What Matters
Walter Benn Michaels

* Who Cares about the White Working Class? edited by Kjartan Páll Sveinsson

In the US, there is (or was) an organisation called Love Makes a Family. It was founded in 1999 to support the right of gay couples to adopt children and it played a central role in supporting civil unions. A few months ago, its director, Ann Stanback, announced that, having ‘achieved its goals’, Love Makes a Family would be ceasing operations at the end of this year, and that she would be stepping down to spend more time with her wife, Charlotte. Our ‘core purpose’, she said, has been ‘accomplished’.

It’s possible of course that this declaration of mission accomplished will prove to be as ill-advised as some others have been in the last decade. Gay marriage is legal in Connecticut, where Love Makes a Family is based, but it’s certainly not legal everywhere in the US. No one, however, would deny that the fight for gay rights has made extraordinary strides in the 40 years since Stonewall. And progress in combating homophobia has been accompanied by comparable progress in combating racism and sexism. Although the occasional claim that the election of President Obama has ushered us into a post-racial society is obviously wrong, it’s fairly clear that the country that’s just elected a black president (and that produced so many votes for the presidential candidacy of a woman) is a lot less racist and sexist than it used to be.

But it would be a mistake to think that because the US is a less racist, sexist and homophobic society, it is a more equal society. In fact, in certain crucial ways it is more unequal than it was 40 years ago. No group dedicated to ending economic inequality would be thinking today about declaring victory and going home. In 1969, the top quintile of American wage-earners made 43 per cent of all the money earned in the US; the bottom quintile made 4.1 per cent. In 2007, the top quintile made 49.7 per cent; the bottom quintile 3.4. And while this inequality is both raced and gendered, it’s less so than you might think. White people, for example, make up about 70 per cent of the US population, and 62 per cent of those are in the bottom quintile. Progress in fighting racism hasn’t done them any good; it hasn’t even been designed to do them any good. More generally, even if we succeeded completely in eliminating the effects of racism and sexism, we would not thereby have made any progress towards economic equality. A society in which white people were proportionately represented in the bottom quintile (and black people proportionately represented in the top quintile) would not be more equal; it would be exactly as unequal. It would not be more just; it would be proportionately unjust.

An obvious question, then, is how we are to understand the fact that we’ve made so much progress in some areas while going backwards in others. And an almost equally obvious answer is that the areas in which we’ve made progress have been those which are in fundamental accord with the deepest values of neoliberalism, and the one where we haven’t isn’t. We can put the point more directly by observing that increasing tolerance of economic inequality and increasing intolerance of racism, sexism and homophobia – of discrimination as such – are fundamental characteristics of neoliberalism. Hence the extraordinary advances in the battle against discrimination, and hence also its limits as a contribution to any left-wing politics. The increased inequalities of neoliberalism were not caused by racism and sexism and won’t be cured by – they aren’t even addressed by – anti-racism or anti-sexism.

My point is not that anti-racism and anti-sexism are not good things. It is rather that they currently have nothing to do with left-wing politics, and that, insofar as they function as a substitute for it, can be a bad thing. American universities are exemplary here: they are less racist and sexist than they were 40 years ago and at the same time more elitist. The one serves as an alibi for the other: when you ask them for more equality, what they give you is more diversity. The neoliberal heart leaps up at the sound of glass ceilings shattering and at the sight of doctors, lawyers and professors of colour taking their place in the upper middle class. Whence the many corporations which pursue diversity almost as enthusiastically as they pursue profits, and proclaim over and over again not only that the two are compatible but that they have a causal connection – that diversity is good for business. But a diversified elite is not made any the less elite by its diversity and, as a response to the demand for equality, far from being left-wing politics, it is right-wing politics.

