Respond: Walter Benn Michaels, The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality

Respond: Walter Benn Michaels, The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality

RESPOND •

Question 26.35

1. What, for Walter Benn Michaels, is the real issue that American society needs to confront? How, for him, does defining diversity in terms of a celebration of difference, especially ethnic difference, prevent Americans from both seeing the real issue and doing anything about it? In what ways does our society’s focus on ethnic and cultural diversity necessarily perpetuate racism and biological essentialism (paragraph 10)?

Question 26.36

2. Why and how are these issues relevant to discussions of diversity on campus in general? On the campus you attend?

Question 26.37

3. Later in this introduction, Michaels, a liberal, points out ways in which both conservatives and liberals in American public life, first, focus on racial or ethnic differences rather than issues of social inequality and, second, benefit from doing so. In a 2004 essay, “Diversity’s False Solace,” he notes:

[W]e like policies like affirmative action not so much because they solve the problem of racism but because they tell us that racism is the problem we need to solve. . . . It’s not surprising that universities of the upper middle class should want their students to feel comfortable [as affirmative action programs enable and encourage them to do]. What is surprising is that diversity should have become the hallmark of liberalism.

Analyze the argument made in this paragraph as a Toulmin argument. (For a discussion of Toulmin argumentation, see Chapter 7.)

Question 26.38

4. How would you characterize Michaels’s argument? In what ways is it an argument of fact? A definitional argument? An evaluative argument? A causal argument? A proposal? (For a discussion of these kinds of arguments, see Chapters 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.)

Question 26.39

5. Imagine a dialogue between Walter Benn Michaels and Sheryll Cashin, author of the previous selection. What would they agree on with respect to diversity on campuses? And where might there be disagreements? Why?

Question 26.40

6. This chapter has provided many perspectives on an issue that is hotly debated on American campuses and in American society at large — diversity. Should diversity be something that schools strive for? If so, what kinds of diversity? What should a diverse campus look like, and why? Write a proposal essay in which you define and justify the sort(s) of diversity, if any, that your school should aim for. Seek to draw widely on the perspectives that you’ve read in this chapter — in terms of topics discussed and also approaches to those or other topics that you might consider. If you completed the assignment in question 6 for the first selection in this chapter (“Making a VIsual Argument: Diversity Posters” in Chapter 26, “What Should Diversity on Campus Mean and Why?”), you will surely want to reread your essay, giving some thought to how and why your understanding of diversity has or has not changed as you have read the selections in this chapter. (For a discussion of proposals, see Chapter 12.)

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