In a liberal society, equity is a false idol
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Over the last two decades, progressive activists have introduced lots of sententious words and euphemisms into the U.S. political lexicon.
Examples include microaggression, intersectionality, cisgender, BIPOC, Latinx, "the unhoused" (that is, the homeless), returning citizens (ex-convicts) and "pregnant persons" (formerly "women").
For those not up to speed on the latest academic conceits and ideological fads, including non-college voters streaming out of the Democratic Party, progressives might as well be speaking Esperanto.
They have also infused old words with new meanings. Take "equity." Specifically, it means ownership in a house or stocks. But in its new meaning, it is used more generally as a synonym for fairness.
Now, it has become a pillar of DEI — the hallowed trinity of diversity, equity and inclusion that defines today's "social justice" ethos. In this context, "equity" conveys a demand for something stronger than mere equality.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers, an enthusiastic advocate of DEI, parses the difference by defining equity as "fairness and justice" that is "distinguished from equality."
"Whereas equality means providing the same to all, equity means recognizing that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances."
After the George Floyd-Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, bureaucracies set up to inculcate DEI spread like kudzu throughout government, colleges and public schools, philanthropies and private companies.
Job applicants were taxed with describing how they would endeavor to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in their daily work.
Democrats duly clambered aboard the equity express. On his first day in office in 2021, President Biden ordered federal agencies to develop Equity Action Plans to advance "racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government."
But DEI's reign was brief. Working class voters, across racial lines, saw it at best as a distraction from their struggles with high living costs and worries about immigration and crime, and at worst as a coercive regime set up by self-righteous elites to correct their thoughts and speech.
Their antipathy toward progressive moralizing played a significant role in sinking Kamala Harris and the Democrats last year and returning the failed coup plotter, President Trump, to the White House.
The president believes he won a mandate to stamp out all vestiges of DEI in America. His minions are firing anyone in the federal government associated with diversity and affirmative action programs.
In yet another example of executive overreach, Trump also is threatening private colleges, businesses and civic institutions with political retribution if they don't fall in line.
How should Democrats respond to this MAGA version of cancel culture? The same way they should have responded to the left-wing original — by standing up unequivocally for liberty of conscience and free speech.
But they should also reflect on the ferocity of the public backlash against a sectarian identity politics that subordinates the general welfare to the pursuit of "equity" for favored groups.
Maybe it wasn't such a bright idea for progressives to abandon Martin Luther King's dream of a colorblind society in favor of group preferences, DEI, critical race theory, and related ideas that fragment Americans along lines of race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality.
Fixating on the differences between groups makes it impossible to build a broad, center-left alliance, especially when non-college Americans, a majority of the electorate, are either left out of the left's hierarchy of victimized groups or assigned the oppressor role.
Democrats, however, should reject race essentialism and equity not because they're unpopular, but because they are illiberal.
In America's liberal tradition, individuals have inalienable rights and liberties, not groups. That many originally were excluded from equal citizenship is reason to apply these principles universally, not discard them.
Liberals from Jefferson to Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama also have drawn a clear line between the aspirational goal of equal opportunity and utopian guarantees of equal outcomes.
Show me a country that claims to have achieved the latter, and I'll show you a totalitarian society that oppresses its subjects and relies on a privileged class of apparatchiks to rule them.
The late sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset (a mentor and friend) identified our native strain of liberal anti-statism as the reason European socialism never took deep root here.
Americans, he noted, invested heavily in universal public education to give everyone an even start, while Europeans built welfare states to "correct" markets' failure to distribute wealth evenly.
The Mandarin left deems Europe's social democracy as morally superior to America's liberal democracy. But U.S. working families don't rank reducing inequality as a top economic priority.
They're more interested in pro-growth economic policies that generate abundant opportunities for upward mobility, keep inflation and debt down, lower the cost of life's essentials, curb illegal immigration and help them acquire the skills necessary to get ahead in a fast-changing economy.
To them, equity connotes elite attempts to rectify past injustices at their expense. Social reform movements in this country succeed when they invoke the liberal universalism of the American creed rather than imported political doctrines like democratic socialism.
That's why liberals and Democrats should depose the false idol of equity and rededicate themselves to fighting discrimination in all forms, promoting equal opportunity and advancing the common good.
The old rallying cry of Jacksonian democracy still illuminates the way forward: "Equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none."
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As we all know the only way to beat racism is with racism. S/
Liberals from Jefferson to Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama also have drawn a clear line between the aspirational goal of equal opportunity and utopian guarantees of equal outcomes.
Difference between a free country and a communist/totalitarian one.