The recent furore over the arrest for ‘disorderly conduct’ of Henry Louis Gates helps make this clear. Gates, as one of his Harvard colleagues said, is ‘a famous, wealthy and important black man’, a point Gates himself tried to make to the arresting officer – the way he put it was: ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with.’ But, despite the helpful hint, the cop failed to recognise an essential truth about neoliberal America: it’s no longer enough to kowtow to rich white people; now you have to kowtow to rich black people too. The problem, as a sympathetic writer in the Guardian put it, is that ‘Gates’s race snuffed out his class status,’ or as Gates said to the New York Times, ‘I can’t wear my Harvard gown everywhere.’ In the bad old days this situation almost never came up – cops could confidently treat all black people, indeed, all people of colour, the way they traditionally treated poor white people. But now that we’ve made some real progress towards integrating our elites, you need to step back and take the time to figure out ‘who you’re messing with’. You need to make sure that nobody’s class status is snuffed out by his race.

In the wake of Gates’s arrest, among the hundreds of people protesting the injustice of racial profiling, a white cardiologist married to a black man put the point best when she lamented that even in the ‘diverse area’ where she lives (Hyde Park, Obama’s old neighbourhood) she’ll hear people nervously say, ‘Look at those black guys coming towards us,’ to which she replies: ‘Yes, but they’re wearing lacrosse shorts and Calvin Klein jeans. They’re probably the kids of the professor down the street.’ ‘You have to be able to discern differences between people,’ she went on to say. ‘It’s very frustrating.’ The differences she means, of course, are between rich kids and poor kids, and the frustration she feels is with people who don’t understand that class is supposed to trump race. But while it’s easy to sympathise with that frustration – rich black kids are infinitely less likely to mug you than poor black kids or, for that matter, poor white kids – it’s a lot harder to see it as the expression of a progressive politics.

Nevertheless, that seems to be the way we do see it. The neoliberal ideal is a world where rich people of all races and sexes can happily enjoy their wealth, and where the injustices produced not by discrimination but by exploitation – there are fewer poor people (7 per cent) than black people (9 per cent) at Harvard, and Harvard’s not the worst – are discreetly sent around to the back door. Thus everyone’s outraged that a black professor living on prosperous Ware St (and renting a summer vacation ‘manse’ on Martha’s Vineyard that he ‘jokingly’ calls ‘Tara’) can be treated with disrespect; no one’s all that outraged by the social system that created the gap between Ware St or ‘Tara’ and the places where most Americans live. Everyone’s outraged by the fact that Gates can be treated so badly; nobody by the fact that he and the rest of the top 10 per cent of American wage-earners have been doing so well. Actually, it’s just the opposite. Liberals – especially white liberals – are thrilled by Gates’s success, since it testifies to the legitimacy of their own: racism didn’t make us all this money, we earned it!

Thus the primacy of anti-discrimination not only performs the economic function of making markets more efficient, it also performs the therapeutic function of making those of us who have benefited from those markets sleep better at night. And, perhaps more important, it has, ‘for a long time’, as Wendy Bottero says in her contribution to the recent Runnymede Trust collection Who Cares about the White Working Class?, also performed the intellectual function of focusing social analysis on what she calls ‘questions of racial or sexual identity’ and on ‘cultural differences’ instead of on ‘the way in which capitalist economies create large numbers of low-wage, low-skill jobs with poor job security’. The message of Who Cares about the White Working Class?, however, is that class has re-emerged: ‘What we learn here’, according to the collection’s editor, Kjartan Páll Sveinsson, is that ‘life chances for today’s children are overwhelmingly linked to parental income, occupations and educational qualifications – in other words, class.’

This assertion, unremarkable as it may seem, represents a substantial advance over multiculturalist anti-racism, since the logic of anti-racism requires only the correction of disparities within classes rather than between them. If about 1.5 per cent of your population is of Pakistani descent, then if 1.5 per cent of every income quintile is Pakistani, your job is done. The fact that the top quintile is four times better off than the bottom quintile – the advantage the children of rich Pakistanis would have over the children of poor ones – is not your problem. Which is why, in a society like Britain, whose GINI coefficient – the standard measure of income inequality – is the highest in the EU, the ambition to eliminate racial disparities rather than income inequality itself functions as a form of legitimation rather than as a critique. Which is also why, when an organisation like the Runnymede Trust, which has for years been devoted to promoting ‘a successful multi-ethnic Britain by addressing issues of racial equality and discrimination against minority communities’, starts addressing itself to class, it’s undergone a real change. Racial equality requires respect for racial difference; class equality requires the elimination of class difference.

