Equality means everyone gets the same. Same size piece of cake, same amount of Christmas presents, same bedtime. (You can tell I have kids).
Equity means some get more because of reasons.
America is built upon the idea that we have all equal opportunity. That is quickly being replaced with calls for equity.
CNN has a piece on Susan Rice’s speech earlier this week where she declared equity will be at ‘the core’ of the Biden Administration’s policy decisions.
"The President has committed the whole of our government to advance racial justice and equity for all," Susan Rice, the head of Biden's Domestic Policy Council said Tuesday, previewing a major address on race by the President later in the day.
"These aren't feel good policies, the evidence is clear -- investing in equity is good for economic growth and it creates jobs for all Americans," Rice said, previewing an agenda that is far broader than the most familiar racial issues, including policing and discrimination.
Biden tackled four areas on Tuesday, including fair housing, reforming the penal system to crack down on private prisons, recommitting the government to lifting up Native American communities and tribes and combating xenophobia against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
But what does that mean? Lifting-up Native Tribes, Biden just slashed their oil profits. Reforming the penal system, that looks like letting people out of prison. Fair housing, that means more public housing in the suburbs. And xenophobia against Asian Americans, Harvard and Yale and other schools that openly discriminate against Asian students had better be worried.
There could be a nugget of an idea in some of this, but how do those things help equity? Again, does letting a black person out of prison because they’re black help anyone?
In the end, the pursuit of ‘equity’ will mean taking from one group (whites and Asians) and giving to other groups (blacks and Hispanics?).
Treating people differently, prioritizing people based on their skin color used to be called racism. Now it’s called equity. There’s no real difference.
America was, for decades, the land of equal opportunity. We fought to make sure people of all races had that opportunity, remember Brown vs Board of Education? But as we have seen some people fall behind because of their choices or the failures of the liberal, Democratic, and increasing socialists government leaders the call for equal outcomes is becoming louder.
Equity is a non-descript term for the idea of equal outcomes. But because it is race-based equity, the equal outcomes will only be for some.
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