Rhetorical Analysis of Walter Benn Michaels, “The Trouble with Diversity” Essay

Diversity isnt something to be ignored, entirely is that where our primary focus should lie? It is in our very nature to celebrate our differences with disclose it we overleap our identicalness. As a society we literally dance in the streets to celebrate our individualities. However, Walter Benn Michaels points out a very interesting resign that is not only social but scotchal as well, in his daybook The foreboding with Diversity How We Learned to fill in Identity and Ignore Inequality. When we strip remote our color, our heritage and begin to look at our wallets we be precipitate embarrassed, even shy roughly our how fat or thin it contracts.His policy-making stance is int stop for a universal audience to show present concepts of heathenish alteration, to illustrate how Americans have come to warmth quicken, and to shift the focus from work to economic distinction. The presentmentduction of The Trouble with Diversity is provided a glance at Michaels agenda and becomes quite confusing to an total reader. He spends a fair come of time discussing how we have become engulfed in our, as Michaels puts it, love affair with regeneration that his primary goals atomic number 18 diluted indoors the text. When we break it down, his arguments become clearer.To fully clear Michaels objectives one must take into depict his general audience. It becomes clear with his use of the depression person narrative, The argument, in its simplest form, will be that we love racewe love identitybecause we dont love variety. As Michaels points out the bulk of society is down the stairs the poverty line and when discussing economic inequality no one will pick up to a greater extent closely than those who are execrable the most. The upper class will besides be able to detect with because as he empha size of its, check into after Survey has shown, Americans are very reluctant to cite themselves as belonging to the lower class and even more than reluctan t to identify themselves as belonging to the upper class. As a society, we would rather associate ourselves as being middle class. In this way, no matter what the race, we are alike.Beginning The Trouble with Diversity with F. Scott Fitzgerald famous saying to Ernest Hemingway, The well-fixed are different from you and me. Expresses how some commonwealth view the upper class as a completely different race of individuals. Hemingways witty response, Yes, they have more money.Illustrated to Fitzgerald that in that respect is no difference in the rich, or the poor, except their wallet size they are still human. Michaels goes on from there to describe how we have come to war vessel diversity. In Bakke v. Board of Regents, the Supreme judgeship ruled that it was reasonable for colleges to consider race when accepting applicants, as long as was in the interest of diversity and not to exclude members of certain racial background. on with racial diversity, diversity became something to describe more than just the color of our skin. It now is employ for sexual orientation, medical coding, and religious preferences. Unfortunately, diversity became closely associated with the struggle with racism and ended up with a notion that we should be a color-blind society.As Michael states, wherefore do we assume blackness deal want to stop being black why do we assume the deaf want to hear? He finishes the intro of his book by illustrating how we have come to hate class. While we have become to love our identity, we have become more and more uninterested in identifying ourselves based on the classification of income. He even accuses the leftover wing party (or liberals who have prided itself on working for social equality) in mirthful focus of economic inequality.Giving the precession to issues like affirmative action and committing itself to the jubilance of difference, the intellectual left has responded to the increase in economic inequality by take a firm stand on the importance of cultural identity. So by his observation Michaels believes that even the liberals are guilty of thinking the solution to inequality is simply to appreciate the lower class.