In the event, however, what Who Cares about the White Working Class? actually provides is less an alternative to neoliberal multiculturalism than an extension and ingenious refinement of it. Those writing in this collection understand the ‘re-emergence of class’ not as a function of the increasing injustice of class (when Thatcher took office, the GINI score was 0.25; now it’s 0.36, the highest the UK has ever recorded) but as a function of the increasing injustice of ‘classism’. What outrages them, in other words, is not the fact of class difference but the ‘scorn’ and ‘contempt’ with which the lower class is treated.

You get a perfect sense of how this works from Beverley Skeggs’s analysis of a story told by one of her working-class research subjects about a trip she and her friends took to Kendals in Manchester: ‘You know, where the really posh food is, and we were laughing about all the chocolates, and how many we could eat – if we could afford them – and this woman she just looked at us. If looks could kill . . . It was like it was her place, and we didn’t belong there.’ The point Skeggs makes is that ‘the gaze that embodies the symbolic reading of the women makes them feel “out of place”, thereby generating a sense of where their “place” should be,’ while her more general point is that ‘the middle class’ should be ‘held accountable for the levels of symbolic violence they enact in daily encounters’ with the lower classes.

The focus of her outrage (indeed, insofar as we can tell from the story, the focus of the women’s own outrage) is not the fact that some people can afford the chocolates and others can’t, but that the ones who can are mean to the ones who can’t. And this represents something of an innovation in left politics. While everyone has always disapproved of adding insult to injury, it’s traditionally been the right that’s sought to treat the insult as if it were the injury.

It’s thus a relevant fact about Who Cares about the White Working Class? that Ferdinand Mount, who once advised Thatcher, is twice cited and praised here for condemning the middle class’s bad behaviour in displaying its open contempt for ‘working-class cultures’. He represents an improvement over those who seek to blame the poor for their poverty and who regard the culture of poverty rather than the structure of capitalism as the problem. That is the view of what we might call right-wing neoliberalism and, from the standpoint of what we might call left-wing neoliberalism, it’s nothing but the expression of class prejudice. What left neoliberals want is to offer some ‘positive affirmation for the working classes’. They want us to go beyond race to class, but to do so by treating class as if it were race and to start treating the white working class with the same respect we would, say, the Somalis – giving ‘positive value and meaning to both “workingclassness” and ethnic diversity’. Where right neoliberals want us to condemn the culture of the poor, left neoliberals want us to appreciate it.

The great virtue of this debate is that on both sides inequality gets turned into a stigma. That is, once you start redefining the problem of class difference as the problem of class prejudice – once you complete the transformation of race, gender and class into racism, sexism and classism – you no longer have to worry about the redistribution of wealth. You can just fight over whether poor people should be treated with contempt or respect. And while, in human terms, respect seems the right way to go, politically it’s just as empty as contempt.

This is pretty obvious when it comes to class. Kjartan Páll Sveinsson declares that ‘the white working classes are discriminated against on a range of different fronts, including their accent, their style, the food they eat, the clothes they wear’ – and it’s no doubt true. But the elimination of such discrimination would not alter the nature of the system that generates ‘the large numbers of low-wage, low-skill jobs with poor job security’ described by Bottero. It would just alter the technologies used for deciding who had to take them. And it’s hard to see how even the most widespread social enthusiasm for tracksuits and gold chains could make up for the disadvantages produced by those jobs.

