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27 Chapter 2 The Mainstreaming of Intersectionality: Doing Identity Politics in a Diversity Culture A song by Le Tigre, a popular feminist techno-punk band based in New York, is titled, “They Want Us to Make a Symphony out of the Sound of Women Swallowing Their Tongues.” It begins with a gentle male voice asking a young woman what possible obstacles women still face after so many gains have been made by the feminist movement. For the entire remainder of the song, different young women swallow their tongues in attempt to answer, their voices stop and start, they stutter and fail to articulate any complete words until the song screeches to an end. It is a difficult question to answer, in part because there are, of course, so many answers. The song comments on the current state of the feminist movement, particularly as it exists in relation to a dominant culture that resists gender equality primarily by insisting that it has already been achieved. This dynamic, not unique to feminism, is an obstacle also faced by the racial justice movement and, to a lesser extent, the queer movement. Identity movements in the United States, and activists within them, evaluate their successes and failures under the conditions of what I call “diversity culture,” in which multiple inequalities violate social norms and are therefore imagined to be uncommon or steadily vanishing. Many scholars have critically examined the shape and function of diversity and multiculturalism projects in the broader sociopolitical environment ; however, it is also important to understand the effects of diversity culture on grassroots movements themselves and on the very projects from which we expect our newest and most cutting-edge identity discourses and practices to emerge. Virulent opposition and countermovement organizing often stimulates or strengthens social protest by providing activists with a visible threat against which to mobilize.1 Conversely, it is difficult to sustain a social movement when a large segment of the public believes it is no longer needed, 28 Respectably Queer and it is especially difficult when the lines between activists, the general public, and the enemy are unclear. These lines are blurred when activist discourses about equality and diversity begin to influence mainstream culture, which is arguably a sign indicating that the goals of the movement are being met. However, they are also blurred when the reverse happens, or when mainstream diversity discourses become integrated into the frameworks and strategies of grassroots movements themselves. The latter process is the focus of this chapter. I use the term “diversity culture” to refer to the ways in which celebrating identity-based diversity and equality have become a part of daily life.2 Of course, at one level, the infusion of social justice discourse into everyday life is what cultural activism (consciousness raising, political performance art, community and cultural centers, etc.) is all about.3 However, in diversity culture, being critical of inequality also serves economic and ideological interests unrelated to social change, or to dismantling the systems that reproduce race, gender, and socioeconomic hierarchies. Major corporations launch advertising campaigns that depict social problems and invoke social change as a means of selling their products, even when their own business practices are the driving force behind the inequities being invoked.4 As I write, a current example is national banking giant Washington Mutual’s 2006 print and television campaign advertising free checking accounts. The campaign is organized around disparaging images of white male banking elites at competitor banks that, presumably unlike Washington Mutual, enable the “rich to keep getting richer.” One print ad depicts a balding white male banking executive stating, “Free checking for life? Over my butler’s dead body!” Not long ago, the marketing strategies of financial institutions relied upon the imagery of the business-savvy white male banker to whom customers could entrust their finances. Today, even banks—the very symbols of global capitalism—recognize that they might better reach consumers through a self-parodic and critical commentary on wealth, whiteness, and/or masculinity. Similarly, at the political level, conservative politicians such as President George Bush expand anti-immigrant and anti–affirmative action legislation while also actively recruiting people of color and white women into government office and working with diversity consultants to develop strategies for appealing to these constituencies (“Viva George Bush!”). Such developments exemplify the recent neoliberal merging of diversity and equality rhetoric with the goals of free-market capitalism and conservative political agendas.5 While this movement toward diversity is often superficial and tokenistic...

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