What is *The Trouble with Diversity* by Walter Benn Michaels about?

*The Trouble with Diversity* critiques how contemporary focus on racial, gender, and cultural diversity distracts from systemic economic inequality. Michaels argues that identity politics serves as a “smokescreen” for class-based disparities, allowing institutions to appear progressive while maintaining wealth gaps. The book challenges readers to prioritize economic reform over superficial diversity initiatives.

Who should read *The Trouble with Diversity*?

This book is essential for readers interested in social justice, political theory, or critiques of neoliberalism. It appeals to those skeptical of corporate diversity programs, educators discussing intersectionality, and activists seeking to reframe debates about equality beyond identity categories. Michaels’ provocative style suits audiences open to challenging mainstream progressive narratives.

Is *The Trouble with Diversity* worth reading?

Yes, particularly for its contrarian perspective on modern liberalism. While controversial, Michaels’ analysis of how diversity discourse perpetuates economic injustice remains relevant to debates about affirmative action, corporate ESG goals, and wealth redistribution. Its accessible arguments make complex socioeconomic critiques digestible for general readers.

What are the main ideas in *The Trouble with Diversity*?

1. **Diversity as deflection**: Corporations and institutions use diversity rhetoric to avoid addressing wealth inequality. 2. **Race vs. class**: Racial identity politics cannot resolve systemic poverty affecting all marginalized groups. 3. **Meritocracy myths**: The focus on equal opportunity ignores how capitalism inherently produces unequal outcomes. 4. **Anti-redistribution**: Elite “diversity” initiatives often replace substantive economic reforms.

What does Walter Benn Michaels say about race and class?

Michaels asserts that treating race as a primary social issue obscures how class inequality disproportionately harms Black, Latino, and working-class communities. He contends that solving economic disparities—through policies like progressive taxation—would disproportionately benefit people of color while uniting broader coalitions across racial lines.

How does *The Trouble with Diversity* critique modern liberalism?

The book accuses liberals of prioritizing cultural representation (e.g., diverse corporate boards) over material changes like union support or wage increases. Michaels argues this allows elites to signal virtue while maintaining oligarchic wealth structures, calling it a “neoliberal appropriation of civil rights discourse”.

What quotes summarize *The Trouble with Diversity*?

* “We love diversity—just don’t talk about redistribution”. * “The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough Black CEOs; it’s that we have CEOs at all”. * “Antiracism without anticapitalism is just another corporate strategy”.

How does the book address affirmative action?

Michaels criticizes affirmative action as a symbolic remedy that benefits primarily middle-class minorities while leaving structural class hierarchies intact. He argues race-based policies fracture potential class solidarity and divert energy from universal economic reforms like free college or healthcare.

Trouble with Diversity

How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality

Walter Benn Michaels

3.59(516 Reviews)

Overview of Trouble with Diversity

Michaels challenges our love affair with diversity politics, arguing it distracts from widening economic inequality. Since 2006, this provocative critique has sparked fierce academic debates - what if our focus on identity is actually preserving the wealth gap we're trying to fix?

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Chapter 1

When Diversity Obscures Inequality: The Trouble with Our Cultural Fixation

Have you ever wondered why America celebrates diversity so enthusiastically while economic inequality reaches historic levels? In Walter Benn Michaels' provocative book "The Trouble with Diversity," he argues that our national obsession with cultural identity serves as a convenient distraction from addressing the widening wealth gap. Published in 2006 and updated with a 2016 afterword, this work has been praised by critics across the political spectrum for challenging progressive orthodoxy while maintaining a commitment to equality. The book has influenced discourse on university campuses nationwide and remains startlingly relevant in our era of identity politics. As inequality continues to grow, Michaels' central question becomes increasingly urgent: why have we chosen to focus on celebrating our differences rather than addressing the economic system that keeps most Americans struggling while a tiny minority prospers?