Race, on the other hand, has been a more successful technology of mystification. In the US, one of the great uses of racism was (and is) to induce poor white people to feel a crucial and entirely specious fellowship with rich white people; one of the great uses of anti-racism is to make poor black people feel a crucial and equally specious fellowship with rich black people. Furthermore, in the form of the celebration of ‘identity’ and ‘ethnic diversity’, it seeks to create a bond between poor black people and rich white ones. So the African-American woman who cleans my office is supposed to feel not so bad about the fact that I make almost ten times as much money as she does because she can be confident that I’m not racist or sexist and that I respect her culture. And she’s also supposed to feel pride because the dean of our college, who makes much more than ten times what she does, is African-American, like her. And since the chancellor of our university, who makes more than 15 times what she does, is not only African-American but a woman too (the fruits of both anti-racism and anti-sexism!), she can feel doubly good about her. But, and I acknowledge that this is the thinnest of anecdotal evidence, I somehow doubt she does. If the downside of the politics of anti-discrimination is that it now functions to legitimate the increasing disparities not produced by racism or sexism, the upside is the degree to which it makes visible the fact that the increase in those disparities does indeed have nothing to do with racism or sexism. A social analyst as clear-eyed as a University of Illinois cleaning woman would start from there.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n16/mich02_.html

This made me recall this item I heard last night:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8310000/8310825.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8303000/8303229.stm

This entire show is apparently already available online to UK residents via the BBC "iPlayer."

It appears there is a whole sage of mouse and mousetrap relating to this player and the BBC's efforts to restrict the vid to UK residents - presumably so that only those who pay for the organization can benefit from access to its content.

My first couple of mild proxy attempts didn't fly. I guess I'll have to take up this challenge a little more forcefully.

Will post what to do if I find a source to figure it out and it is not too crazy complex.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nfr2h/Panorama_Undercover_Hate_on_the_Doorstep/

On edit, here is a link to the .pdf of this short work referenced in the OP (just under 2MB, 76 p.)"

http://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/publications/pdfs/WhoCaresAboutTheWhiteWorkingClass-2009.pdf

Very good...

and it was very interesting to see the look in their eyes as they grasped this issue. We have been so conditioned to not "see" this reality, that when it is pointed out it is like a slap. Everyone (at least of a certain class) knows the contentions of this piece in their very bones. There is the nod of the head and the hardening around the mouth - we live this discrimination every day of our lives and folks light up when an acknowledgment of it is made. Now, for steps beyond 'acknowledgment'...

Every single liberal issue follows the same pattern. The article describes exactly how all left wing political ideas are co-opted to advance the ruling class agenda.

Think about all of that "polite" and "civil" bs that was thrown at us here. At the same time as we were being accused of being rude, the people making the accusations were going way overboard with the rudest sort of behavior imaginable. The article explains how "politeness" - a surface "courtesy" and "kindness" and "caring" - is being used to justify oppression, to shut down the political Left, while masquerading as a battle against oppression.

What we were doing was not being "rude" but rather upsetting the liberal apple cart - we were questioning the validity and integrity of the idea that being on the political Left was a matter of making a class-based society more pleasant, nicer, more green, more stylish and pretty. It has nothing to with actually being "nice," but rather the problem was that we were challenging the idea that being "nice" to those suffering was better than fighting to alleviate the suffering. What was being threatened was class-based society, and that is what the PI members here were so frantically fighting to defend.

This is an amazing bit of pablum here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7393861

proly shudda just called anybody talkin' shit about Obama a racist and be done with it.

Patriotism just got some serious competition in the last resort contest.

For those of us who lived from the days when it was rare and noteworthy when a Black person was on TV, to see a Black man in the White House carries some powerful symbolism. The people on that thread are professional educated people of color. Some of them were always pretty conservative. Of course they identify strongly with Obama, and of course they are hyper-alert to any hint of a double standard, and there are people criticizng Obama at DU who have expressed racist ideas in the past.

But do they really believe that had, say, Edwards been elected and did the same things that Obama has done, that there would not be the same level of criticism? Or, what if Powell had run as a Republican and won and then did the same things? This all has more to do with liberal politics than it does race.

I think they are supporting what they hoped Obama would be, not what he actually is.

upwardly mobile, the status quo suits them just fine. Their world mostly is 'post-racial', except when something like the Gates affair happens, then they are outraged. If it happens in the hood, well, that's different, those people need to get them some education, mebbe at a charter school.

