(November 30, 2016 at 3:32 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: The most recent issue of the Chicago Reader has a very insightful interview with the author of “The Trouble with Diversity”. It’s a local story but highly relevant to the recent USA national election, the direction of the Democratic Party and the priorities of political left. Here is the link:
Chicago Reader: The Trouble with Diversity
The author’s main thrust is that by focusing almost on exclusively on identity politics and racism, the Democratic Party has given short-shrift to the exploitation of the poor and lower-middle class people regardless of race or gender. Given the audience of the Reader, Chicago’s hipster North-side liberals, many of progressive assertions go unchallenged. That’s to be expected. At the same time, I think he gives a particularly biting critique of the socio-economic elite’s politically correct virtue-signaling and bossy scolding.
Here are some quotes from the article:
Quote:…it's considered a victory if minorities or women become executives at Fortune 500 companies, whether or not workers at those companies are paid a living wage. In other words, liberals are OK with inequality so long as it's diverse inequality.
Quote:But you can't build a working-class movement with that kind of campaign, because they're not the victims of discrimination, they're the victims of exploitation. If you keep telling them the problem is discrimination, what you're actually telling them is, "We don't want to get rid of inequality, we want to legitimize it." It's to say, "Look, if you're poor because you're a victim of racism, sexism, homophobia—that's a problem because it's an inequality of opportunity. But if you're not a victim of one of those things, fuck you."
Quote:White people are indeed victimized—they're the largest group of poor people, the largest group of people on welfare, and group below the poverty level in this country… But then the response on the so-called left is just to go, "Racists!" That doesn't change people's minds. You're not trying to organize them, you're just scapegoating. Scapegoating people is a bad idea when they're in the majority and you're in the minority. It's one thing if you're scapegoating 10 percent of the population, but you're scapegoating a very large part of the population.
Quote:To me, the whole discourse of microaggression and safe spaces is what comes after farce. It's a pantomime performed of theorizing inequality among people who are the beneficiaries of the fundamental inequality and structures of our society. And it's probably more useful to the right than the left. People often say that having faculty and students of people of color is really important because they represent their people. But I don't think there's any poor white person or lower middle-class person who see the rich kids at Harvard and think they're there because they represent me. No, they think, These rich kids get to go to Harvard, and people like me don't. When you see that kind of pantomime on campus, what you see is a fuck-you to everyone else that is suffering.
The above should give you a good flavor of the interview, but I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing.
I agree with the author that class issues revolving around economic inequality should be the central issue for at least one of the major parties, or at least right up there with climate/environmental concerns.
