[Peace-discuss] Would It Kill Us to Apologize to Iran for the Coup?

[C. G. Estabrook]

I wouldn't call it limousine liberalism, but John is correct I think to suggest 
that there is a tendency in recent American liberalism to substitute diversity 
for (economic) equality as the goal of progressive politics.

The argument is sharply set out by Walter Benn Michaels in "The Trouble with 
Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality" (2006).  And 
it's been argued that the real story of Tom Frank's "What's the Matter With 
Kansas?" (2004) is that the working class abandoned the Democratic party when 
the Democrats abandoned economic equality (insofar as they ever embraced it) in 
favor of diversity.

Benn Michaels summarized his argument in a recent issue of the British journal, 
"New Left Review."  Here is his conclusion:

"...the answer to the question, ‘Why do American liberals carry on about racism 
and sexism when they should be carrying on about capitalism?’, is pretty 
obvious: they carry on about racism and sexism in order to avoid doing so about 
capitalism. Either because they genuinely do think that inequality is fine as 
long as it is not a function of discrimination (in which case, they are 
neoliberals of the right). Or because they think that fighting against racial 
and sexual inequality is at least a step in the direction of real equality (in 
which case, they are neoliberals of the left).  Given these options, perhaps the 
neoliberals of the right are in a stronger position -- the economic history of 
the last thirty years suggests that diversified elites do even better than 
undiversified ones. But of course, these are not the only possible choices."

<http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2731>


John W. wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 8:58 AM, Robert Naiman <naiman.uiuc at gmail.com 
> <mailto:naiman.uiuc at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> I'm definitely not in favor of refusal to recognize privilege. But I presume
> that in a non-racist society, if everyone woke up one day and discovered that
> by some mysterious process, a chunk of their neighbors were
> disproportionately excluded from the economic benefits that the society had
> to offer, people would move to address the disparity.
> 
> 
> You gotta be shitting me, Robert.  Surely you jest?  You have neighbors right
> here on this mailing list who are disproportionately excluded from the
> economic benefits that society has to offer, and it has nothing to do with
> race, and no one on this list is doing a damned thing about it or is GOING to
> do a damned thing about it.  Whenever I talk about poverty, lack of health
> insurance, etc., from a personal perspective, I get a blank stare from the
> limousine liberals.  "Get a life," they say, or "Be warmed and filled," to
> quote the Good Book.  I daresay that most of the readers of this list care
> more about people in Pakistan than they do about their neighbors, at least in
> terms of doing anything pragmatic to help them.
> 
> I'll probably live to regret that comment, but there it is.
> 
> 
> 
> So, the fact that such disparities persist in our society, and the fact that
> we don't move successfully to redress them, to me is evidence enough of
> racism; no other story is necessary.
> 
> 
> You ain't read enough stories, apparently.  There are many types of 
> disparities in our society, and many complex causes of such disparities.
> Racism is an important one, but it is only one.
> 
> 
> 
> That doesn't mean that other stories don't have value, and might not also be 
> important to achieving the end of redress, but I see no need to posit them as
> prerequisites, and some reason not to; since it might be the case, for
> example, that some people have a psychological barrier against recognizing
> privilege, but not against redress justified on some other basis.
> 
> 
> You lost me there.  Not that it matters.