Chapter 2

The False Promise of Race and the Distraction of Culture

When F. Scott Fitzgerald remarked that "the rich are different from you and me," Hemingway famously replied: "Yes, they have more money." This exchange captures the fundamental tension at the heart of American society: are social differences about what people have (wealth) or what they are (identity)? Throughout American literature and culture, we've consistently transformed economic differences into cultural or racial ones. In The Great Gatsby, Jimmy Gatz becomes Jay Gatsby but remains "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" despite his wealth. The novel treats class divisions as if they were racial ones, where the poor boy passing as rich is "not quite white enough." This transformation of economic difference into racial difference has proven extraordinarily attractive in American society. Even as scientific racism has been thoroughly debunked, we've maintained our attachment to race by recasting it as social rather than biological. Our commitment to diversity emerged from anti-racism efforts, particularly following the 1978 Bakke Supreme Court decision, which legitimized considering race for the sake of "diversity" in university admissions. This shifted our approach from creating a "color-blind" society to celebrating a "color-conscious" one, extending beyond race to all kinds of identities - cultural, religious, sexual, even medical. The fundamental problem is that we love race and identity because we don't love class. In a society with growing economic inequality, focusing on racial and cultural differences provides a convenient solution: rather than confronting the uncomfortable reality of wealth disparity, we can celebrate diversity. While the rich get richer and the poor stay poor, the intellectual left has prioritized cultural identity over economic equality. Our response to Hurricane Katrina revealed these misplaced priorities. The left framed government failures as racism ("George Bush doesn't care about black people") rather than classism. Bush likely cares about Condoleezza Rice and other successful Black conservatives. What he - like Clinton, Kerry, and most Americans - doesn't care about is taking steps to end poverty.

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Chapter 3

The Scientific Fiction of Race and Our Cultural Attachment to It

The concept of race persists as a powerful social construct despite being scientifically invalid. Through contrasting stories of Homer Plessy (1892) and Susie Guillory Phipps (1977), we see how racial classification remains powerful even when physically imperceptible. Both light-skinned individuals were legally classified as Black despite appearances, revealing race as something beyond mere appearance. In America, race has always been considered internal rather than visible - not about skin color but about "blood." The one-drop rule meant any Black ancestry made a person Black, effectively dividing Americans into Black and not-Black categories, with not-Black generally meaning white. This explains why various immigrant groups "became white" over time, while mixed-race individuals like Tiger Woods face pressure to identify as Black rather than multiracial. Modern genetic science has thoroughly debunked biological notions of race. Genetic variation within supposed racial groups often exceeds variation between groups - a person from Congo may be genetically more different from someone in Mali than either is from a Belgian. Disease associations further demonstrate race's scientific incoherence: sickle cell anemia, considered a "Black disease" in America, actually correlates with ancestry from malaria-prone regions regardless of race. Similarly, Tay-Sachs affects specific populations (Ashkenazi Jews, French Canadians) rather than following racial lines. Despite scientific evidence against biological race, the concept persists socially. Drawing on Sartre's analysis of Jewishness as similar to the debunked scientific concept of "phlogiston," race exists not as biological reality but as social fact. The absence of biological "Jewishness" doesn't mean Jews don't exist - they exist as a social category with real consequences. Du Bois defined blackness through shared experience rather than shared physical traits, and Adrian Piper articulated that what connects Black people is being identified as Black, not genetic commonality. When racial perceptions differ, whose view prevails? Louisiana courts ruled Susie Phipps was Black based on her parents' identification despite her self-identification as white, while census guidelines privilege self-identification as "by definition accurate." This creates a paradox: if race has no biological reality, what exactly are we perceiving when we identify ourselves racially? We're essentially endorsing a mistake - treating race as social fact amounts to acknowledging it's not biological while insisting we continue categorizing people as if it were.

Chapter 4

The Seduction of Cultural Identity

Culture has become both a synonym for and replacement of racial identity. The anthropological notion of culture was invented specifically as an alternative to race, suggesting differences between groups are learned rather than biological. But this shift from race to culture simply transforms racial stereotyping into cultural stereotyping. Richard Ford points out that supposedly "Black cultural traits" are neither practiced by most Black people nor exclusive to them. Unlike gay identity, which has a defining characteristic (same-sex desire), there is no equivalent behavior that makes Black people Black. The problem with culture is that it's utterly dependent on race; we can only identify cultural practices as belonging to a racial group if we already know who belongs to that group. The concepts of heritage and memory that support cultural identity are equally problematic. Why should certain books or cultural artifacts count as part of one person's heritage but not another's? Your cultural heritage isn't determined by your genes - we don't inherit languages, books, music or art biologically. The very notion of "acting Black" or "acting white" makes no sense if we acknowledge there's no physical fact of blackness. As W.E.B. Du Bois defined a Black man as "a person who must ride Jim Crow in Georgia," now that Jim Crow no longer exists, the logical conclusion is that racial categories themselves no longer exist. Yet despite this, Americans remain committed to keeping race central to American identity. Cultural diversity gives us a vision of difference without inequality. Our core conception of culture involves the idea that cultures are essentially equal, making it nonsensical to view a society organized into cultures as hierarchical. By imagining a world divided into different cultures, we pretend equality already exists rather than needing to be created through wealth redistribution. Culture provides lovable differences-like those between Asian Americans and Caucasians-rather than uncomfortable differences between rich and poor people. At both Harvard and UIC, students proudly identify by ethnicity but rarely by economic class. This allows institutions to maintain the fantasy that they're meritocracies, where affirmative action ensures no one is excluded because of race while individual merit determines who attends which school. But this is a convenient illusion that masks the real economic disparities that determine educational outcomes.

