Identity Politics and/as Class Politics - with Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph Reed

Walter Benn Michaels and Adolph Reed have both argued that identity politics is not an alternative to a class politics but a form of it, the politics in particular of the professional managerial class. In their view, the reason that racism and sexism play an increasingly central role in the critique of inequality is so that anti-racism and anti-sexism can play an increasingly central role in its defense. In conjunction with the release of the 10 Anniversary edition of Michaels’s book, THE TROUBLE WITH DIVERSITY, they will sketch out their views on these issues and engage with alternatives that might be proposed by the audience. About the Book: When it was first published in 2006, the reviewer for Toronto Globe and Mail, suggested that "The Trouble with Diversity" ought to come with what we would now call a trigger warning: “Liberals beware, this book is likely to be dangerous for your intellectual health and self-esteem.” It went on to provoke a firestorm of praise and condemnation: hailed as “genius” ("The Economist"), “cogent” ("The New Yorker"), and “impossible to disagree with” ("The Washington Post", excoriated as "a wildly implausible product of the shock and awe school of political argument” ("Slate") and “seething, misplaced, amnesiac resentment ("The Nation"). Now, a decade later, Michaels offers a new afterword on how our regime of equal-opportunity exploitation has only intensified. Not only does he demonstrate that neither enthusiasm for diversity nor hostility to discrimination offer a premise for social justice, he shows that they instead legitimize the economic forces that drive inequality. About the Author: Walter Benn Michaels is Professor of English at UIC. He is the author of several books, including "Our America" and, most recently "The Beauty of a Social Problem: Photography, Autonomy, Economy". In addition to writing for The New York Times Magazine, n+1 Le Monde Diplomatique and many scholarly journals, he has recently published in Le Monde and currently has an interview up at Objektiv. He is an editor of and frequent contributor to nonsite.org. About the Interlocutor: Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the editor of "Race, Politics and Culture: Critical Essays on the Radicalism of the 1960s" and "Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and our Retreat from Racial Equality" and is author of "The Jesse Jackson Phenomenon: The Crisis of Purpose in Afro-American Politics"; "W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism & the Color Line"; "Stirrings in the Jug: Black American Politics in the Post-Segregation Era" and "Class Notes" and co-author of "Renewing Black Intellectual History: The Ideological and Material Foundations of African American Thought." He has been a columnist in The Progressive and The Village Voice, has written frequently in The Nation. He served on the board of Public Citizen, Inc. and was a member of the Interim National Council of the Labor Party, and the executive committee of the American Association of University Professors. He is an editor of and frequent contributor to nonsite.org and a contributing editor to the Socialist Register.