Wear Clean Draws  (because there’s 5 million ways to kill a ceo)

So, one of the other things I didn’t address in Walter Been Michaels’ book, The Trouble with Diversity, was the chapter, Just and Unjust Rewards. It seems to begin as an attempt disarm critics who might argue that he is singling out race when it comes to diversity. To really be fair, and not come off as racist obsessed with race, you should really look at all aspects of diversity: gender, disability, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and so forth. right?

That’s why he starts the chapter with this: “The commitment to diversity shouldn’t be and hasn’t been limited to the phantasm we call races.”(p 111)

He does a feeble job of pursuing that goal because it turns out that gender is just a springboard to talk about … race. Discussing gender for about 8 pages of 30, he concludes with 3 paragraphs on domestic violence which magically leads to this Road Runner (beep beep) of a segue:

“So domestic abuse is essentially a poor people’s problem, like bad schooling and inadequate health care. Rich people’s problems involve things like having to work very long hours and having to move every few years to keep climbing the corporate ladder. One of the featured couples in the New York Times series “Class Matters” complains of ’stress and anomie,’ and the demands not just on the husband’s time but also on the wife’s.”

Discussing the couple featured in the Times series, allows him to latch on to the husband’s lament that his neighborhood isn’t as diverse as his workplace which turns into a reason to — oh goodie! — talk about race which, for Michaels, means thinking about how the Times pieces on class was published the same day as an article about a diversity day sponsored by the CEO of a top firm, and thinking about that makes Michaels think about banks which, conveniently, makes him think about how banks happily apologize for their profits from slavery since it’s easier to say “We’re sorry” than to pay reparations, though Michaels assures everyone that he’s not supporting reparations since it would reinscribe the salience of race, which would be a bad thing and to make that argument Michaels offers up a spirited defense of equality of opportunity in order to undo the “histories of accumulation” and, although a society based on equality of outcomes might accomplish the same thing, it still wouldn’t be a society that rewarded hard work and talent and as we all know that would be unAmerican *deep breath* QED. Next.

I purposefully wrote that as a run on sentence to illustrate the way Michaels argues. It’s a stream of consciousness style where he moves from one point to another, the constant movement inspired by his amusement at his own cleverness. As you hurry along, backing away from the steamroller of anything-goes-stream-of-consciousness, you aren’t encouraged to think too hard about whether it’s a cohesive argument or illustrates his thesis.

This chapter is an excellent example. Why should a discussion of domestic violence lead directly to a discussion of people featured in a NYT piece about class? Well, it happens that way because Michaels is talking about how DV is a poor person’s problem. If the poor have problems, then the rich have problems. You’ve heard that expression, right? Rich people’s problems. That makes him think of the Times piece where a fairly well-to-do couple talk about their problems — rich people’s problems! — such as lack of time. Ah! Rich people’s problems are so insignificant. And on it goes.

(Another thing to be explored: the way Michaels constantly sets up Rich v. Poor and then ridicules the rich. I have no idea what audience he wants to appeal to with that technique. *rolls eyes*)

If he starts out a chapter claiming that he’s going to show that gender issues distract from class issues and ends up spending more than 2/3 of the chapter talking about how race distracts us from class, that’s all fine as long as one idea led to another. You can see how one thing led to another right? Who cares if the chapter has no thesis, that it seemed as if it were going to be one thing, and yet ends up being something else entirely. What’s important is that you’ve been having The Walter Benn Michaels Experience!

In a chapter that that started off appearing to be a demonstration of *why* he wasn’t singling out race, gender merits 1/3 of the chapter. The rest is about Michaels’ favorite topic: race. Well, perhaps we can be grateful that the hypothetical children Michaels uses are girl children. I suppose maybe I should count that as evidence that Michaels is able to think of something other than race in this chapter.

