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.
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I'll get into this more later, but you are very right about his lack of understanding of what social construction means. this is typical for people outside social sciences / humanities, but it's inexcusable from him.
also, one of the things that chapped my ass about his book was at the end.
he says that things like whether you eat velveeta or brie is, sure, probably a marker of "class". there are tastes associated with various social strata.
and he can't be painful, he says, to be made fun of for liking brie or country music or what have you.
but buck up young feller, ain't no thing. see, the deal is, the *real* problem is being able to afford brie. not to mention that michaels insists that some things simply are better than other things, and that taste is all sorta, well, it is what it is. brie is much better than velveeta. wanting to go to paris is superior to wanting to go to las vegas.
but so what?
that stuff don't hurt you little feller.
having no money does.
*yawn*
apparently, he's completely unaware, also, of an entire literature on structural oppression!