I'm actually mostly sympathetic with this argument (I'm not sure that it's an accurate representation of Rudy's position, but maybe I missed an email, and I'm sure we'll hear from him on this question). I think that the question of difference becomes a little messier, because while I agree with you that multiculturalism as a form of neutralization of counter-systemic movements uses a concept of difference to deflect questions of systemic inequality, I also think that some of the real dumb fights of the New Left show the need for the embrace of difference in the sense of a multiplicity of struggles (there is a very good Pannekoek essay on this question that I will try to find.)
I would also like to note that the height of the new social movements (feminism and civil rights/black power in particular) occurred at the moment that the country was moving towards greater degrees of equality. Their decline coincides with the collapse of that effort. (This needs to sketched out a bit more, but I will leave it there)
robert wood
> Alan Rudy seeks to recuperate 'the anti-racist impetus behind
> multiculturalism' from its critics.I see it differently. It is not that
> multiculturalism has a rational anti-racist kernel. The relationship
> between anti-racism and multiculturalism is rather different.
> Multiculturalism is the subversion of anti-racism, its involution into
> something quite different.
>
> Throughout the twentieth century many have taken up the fight against
> racial discrimination and oppression, and demanded equality.
> Multiculturalism is different. Its central thesis is not the overcoming of
> inequality, but the accomodation of inequality. Multiculturalism takes
> difference, not equality as its starting point (and its conclusion).
>
> The other central difference between multiculturalism and anti-racism is
> that multiculturalism is for the most part an official discourse operated
> by teachers, municipal administrators, human resources managers and
> government officials. Anti-racism was for the most part a set of struggles
> against the state.
>
> Multiculturalism has coopted the anti-racist struggles of the past into
> its imaginary history. At my school, teachers will happily tell my
> daughter about Claudia Jones in Black History Month. (And in the next
> breath they invite her to join the Metropolitan Police run 'Detective
> Club'.)
>
>
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