Should they read this I would no doubt be accused of playing the 'class card'.

Damn straight.

All I had to see was those tears coming down Reverend Jackson's face and I felt my own. It had nothing to do with Obama. I knew who he was. Still...

It occurred to me that it was the end of an era. The Civil Rights "movement" was born of the understanding that Civil Rights was a demand which crossed class lines for people of color. Even the Black Bourgeoisie (mostly a misnomer) shared a common set of demands. Of course, racist "attitudes" and racial equality were two entirely different things. The latter was primarily economic, once basic legal parity was achieved. The fiction of that equality coming "naturally", on the heels of juridical reforms, died with the death of affirmative action and economic prosperity.

For people like Obama, it was always about "attitudes", anyway. They are at the end of an era of remarkable unity and of a set of perspectives which were never defined as working class but never deviated from that class perspective, nonetheless. Now its done.

It still bugs me every time I hear "white-working-class", though. The working class ain't white... it has no "color".

Still, I get the writer's drift.

I was genuinely moved by the reaction of people of color, not only here, but internationally. I cried, even though I didn't vote for him or had any expectations (and I'm not particularly weepy). But, I don't think I was as immediately as perceptive as you. I didn't see it as an end of era, just another moment of co-optation. Now, there are AA voices that have a class analysis, and see (and have always seen) Obama for what what the Democratic Party is, but you're right. Part of the coalition that made up the CR Movement, has lost any sense beyond identity politics.

Oddly, the Immigrant Rights Movement is suffering from the same thing. Many working class Latinos can't believe Obama isn't on their side. They don't have legal parity, and may never have judicial reforms, but it won't be long until they face even more intense repression, and have to fight or leave. It's not done yet, but it's not gonna be about attitudes any time soon. Attitudes are not going to change without a fight. Who knows if it can happen. I can only hope.

Never will understand the whole thing. Don't really want to I suppose.

While you guys were cryin' I was throwing shit at the walls.

Keep on bro'

I've known, and worked with, some really old A-A guys, that were at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. Somehow, people from Birmingham in the early/mid 60s came to Cincinnati. Fred Shuttlesworth, who was a co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (even before MLK) ended up here, along with a bunch of other A-A activists. I wasn't their best friends, but, I've worked with them, and I witnessed their reaction to an event way beyond their wildest expectations. Neither they or I expected anything from Obama, but their tears touched me. They and I am throwing shit at the walls, but come on, it's gotta touch you. It never occurred to me that they were crying, because (as Anax said) it was an end to an era. Not sure if that was the case, but I am sure he's right that that was the reason for MY reaction.

Maybe either you and/or anax can explain to me what you guys are referring to as "an end of an era." Not sure what you guys are saying here. My predisposition on this is to disagree with that comment but maybe we are talking about different things.

My initial reaction, this was how I was thinking about this before Obama was the nomination, was that the election of Obama would be the worst possible scenario for blacks in this country. I recall making one satirical comment about the "dream ticket" for the multicultural Empire would be if Obama were Prez and Hillary were VP so as to display to the world how all inclusive is the slaughterhouse.

Again maybe we are talking about different things here but I see it (The Obama phenomenon) as the clever disguise for the perpetuation of this "era."

Every time that there was an anti-war march against the Vietnam War in an urban setting - Washington, New York, Chicago - the demonstrators could count on being put up in black churches. Every time the skirmishing with police entered the black community, we moved onto friendly territory. Each time we tried to organize a union in a partially black workplace, we inevitably spoke at black fraternal organizations, which, though they were nominally composed of "professionals", nevertheless could be counted on to support any unionizing effort. It was entirely possible in the black community to be elected to office, despite and often because, the candidate had been a Black Panther, a Nationalist... even a Black Communist. In the black community, it was difficult to isolate, not just Reverend Jackson or Al Sharpton, but even Reverend Farrakhan. Malcolm remains, even today, not just as icon but as a genuine hero... as does DuBois... and Marcus Garvey.