In the 8 pages that actually are about gender, he analyzes three issues: a sex discrimination lawsuit against Morgan Stanley, a sex discrimination lawsuit against Walmart [2], and domestic violence. I reckon he picks domestic violence for the rhetorical effect. After all, it’s also fish-barrel-smoking gun to see pay discrimination as mainly an economic issue. Domestic violence, though? The connection isn’t so easy to make — at least that is what Mr 3 Names believes most people will respond. Delighted to enlighten the benighted, he points to a paper on inequities in the provision of domestic violence services to women.

He uses it to argue that, whereas people have argued that domestic violence occurs at all levels of society, this is a myth. Domestic violence is *really* an issue of class. Well, gosh. Shocking. Anyone who had one clue about feminist scholarship on domestic violence would understand that poverty is an important factor albeit not the only factor. Feminists have found it important to stress that while economic factors play a role, domestic violence isn’t *confined* to the poor or lower strata. For some reason, Michaels singled out the word confined, putting quotes around it. I’m not sure if he’s troubled or why he might be, but the reason feminists have stressed that DV isn’t confined to the poor is to help alleviate the stigma attached to DV. When people think it’s a pathology of poverty, they are ashamed to report the crimes because they don’t want to be seen as a victim living in a trailer park or the projects.

Since Michaels is either unschooled in such issues or would prefer to ignore them, he sallies forth unmoved by the need for subtlety. He’s especially unmoved since he wants to point out, repeatedly, that such things as stigma, disrespect, and the bigoted stereotypes associated with poverty and class are really really really insignificant when compared to lack of money. [3]

Initially, I hadn’t had time to read the paper. Tonight I just glanced at it and I burst out laughing upon reading the introduction. Michaels marshals the paper as evidence that the poor don’t get as many services as they ought to. Yep, that is what the paper is about. But he also tries to claim that *the study* shows that domestic violence rates are higher among the poor.

But the study doesn’t not show that. instead, the study draws on research findings from an existing and ample literature on the relationship between poverty, income, and DV. In other words, this is a finding that is widely discussed — and debated (see paper linked below). This isn’t anything that the paper, itself, discovers. But Michales would have you believe as much and that he, Michaels, has been the vessel of enlightenment.

Of course, had he consulted the lit, he would have discovered the problem with such statistics, which the authors themselves note:

Of course, all of these studies are based on surveys, so if certain populations are systematically less likely to report, we cannot draw definitive conclusions regarding their rates of abuse.

Additionally, with regard to the crime statistics cited in the paper, it is frequently noted that the numbers over-represent the poor since the poor are forced to use state services and are more vulnerable to police and social service surveillance techniques.

When DV happens in the homes of those who are better off, they keep it out of the hands of the police and government surveillance agencies whenever possible. Instead, they can afford to deal with the problem through other less public mechanisms — such as depositing their problems with a private physician, on a psychiatrist’s or therapist’s couch, or in with an attorney and divorce court instead of turning to a shelter or clinic.

I’m not saying that poverty has no relationship to domestic violence. I am saying that Michaels isn’t interested in carefully making his way through a tradition of scholarly research. He’s only interested in cherry picking through whatever has conveniently landed in front of his face.

This selectivity is also evident in his use of a quote from Kerby Anderson. According to Michaels, Anderson, “in his inventory of mistaken beliefs about deomestic violence,” says that “in reality…victims of domestic violence come from all walks of life’” Michaels doesn’t tell us why Anderson is the definitive source to turn to. Anderson is a “columnist and religious leader” according to Michaels. But why do we have reason to think that Anderson’s views are representative of a gender analysis of domestic violence — which he is ostensibly criticizing.

Why not the department of Heath and Human Services, which is the source for this page, the first hit on the search for “domestic violence facts”? Might it be that the fact sheet actually states the economic factors are among the root causes of DV and violence? Naw! That might mean that, once again, Michaels cherry picks his evidence. http://www.athealth.com/Consumer/Disorders/DomViolFacts.html

Even when you look for domestic violence myths, the search results reveal that there is a law firm page that lists the Kerby Anderson myths, a couple of DV web sites that do so; However, there are also DV web sites that debunk the myth that economic factors aren’t salient in domestic abuse. As another instance, there is this Boston University page which says which maintains:

Fact: Domestic violence occurs at all levels of society, regardless of their social, economic, racial or cultural backgrounds.

