any number of trades are big fans of the illegals. He really infantilizes - and then obviously pisses off - the kind of people who work with this stuff daily, people who have a complex view of the situation but have no intellectual, professional or poltical outlet for that complex understanding.
Fourth, he seems to have a fairly clear sense of the structural relationship between race and economics but absolutely no sense of - or, at least, no willingness to address - the structural nature of American individualism and its long-held and deep-rooted antipathy to class analysis. Related to this, he seems to have no understanding whatsoever of how that individualism, combined with Progressive ideas about scientific analysis and expert-led policy, is reflected in his style, that of an incredibly condescending patronizing self-important ass. He needs to be able to tell my students why, despite their clear understanding that global and domestic capital doesn't care about them, that the government doesn't care (and neither party cares) about them, that the administration isn't (and most of the faculty aren't) committed to their intellectual, professional, political or cultural success (unless it allows the U to successfully get alumni donations), they shouldn't look out for number one or where the opportunities are for them to look out for anyone else but number one (much less the constraints on what the groups and opennings associated with those opportunities are)? I tell them that, these days, because local communities, the state and the feds do so little, the most likely place to look to do this kind of stuff is - tragically, to my mind - megachurches (yeah, yeah, UUs and Qs do some, but they tend to be tiny congregations, eh?).
Why not make the same basic argument by means of the remarkable similarities associated with the disproportionate consequences of neoliberalism for lower income historically oppressed minorities and low income whites? Why not make an argument for class struggle rather than one denigrating the prioritization of race and diversity? Because such an argument gets you fewer readers, is way less sexy and garners you far less renown?
On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 1:26 AM, Voyou <voyou1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-10-04 at 18:32 -0400, Doug Henwood wrote:
> > On Oct 4, 2009, at 5:58 PM, Voyou wrote:
> >
> > > I don't think it is unfair - Michaels's position on racism and sexism
> > > really is superficial.
> >
> > Would you say the same about Adolph Reed, who supports WBM strongly?
>
> I think Reed does what Michaels doesn't, coming up with an understanding
> of the role of race in contemporary US politics which doesn't depend on
> the idea of diversity. The critique of diversity is a useful part of
> coming up with such an understanding, so I can see why Reed would
> support Michaels. I don't know if support would go the other way, though
> - my problem with Michaels is not only that he doesn't come up with an
> alternative analysis of race, he doesn't even seem to think one is
> necessary.