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Chapter 5

Victimhood Hierarchies and the Invisibility of Class

Philip Roth's novel "The Plot Against America" imagines an alternative history where anti-Semitism becomes central to American policy under President Charles Lindbergh. The powerful scenes depicting discrimination against Jews create a disturbing but counterfactual history. What makes these scenes particularly striking is that while this discrimination didn't happen to Jews in America, it absolutely did happen to Black Americans. From 1896 until the 1960s, segregation was legal and enforced. While Jews faced discrimination through quotas in universities and exclusion from country clubs, they were never subjected to the systematic segregation Black Americans endured. Art Spiegelman's "Maus" similarly portrays America as divided between Jews and non-Jews, depicting Jews as mice while other immigrant groups have assimilated into American "dogs." This counterfactual Americanization of the Holocaust raises questions about why there's a Holocaust Memorial Museum on the National Mall when the Holocaust wasn't part of American history. As Malcolm X observed to Alex Haley, immigrant children arriving in America would quickly learn their first English word-"nigger"-not because they'd become racists, but because they'd instantly become beneficiaries of American racism. Even the most despised Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe discovered upon arrival that they were "white guys." The lynching of Leo Frank-a Jewish factory superintendent wrongly convicted of murdering a 14-year-old employee-is often cited as proof of American anti-Semitism. Yet while approximately 3,500 Black Americans were lynched between 1880-1930, Frank was one of only four Jews ever lynched in America. The attack on Frank by Populist Tom Watson emphasized both his Jewishness and his wealth, calling him the "rich Jew." Frank earned $180 weekly plus profit shares-about 35 times what his murdered employee Mary Phagan made at ten cents per hour. This class dimension is often overlooked when discussing Frank's case. Charles Chesnutt's "The Marrow of Tradition" reveals how racism overrides class privilege. When Dr. Miller, a Black doctor, is forced into the "colored car," his objection isn't just about racial discrimination but about being grouped with people beneath his professional status. Jim Crow effectively transformed class differences into racial ones, making whiteness more significant than economic status. The market eventually replaced explicit racism with economic barriers-"OUR PRICES DISCRIMINATE BECAUSE WE CAN'T"-allowing discrimination to continue under the guise of class rather than race. Both racism and anti-racism, paradoxically, transform economic conflicts into racial ones, making class invisible.

Chapter 6

The Myth of Educational Meritocracy

Universities function as our primary mechanism for convincing ourselves that economic inequality is justified, serving as supposed engines of social mobility while actually reinforcing existing class structures. The comforting fiction that "there are both rich people and poor people at Harvard" masks a stark reality - only 3 percent of students at selective colleges come from the lowest socioeconomic quarter, while 74 percent come from the highest. In practice, students are 25 times more likely to encounter rich peers than poor ones on elite campuses. SAT scores correlate as strongly with family income as with college grades, rising in lockstep - for every $20,000 increase in family income, average SAT scores climb about 12 points. Affirmative action doesn't violate meritocracy-it creates the illusion that we actually have one. While public discourse frequently highlights how white classrooms would look without race-based affirmative action, a more revealing thought experiment is to imagine what Harvard would look like with genuine class-based affirmative action: with median US family income at $54,000, almost 90% of Harvard students come from wealthier families, and 75% from families earning over $100,000. If Harvard's income distribution matched America's, over half its current students would disappear-mostly rich white kids who benefited from expensive private schools, SAT prep courses, and enrichment activities. Race-based affirmative action functions as a collective bribe rich people pay themselves for ignoring economic inequality. Harvard's much-publicized policy of not charging tuition to families earning under $60,000 barely helps the poor, who can't qualify for admission in the first place due to systemic educational disadvantages starting from early childhood. Meanwhile, merit-based scholarships increasingly replace need-based ones across universities, effectively giving money to wealthy students who were already college-bound rather than increasing access for the poor. This shift reflects a broader trend of universities competing for high-achieving students rather than expanding opportunity. Recent novels like Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons" and Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep" tackle class through scholarship students at elite institutions, though with varying degrees of insight. Both protagonists face deep embarrassment over their families' class markers - Charlotte's unemployed father with his rusted pickup truck, Lee's father in the mattress business with their old Datsun. These details serve as powerful symbols of class difference in environments where wealth is often carefully hidden behind a veneer of casual privilege. While Lionel Trilling once criticized American writers for avoiding class conflict, these contemporary authors attempt to portray an America where economic inequality matters fundamentally to lived experience. Yet Wolfe, dubbed "President Bush's favorite novelist," focuses less on poverty's material reality than on the "condescension" Charlotte faces from the "liberal elite," suggesting that cultural alienation matters more than economic hardship. This narrative choice itself reflects a privileged perspective on class dynamics in higher education. The data tells an unambiguous story: America's top universities, despite their stated commitments to diversity and opportunity, remain bastions of privilege where wealth perpetuates itself under the guise of merit. The few low-income students who do make it serve more as tokens that legitimize the system than as evidence of genuine social mobility.

