https://mailchi.mp/daf4220cc1e0/krd-news-an-important-warning-equality-does-not-equal-equity?e=9365a7c638
Tal Fortgang / Commentary Magazine / June 2022
Two days before the 2020 election, then–vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris shared a short video on social media endorsing the radical but increasingly commonplace idea of “equity.” Narrating over an animated depiction of two people climbing a mountain, Harris explained why “equality,” long accepted as our highest aspiration for race relations in America, is not good enough. “Equality suggests, ‘Oh, everyone should get the same amount,’” she says over an image of a white person starting at ground level while a black person climbs out from a ditch. “The problem with that: Not everyone is starting out from the same place.” Equality does not remedy past injustices but perpetuates them. Equity, by contrast, “means we all end up at the same place.” In the video, the black person joins the white person at the top of the mountain as “Biden-Harris 2020” descends from the heavens.
Harris’s flippant suggestion that in an ideal society “we all end up at the same place” was a clear signal to progressives just before the election: The next Democratic administration was prepared to adopt the new lingo and substantive goals of the diversity, equity, and inclusion industry. Just a few decades after a critical mass of Americans accepted the civil-rights movement’s argument for equality—based in equal treatment rather than equal outcomes—they have been told that their efforts have been for naught. Equality of opportunity is now considered insufficient at best, a nefarious way to perpetuate existing disparities at worst. Equity, similar-sounding enough to ride equality’s coattails, admits that progressives want what conservatives have long been reassured they do not: radical equality of outcomes, as defined by progressives, of course. And the Biden-Harris campaign considered the idea popular enough to release a video endorsing it 48 hours before Americans would head to the polls.
They were probably on solid footing to think so, at least regarding young progressives. The distinction between equality and equity is a staple of social-justice education, ubiquitous in preschools and graduate schools alike. One well-known graphic (promoted by institutions ranging from American University to Paper Pinecone, a directory for preschools) has been particularly influential. It features three individuals of varying heights at a baseball game, trying to watch from beyond the outfield fence. At first, each of the three are standing on identically sized boxes, so the tallest one can see the game easily, the middle one can just barely see it, and the shortest can’t see anything. This, we are told, is “equality.” Everyone is on a level playing field, which disproportionately privileges the already advantaged and fails to help the disadvantaged.
