The old controversies I see include: theorizing versus activism, revolution versus reform, class versus everthing else. I'm probably on Michaels side on all of these, but I think he's wrong in a variety of ways. The main way is his failure to see the everyday untheoretical, reformist, non-class struggles as the crucible from which some more comprehensive, encompassing, deeply-rooted movement would emerge, if anything ever does emerge. Sort of like lecturing protozoa on the need to evolve into tadpoles. His lectures cannot accomplish much; I know, I've delivered similar ones myself. It doesn't work that way. Focusing on the positive alternatives is more useful, IMO.
He says that discrimination is not a by-product of neo-liberalism, racism corrupts the market. Racism is unnecessary to neo-liberalism. This reminds me of the smug lectures I heard from econ profs. Problem is, this analysis rests on neo-liberal economic theory that excludes the concept of power. The use of race to divide the working class. Michaels says that capitalism no longer requires racism to perpetuate exploitation. This is an empirical question, and Michaels is not an empirical guy, he doesn't do data, so he has no basis for this statement. It could be true, but he offers no support for it.
Regarding the three antinomies I invoked above, if you grant that the ultimate purpose of exploitation is money, then all the non-class divisions are instrumental to the perpetuation of class society. So they are not extraneous to class. They are important, though not exclusively in and of themsleves. We might also hold that the ultimate object of sexism is patriarchy, of racism is white skin privilege, which mean that class isn't all that.
I get an imputation of American society as post-racial from Michaels. I think this is ludicrous. All you have to see is how the president feels the need to tip-toe around issues of race. The political-economy implications of modern day racism are evident in the health care debate. The dominant roots of reaction are those who think ObamaCare means their taxes paying for someone else's insurance, or their Medicare being invaded by someone else. "Someone else" in peoples' minds is minorities, which have become in bass-ackwards fashion a signifier for the poor (backwards because of course most poor are white).
Racism is more complicated than it used to be. I'll invoke my old example of the spectacle of a Southern Baptist leader making a ceremony of washing the feet of a black parishioner as atonement for the racism of the past. You have Pat Robertson's tv shows, often including a black man in sidekick role. You have the GOP trying to organize black churches against gays or black workers against Mexican immigrants, Grover Norquist organizing Arab-Americans. The far-right adulation for Alan Keyes. There is more than tokenism there, however manipulative it might be.
I'd say the cure for it all is more activism and more conversation, the less rancorous the better.