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Chapter 7

The Contradiction of Equal Opportunity

The strongest form of egalitarianism would be equality of outcome, but most Americans believe there should be rewards for hard work and ability. We defend equality of opportunity precisely because we believe that without equal starting points, hard work and ability won't be properly rewarded. When wealth enables one child to attend an elite college while another is tracked into community college, wealth-not merit-determines outcomes. Our commitment to equal opportunity requires both refusing equality of outcome (to reward hard work) and refusing generational transfer of inequality (for the same reason). Yet a society truly committed to equal opportunity would fund all school districts equally and abolish private schools. Instead, wealthy parents naturally choose better schools for their children, creating a moral dilemma that could be solved through systemic change rather than individual choices. Even more contradictory is Americans' opposition to inheritance taxes-50% oppose any estate tax whatsoever. People who will never receive significant inheritances nevertheless defend others' right to pass on wealth untaxed, directly contradicting the principle of equal opportunity they claim to support. This creates a fundamental contradiction: we claim to believe in a system where hard work and ability matter, while supporting policies ensuring inheritance matters more. The American Enterprise Institute notes that "people must believe that our system is generally fair for it to remain vital." If citizens perceive the rules as unfair, "the political repercussions could be significant"-a polite way of asking why people shouldn't tear down a system rigged to benefit certain groups regardless of merit. Polls show Americans still believe hard work leads to success (75-80% agreement), explaining the lack of class resentment. This also clarifies why many poor people vote against their economic interests. Just as upper-middle-class voters might support higher taxes against their immediate financial benefit, lower-income voters might oppose estate taxes on principle. The real contradiction isn't between voting patterns and interests, but between our professed support for equal opportunity and our embrace of policies that make opportunities fundamentally unequal.

Chapter 8

The Politics of Identity vs. Ideology

In January 2006, Evo Morales was inaugurated as Bolivia's president twice: once officially in La Paz wearing a dark suit, and once at Tiwanaku's pre-Columbian ruins dressed as a pre-Incan sun priest. These dual ceremonies represent two different aspects of his leadership-as head of the socialist MAS party and as Bolivia's first indigenous president in over 400 years. The distinction between Morales' roles highlights a crucial difference: socialism is an ideology while being Aymara Indian is an identity. When Morales advocates nationalizing Bolivia's water system, he speaks as a socialist; when referencing "the dreams of our ancestors," he speaks as an indigenous person. This difference-between who your ancestors are and what your beliefs are-obscures economic inequality much like the difference between ancestry and wealth. The shift from ideological to identity-based thinking fundamentally changes how we view cultural differences. When we change beliefs after being convinced by an argument, we see the new beliefs as better than the old ones - there's no mourning the loss of incorrect ideas. No one laments that we no longer believe human sacrifice appeases gods or that bad air causes malaria. Cultural identity operates differently. We don't experience moving between cultures as progress because cultures aren't right or wrong - they're just different. Where beliefs divide into right or wrong, cultures divide into same or different. We celebrate cultural diversity but not mistakenness. When Huntington's worst fears come true and English disappears in favor of Spanish, so what? Spanish isn't worse than English - it's just different. Unlike political systems which can be better or worse, languages are all equally adequate. Our descendants will speak their language just as we spoke ours. The commitment to linguistic diversity rests on respecting cultural identity, but paradoxically, the things truly worth preserving have nothing to do with identity. We preserve Shakespeare not because he's part of our culture but because his works are great for everyone. We value liberal democratic institutions because we believe they're superior to alternatives - not because they're "ours."