Because Donald Trump is completely indefensible, not only as a president but also as a human being, the right is leaning harder and harder, almost to the exclusion of any other political argument, into anti-diversity messaging.
I tell you what, getting rid of diversity wont do a thing to fix what is wrong with this country right now. The person who is president is completely unfit for office, and he is scheduled to be in office for 3 1/2 more years. THAT is the problem, not DEI.
Do you people ever watch Donald trump speak? He sounds like a moron and its only getting worse. Then there is the corruption, then there are all the weirdo misfits he surrounds himself with. This is the most embarrassing presidential era in our 245 year history, by far.
Of course it will. The race essentialism the left has leaned into the last decade has torn this country apart.
The ascendance of Barack Obama led to the country being torn apart. The prospect of a black man becoming president freaked millions of racists out, and directly led to birtherism and then directly to trumpism.
Its all about people thinking they are losing "their" country.
No, the leadership of Barack Obama did that....
No John, the data is very clear, race relations took a nose dive not in 2008 when Obama was elected, but in 2014, when democrats embraced the poison of BLM and race essentialism. Democrats undid 50 years of progress with their adoption of racial polarization as a political strategy.
The damage done by Democrats embrace of the Michael Brown hoax will take decades to recover from.
Donald Trump was so into the racism of birtherism he used it as the basis for his aborted interest in running for president in 2012. There was a time when 2/3 of republicans believed Obama was born in Africa, for no reason other than his name and his fathers heritage. The idea that race was not a big divisive issue before 2014 is ludicrous.
GOP congressional candidate Mark Meadows
Race relations were better in 2012 than 2008, according to both black and whites and were very close to their all time high per Pew Research. There was zero measurable backlash to Obama being President. As the objective data shows, Obama had a chance to be a unifier but his embrace of race essentialism at the end of his term destroyed all progress that had been made. It was Democrats losing their mind and poisoning the country with a fake narrative about a small time thug that led to race relations plummeting and caused Democrats to believe absolutely absurd things about unarmed blacks being prayed upon white cops. A made up narrative that festered until it exploded six years later.
That's reality. Donald Trump's failed 2012 campaign was a nothingburger, even if you believe it was only about Obama's birth place, which is not a race issue anyway.
So now you think birtherism was not racism. I'm not surprised. Mark Meadows literally said he was going to send Obama back to Africa (Kenya) and you think it wasnt about race. Its just ludicrous.
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April 2011: A Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey found Trump leading the GOP field with 26%, ahead of Huckabee and Romney. This surge was largely attributed to his birther rhetoric.
copilot
Maybe because Kenya is in Africa?
Was the McCain birtherism issue racist too?
And the Democratic Lt. Governor of Illinois is still pushing "the Brown was murdered" blood libel just the other day. Have to manipulate their voters by any means necessary I guess.
As Trump, his appointees, and Republicans are wiping existing factual data from several government websites, closing down exhibits in several Smithsonian museums, attacking every major college institution of higher learning across America, and setting the stage to use the military against any liberal or conservative protest or dissent, all of a sudden right wing extremists want to claim the mantle of "free speech" while they are giddy at Trump tearing down DEI but fail to look at the hundred or more major corporations who rejected this assault and continue to stand by their diversity standards.
Corporations are the "Happy Holidays" proponents. Corporations embrace all buying customers and reject the notion of exclusion.
Conservatives don't want a liberal society, which is why they voted for Trump.
Hegseth just posted videos of pastors who reflect his own beliefs that women should NOT have the right to vote. How is that liberal? How is the military kicking out blacks with a skin disorder liberal or fair? Black veterans serving regardless of time serving their country all of a sudden are kicked out because of Hegseth demanding an antiquated idea of appearance they cannot meet dye to a skin disorder they have no control over?
Fairness is gone if Trump and his minions want to make everything white centric. That is happening.
Pete Hegseth is a white nationalist who is a member of a white Christian nationalist church. Why this has never been a part of mainstream news coverage is beyond me.
thehill.com /homenews/administration/5444330-hegseth-church-women-voting/
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a CNN segment about a pastor who believes women should not vote on the social media platform X.
The segment largely focuses on Pastor Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist who cofounded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) in Idaho.
The report shows Wilson advocating for a Christian nation and entertaining the idea that women should not vote.
“I would like to see this nation being a Christian nation, and I would like this world to be a Christian world,” Wilson said.
The clip also shows fellow pastor Toby Sumpter, saying, “In an ideal society, we would vote as households,” and Jared Longshore, another pastor, saying he would support repealing the 19 th Amendment.
Amy Prince, a parishioner interviewed for the segment, said her husband “is the head of our household, and I do submit to him.”