Researchers and service providers have found, however, that economic and social factors can have a significant impact on how people respond to violent incidents and what kind of help they seek. Affluent people can usually afford private help - doctors, lawyers and counselors while people with fewer financial resources (i.e., those belonging to a lower economic class or a minority group) tend to call the police or other public agencies. These agencies are often the only available source of statistics on domestic violence, and consequently, lower class and minority communities tend to be overrepresented in those figures, creating a distorted image of the problem.

so, once again, Michaels is simply cherry picking to find support for his argument which is what after all? That a gender analysis is superfluous when it comes to domestic violence. Instead, we only have to look at class. Apparently, what that means, though this goes unstated, is that if you got rid of poverty or economic hardship, domestic violence would go away. Is that it?

But what actually made me laugh, was that the paper’s abstract immediately undermines Michaels own work:

. Specifically, counties with poorer, less educated, and more black women are significantly less likely to provide such services. Not only does this raise issues of equity, but effectiveness is also not achieved given that women with these characteristics are the most likely to be victimized.

In other words, the authors refuse to separate race from class from gender in their analysis. And yet, Michaels uses their paper to insist that DV is ultimately a “poor people’s problem.”

Additionally, although Michaels likes to focus on the fact that DV rates are “7 times greater” among the poor than the well-to-do, the same DOJ research which generated that stat also generated this one: “Black females experienced intimate partner violence at a rate 35% higher than that of white females, and about 22 times the rate of women of other races.” (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/ipv.txt)

Had he cared to consult even only the executive summary of the paper’s findings, Michaels would have learned that the numbers actually undermine his thesis. [4]

I’ma gonna go read more of this paper, just for fun, because I have no doubt that the rest of their analysis will undermine Mr 3 Names’ claims.

NB: This paper provides a nuanced discussion of the issues involved in DV statistics.

[1] I should note that, in Michaels’ words, the “idea of equality of opportunity” (my emphasis) will undo the “histories of accumulation.” it’s not that the practices involved in instantiating equality of opportunity will do so, no. Rather, it’s the idea.

[2] Especially fascinating is Michaels attack on pay discrimination lawsuit at Wal-Mart. Apparently, the only thing that mattered there was the pay inequality. Michaels seems to have forgotten that there’s more to the issue than pay, as Liza Featherstone points out in this interview about her book, Selling women Short. See more of my criticisms here, It’s an either/or world, man, don’t trouble yourself

[3] Of course, we won’t talk about how his analysis, focused as it is on the U.S., forces us to think only in terms of stark, absolute poverty. His analysis doesn’t allow us to think about people who are not impoverished but nevertheless face economic struggles. They have the basic necessities and then some; they may even have mortgage and a couple of cars, not unlike they people in the study on Obamacare (the Baucus plan) mentioned in an earlier post. A discussion for later, then, is the tendency Michaels has to focus our attention on the extremes, so that we talk about the poor and the rich, and forget about those in the vast in-between — a place where things like stigma, respect, shame, and so forth may just weigh heavily on those against whom they are targeted. But more, a place where we can start to see how economic exploitation is not only legitimated but made to work quite smoothly via social structural oppression.

[4] We won’t talk about their discussion of the fact that, when it comes to gender inequality, women often don’t report because they make so much less than their male partners that they don’t feel they can leave the relationship. This would probably make Michaels’ head explode since it would require having to think about income inequality precisely AS a gender issue: the systematic gender inequality where women are systematically earning less than men because the occupations they typically fill are systematically paid less than the occupations men typically fill. I mean, I don’t know why I’m talking to Michaels about this. By his own admission,he makes 2.5 x the salary of his wife. Does he ever ask himself why that is? Or if we might find similar disparities as a general trend between het couples?

* (the original search phrase: http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&source=hp&q=%22abuse+come+from+lower+income+families%22&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=2cca7b2e99206b9c)