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Chapter 9

Religion, Belief, and the Public Sphere

Diversity thinking obscures not just economic difference but political difference as well, treating genuine ideological disagreements as mere "diversity of thought" where all perspectives have equal value. This cultural model becomes particularly vacuous when applied to religion. While religious tolerance is important, celebrating "theo-diversity" fundamentally misunderstands religion's nature. Only someone who believes in no religion can view all religions as equally valid. From the standpoint of the religions themselves, their differences aren't complementary but contradictory. As Pope Benedict XVI argues, Christianity claims universality because it claims truth - if Christianity is true, other religions must be false. From the Pope's perspective, what matters in religion isn't feelings but beliefs - which are inherently public and normative in ways our identities aren't. Religious beliefs make universal claims: if you think abortion is wrong, you think it's wrong for everyone, not just for your cultural group. This reveals the fundamental difference between identity and conviction. While Clarence Thomas's race may have helped his Supreme Court nomination, it's his beliefs that determine his decisions, demonstrating no necessary connection between identity and thought. The bizarre trend of recasting religious believers as identity groups fundamentally misunderstands the nature of religious disagreement. Fundamentalist Christians aren't an ethnic group but people who hold specific beliefs about scripture, homosexuality, and Jesus's divinity. When others disagree with these beliefs, they're expressing disagreement, not prejudice. When religious arguments enter public debate, they face inherent limitations. Consider abortion: while religious groups oppose it as murder, this position doesn't require religious conviction - many atheists also oppose murder. The debate hinges on whether a fetus counts as a person, not on divine revelation. Religious arguments become problematic when they rely solely on revelation, as with opposition to homosexuality, which primarily stems from biblical prohibitions. Religion belongs in politics more than race or culture because it involves actual beliefs about what's true and right. The debate over whether America should be Christian is more worthwhile than debates over American identity, and a debate about America's worship of free markets would be better still.

Chapter 10

The Distraction of Diversity in an Unequal World

Walter Benn Michaels teaches at the University of Illinois, Chicago, earning $175,000 annually, placing him in America's top 3% of earners. His household income of $250,000 nearly puts him in the top 1%. Yet he doesn't feel rich - a common psychological phenomenon among the affluent. He experiences "legitimating disidentification" when reading New York Times articles about the super-wealthy, allowing him to think of himself as not part of the economic inequality problem. This self-deception mirrors a broader American delusion. Nearly two-thirds of young Americans believe they'll become rich despite statistical impossibility. American Idol perfectly symbolizes this mentality - offering formal equality of opportunity while contestants display what critics call "delusional self-confidence" about their chances of success. Since the book's original publication, America has become more diverse, with unexpected developments like electing its first Black president and legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. The foreign-born population has increased to an all-time high of 41.3 million, and the white percentage of the population has dropped from 67% to 62.2%. Diversity training now includes instructions about preferred gender pronouns, showing significant progress. Yet while diversity has flourished, economic conditions have worsened. Since 2005, the poor have gotten poorer (20th percentile dropping from $21,668 to $20,885) while the rich have gotten richer (90th percentile rising from $142,288 to $150,000). The 1% have seen their average income rise by 36.8% to $1,303,198, while the bottom 99% have experienced a 0.4% decline. As economic inequality rises, so does enthusiasm for addressing non-economic inequalities. Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs win diversity awards while paying enormous bonuses. Both Wall Street and Occupy Wall Street celebrate transgender rights while ignoring income redistribution. Conservative economists like Nobel Prize-winner Gary Becker distinguish between "good inequality" produced by markets and "bad inequality" from discrimination. In competitive markets, employers can't afford to indulge racial preferences - they need workers who'll work hard for little pay. The solution isn't upward mobility (which data shows is minimal in America) but organizing. Union members earn significantly more than non-union workers ($970 vs. $763 weekly median salary). When faculty at University of Illinois at Chicago unionized, lecturer salaries increased from $30,000 to $37,500. During negotiations, management quickly agreed on non-discrimination and diversity policies but fought for two years against wage increases - revealing that while discrimination is against employers' interests, paying workers less is precisely in their interest. Black people are economically worse off than ten years ago not because of increased racism, but because the last decade has been hardest on poor people, and Black people were already disproportionately poor. A serious race-blind transfer of wealth to poor people (even just a $15 minimum wage) would benefit poor Black people more than any antidiscrimination law. In a world of growing wealth gaps, our obsession with identity distracts from economic inequality. We comfort ourselves thinking racism causes American inequality because everyone can oppose racism. But capitalism, not racism, creates the vast pay disparities between caregivers and executives. Unlike white supremacy, capitalism has defenders. Any serious conversation about making America more equal must address capitalism - the biggest trouble with diversity is that it prevents us from confronting the trouble with capitalism.