The Civil Rights Movement, and the lead-up to it, produced a progressive community... an analog of the radical German workers of the Civil War or the "foreign" workers at the origins of the trade union movement... but, even more so. Certainly, the movement combined the demands of the black middle class with the demands of black workers (though it might have often fought only for the former) because the circumstances demanded it. More than this, though, the operative slogans were for "equality". Even the open sellouts (Bayard Rustin or Whitney Young or Andy Young) had to phrase their opportunist bullshit in "progressive", or even "radical" terms.

Of course, what I described above was unstable... was eroding at the edges from the very beginning. Of course it was undermined by "evangelical Christianity" which allowed the opportunist clerics of the black churches to become more "Christian" than black, and it was undermined by the Democratic Party dole, and it was abandoned by a long stream of celebrities. And the movement "opened up" opportunities in suburban life even as the black masses sunk further...

Still, the fabric of political unity remained, and that unity was unique in American History... though it was already headed in the same direction as the passenger pigeon.

The election of Barak Obama finishes it. It will bring about the disintegration of that community into its class components, but not in a way that quickly helps anybody's movement.

It was a very clear premise: "It is impossible for a black person to become President of the United States."

The election of Barak Obama proves the premise even as it appears to prove the opposite.

I know Reverend Jackson. If you don't think those were bittersweet tears, take my word for it.

"It was a very clear premise: "It is impossible for a black person to become President of the United States."

The election of Barak Obama proves the premise even as it appears to prove the opposite."

that will reverberate in my head all day...

I'm talking about an era where the solidarity of African-Americans was a prime driver of radical political activity in this country.

Like Anax said, the "era" was marked by African-American leadership/support for all matters of Left struggles, but most importantly, the Civil Rights Movement had characteristics of a national liberation struggle. Class distinctions became blurred and there was a rich narrative of liberation that touched every fiber of black life with enough left over to inspire a couple of generations of student and working class white radicals.

The Civil Rights Movement had changed, long ago, with the acceptance of black elites into the Democratic Party, the emergence of a black middle class and some success in legal reform. And, in my opinion, overwhelming repression of black activists by the state, coupled with preemptive strikes through The War on Drugs and the militarization of urban policing after MLK's death.

The result is the isolation of many previously radical black institutions (like the church) from Left political activity, and from lives devastated by poverty. Yet, the Movement remains alive as distant memory for many A-A working class people. It has always seemed they may find their way back to it. Obama's election closes the door to that possibility. The way forward most certainly will be through class struggle, not national liberation. The black elite will not be allies (no matter how transient) and the fight will be even harder.

That you don't go for titles, buts hes always the Reverend Jackson to you.

I have a question. How much of a black "middle class" truthfully was there? To me it seems like that is almost a misnomer. I have no doubt there were plenty of aspirants ("buppies" as I've seen then derogatorily called) but how it still perplexes me just a bit.

Also, been meaning to ask about Al Sharpton. Have heard very, very few people black people speak positively of him or even neutrally for that matter. Most recall his enthusiastic participation right from the start in the "War on Drugs". I realize there are "levels" and "degrees" of "betrayal, but that seems particularly egregious.

urgency and impatience and they are not the same thing. You weren't going to convince people on election night that Obama was really the Second Coming (of George Bush). Doesn't mean you couldn't rant and rave to that effect, but its also important to remember the bigger picture, and not just what it means/will mean but also what it meant. Those three are not discrete moments that exist in isolation from each other..or even an independent existence separate from their own history.

I also think, from my own perspective, its much easier to think it "doen't mean anything" if you weren't there. Thats not my opinion and I think its a jaded viewpoint but if you just look at it fatalistically in the sense of "what was achieved?" it isn't hard to arrive at some variation of that conclusion.

I think Chlamor desperately wants to be heard..and while hes not wrong, hes devoted himself fully to "intensity" and that is not always what is on tap or called for. But on the other hand, "intesity" will never be the wrong response either..

I'm not 100% convinced this is a death knell by the way except in the most wistful and nostaligc sense, but you guys have a better finger on this than I do.