Theology and Evolutionary Psychology, Interlude: On the Sweet Tooth, Identity, and Justice

Over the weekend I had been reading Walter Benn Michaels' book The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality.

In The Trouble with Diversity, Michaels offers an interesting thesis about something he feels has gone awry in our country. His thesis reminded me of some of my comments regarding the Magic Moral Number 150. So, I'd like to share Michaels' thesis with you and then connect it to what I've been saying about cognitive sweet tooths and evolutionary psychology.

Michaels feels that the liberal left has made a mistake. Specifically, he feels that our current focus on identity over equality is stalling efforts for a truly transformative politics. Generally, identity--who we are--dominates the American political and cultural conversation. The most salient marker of identity is generally race and ethnicity. Consequently, America and its institutions of higher education tend to focus of issues of diversity. Achieving diversity is the great moral and political goal.

Michaels claims that this focus on identity and, hence, diversity, is muddled and woefully off target. For Michaels the issue isn't diversity but equality. For Michaels the salient issue should not be race but class. The real problem in American is not race, its poverty and the shrinking of the middle class. It is true that race and ethnicity are correlated with socioeconomic status, but this only confuses the political conversation. You don't address poverty by celebrating diversity. As an example, Michaels points to post-Katrina reactions. Most of those who bore the brunt of Katrina's devastation were poor blacks. For Michaels the important issue was that these people were poor. But for the media and most political pundits the talking point was race. But Katrina wasn't about race, it was about class. Thus America, on a wide scale, missed the point.

Let's hear some from Michaels from his first chapter. On his main thesis:

"[My] argument, in its simplest form, will be that we love race--we love identity--because we don't love class. We love thinking that the differences that divide us are not the differences between those of us who have money and those who don't but are instead the differences between those of us who are black and those who are white or Asian or Latino or whatever. A world where some of us don't have enough money is a world where the differences between us present a problem: the need to get rid of inequality or to justify it. A world where some of us are black and some of us are white--or biracial or Native American or transgendered--is a world where the differences between us present a solution: appreciating our diversity. So we like to talk about the differences we can appreciate, and we don't like to talk about the ones we can't. Indeed, we don't even like to acknowledge that they exist." p. 6

Regarding the misstep of the American Left:

"Giving priority to issues like affirmative action and committing itself to the celebration of difference, the intellectual left has responded to the increase in economic inequality by insisting on the importance of cultural identity. So for thirty years, while the gap between the rich and poor has grown larger, we've been urged to respect people's identities--as if the problem of poverty would be solved if we just appreciated the poor. From the economic standpoint, however, what poor people want is not to contribute to diversity but to minimize their contribution to it--they want to stop being poor." p. 7

On the goals of his book:

The goal of the book is that "by shifting our focus from cultural diversity to economic equality [we can] help alter the political terrain of contemporary American life." p. 7

Summing up his first chapter:

"...we should not allow--or we should not continue to allow--the phantasm of respect for difference to take the place of that commitment to economic justice. In short, this book is an effort to move beyond diversity--to make it clear that the commitment to diversity is at best a distraction and at worst an essentially reactionary position--and to help but equality back on the national agenda." p. 16

This is an interesting stew of ideas. Rarely do you hear an intellectual who is fighting against poverty be so negative about cultural and ethic diversity. Those two commitments tend to move together in the current political conversation.

I'm intrigued by Michaels' thesis and feel that he may have a point. Is the focus on diversity confusing us? Causing to miss the real problem, poverty and inequality? What do you think?

As you think about that question I'd like to suggest a connection between Michaels' diagnosis and evolutionary psychology.

Michaels believes that the focus on identity (currently dominated by issues of race) is due to the fact that issues of identity have easy solutions (i.e., celebrate diversity). In contrast, he suggests that we ignore issue of equality because those solutions are hard and troublesome. I agree. But I also think that evolutionary psychology offers another, complementary perspective.

Specifically, we can SEE race. It's harder to see class. Thus, the focus on race is another a cognitive sweet tooth, an evolved mental bias.

Let me explain. Many evolutionary psychologists believe that our minds are equipped with social recognition devices. That is, it is adaptive to be able to sort familials from non-familials and friends from foes. Further, as we'll cover later in this series, it is also adaptive to recognize exchange partners and to recall the faces of those who have cheated you in past exchanges. Neuroscientific evidence supports the existence of this social recognition device in that we know that there is a specific sector of the brain exclusively devoted to the memory of faces. Damage to this area leads to prosopagnosia ("face blindness").

My point is that as the brain scans the environment it is sorting people into two categories: Friend versus Stranger. Obviously, in this task the brain is drawn to salient visual and auditory cues (e.g., skin color and accent) just like it is drawn to sugar.

So, what I'm suggesting is that one other reason that race may insert itself into political conversations at the potential expense of more important concerns (poverty) is that brains are drawn to observable Stranger/Friend signals. As I said, we can SEE race. It's harder to see class.

To conclude, here are some discussion questions for churches:

1. Are churches also missing the point, focusing overmuch on diversity rather than on equality?

2. If the brain cues more easily off of visual stimuli, are churches working to make class more VISIBLE so that the church isn't trapped or sidetracked by yet other sweet tooth of the mind?