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Key Themes in Trouble with Diversity

class vs identity
economic inequality distraction
critique of neoliberalism
meritocracy and diversity
racial essentialism

Quotes from Trouble with Diversity

Culture has become both a synonym for and replacement of racial identity.
Diversity gives us a vision of difference without inequality.
The problem with culture is that it's utterly dependent on race.
We're essentially endorsing a mistake.

Characters in Trouble with Diversity

Walter Benn MichaelsAuthor and literary theorist
Susie Guillory PhippsWoman who legally challenged her racial designation
Homer PlessyPlaintiff in the 1892 racial classification case
F. Scott FitzgeraldAuthor whose work is used to analyze class

About the Author

Walter Benn Michaels, author of The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality, is a prominent literary theorist and critic renowned for his incisive analyses of identity politics and socioeconomic inequality. A professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he chaired the department from 2001 to 2007, Michaels combines academic rigor with polemical clarity to challenge prevailing discourses on race, class, and neoliberalism.

His expertise in American literature and critical theory informs works like Our America: Nativism, Modernism and Pluralism and The Shape of the Signifier, which critique cultural essentialism and historicize ideological frameworks.

Michaels’ career spans decades at institutions including Johns Hopkins University and UC Berkeley, supported by fellowships from the ACLS and Princeton University. Co-author of the influential essay “Against Theory” (featured in the Norton Anthology of Literary Criticism), he extends his contrarian perspective to public debates through platforms like The American Prospect and the London Review of Books.

The Trouble with Diversity has sparked widespread academic and political dialogue since its 2006 release, solidifying Michaels’ reputation as a provocative voice in critiques of late capitalism. His 1987 study The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism remains a landmark in American literary scholarship.

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"Reading used to feel like a chore. Now it’s just part of my lifestyle."

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"Feels effortless compared to reading. I’ve finished 6 books this month already."

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"BeFreed turned my commute into learning time. 20-min podcasts are perfect for finishing books I never had time for."

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@SofiaP

"BeFreed replaced my podcast queue. Imagine Spotify for books — that’s it. 🙌"

@Jaded_Falcon

201

"It is great for me to learn something from the book without reading it."

@OojasSalunke

"The themed book list podcasts help me connect ideas across authors—like a guided audio journey."

@Leo, Law Student, UPenn

483

"Makes me feel smarter every time before going to work"

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Chapter 10

Trouble with Diversity

OverviewOverview of Trouble with Diversity

One book. Many ways to hear it.

When Diversity Obscures Inequality: The Trouble with Our Cultural Fixation

The False Promise of Race and the Distraction of Culture

See every word as you hear it

The Scientific Fiction of Race and Our Cultural Attachment to It

The Seduction of Cultural Identity

Get more out of Trouble with Diversity

Victimhood Hierarchies and the Invisibility of Class

The Myth of Educational Meritocracy

See every word as you hear it

The Contradiction of Equal Opportunity

The Politics of Identity vs. Ideology

Get more out of Trouble with Diversity

Religion, Belief, and the Public Sphere

The Distraction of Diversity in an Unequal World

You made it to the end of Trouble with Diversity

Key Themes in Trouble with Diversity

Quotes from Trouble with Diversity

Characters in Trouble with Diversity

About the Author

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1,000,000+ curious minds.

1,000,000+ curious minds.

One book. Many ways to hear it.

When Diversity Obscures Inequality: The Trouble with Our Cultural Fixation

The False Promise of Race and the Distraction of Culture

See every word as you hear it

The Scientific Fiction of Race and Our Cultural Attachment to It

The Seduction of Cultural Identity

Get more out of Trouble with Diversity

Victimhood Hierarchies and the Invisibility of Class

The Myth of Educational Meritocracy

See every word as you hear it

The Contradiction of Equal Opportunity

The Politics of Identity vs. Ideology

Get more out of Trouble with Diversity

Religion, Belief, and the Public Sphere

The Distraction of Diversity in an Unequal World

You made it to the end of Trouble with Diversity

Users also liked

Discover more

Overview of Trouble with Diversity