Recently, I was asked to take a training class for my job titled, “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace.” It was just one of those mandatory classes that the company asks all their employees to take a few times a year. What struck me as notable was the definition of equity. The training described it like this: “Equity… recognizes that each person has different circumstances and make use of resources and opportunities to reach an equal outcome. In other words, equity levels the playing field for all.” Admittedly, the juxtaposition of equity and equality has been on my mine for quite some time, but it was during that class where it became clear in my mind why I feel so strongly about equity.
I am against equity. Even though it rightly assumes that each person has different circumstances, that being different talents, weaknesses and upbringings, I believe that it is something that will have many unintended consequences (or intended, for those that are proponents of it) and, more importantly, it is not something that is desirable to those that it intends to help. Equality and ultimately freedom serves as a better function for what equity tries to do.
Equity is like having everyone reach the finish line of a school race at the exact same time. For this to happen, you must ensure that the better participants are handicapped in some way and the ones at the bottom are given a buff, like they can start at the halfway point. This affect both sides negatively. At the top, nerfing the best participants will not allow them to reach their potential for the sake of the bottom participants. Dedicating hours to training; forgoing nightly activities so that you can maintain a consistent sleep schedule; and putting healthy foods in your body, is not easy. Many will not do what it takes to win something like a race. That is why it is all the more impressive for those that take the correct path and reach their potential to win.
At the bottom, giving those that did not make the right choices a contrived advantage will do two things. One, they will not be able to have a realistic outlook on how they are progressing. In order to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses properly, you must have clarity in the consequences of your actions and be able to see the results of it before you. Only once you have seen that can you make an informed decision on what you need to do to improve and also maybe come to the decision of giving it up in order to pursue something else. Equity muddles that insight. The second thing is that without the clarity, they cannot properly branch out their abilities and take their own paths. A runner might have a natural ability competing in hurdles, but instead they direct their energy to marathon running because they got an advantage through equity and thought to themselves that this is what they were good at, never really exploring their full potential in hurdles. Equity would stump the growth of people in this way.
The reason why equity is being pushed in our society is not what it can do for those that it seeks to help, but for those that are doing the helping. By switching from an equal playing field to where those that are at the lowest are given the most and those that are highest are given the least will give ultimate authority to the group doing the distributing. You cannot implement a system like this without constant regulation and supervision. It naturally brings up the questions of, “Who will be making use of the resources and doing the distributing?” Will it be the government? Also, what metrics will be used to determine who needs the resources as well as what are the metrics for success and, the biggest question to me, who will be held accountable if they distributed it to the wrong people, using the wrong metrics and ultimately if their metrics for success gives them a failing grade? The answer is: it doesn’t matter. When power of this scale is given to any group, governing body or not, they don’t have to answer to any of our questions or demands.
While I do not believe equality is perfect, it is far greater than equity in this aspect. Ideally, if there is a race being held, you would want to give the details of the announcement out to everyone at the same time, letting every student know equally. Equality would be to give everyone enough of the facility to practice for themselves and to not ban or open certain hours of the facility to certain groups of people. This is truest sense of equality to me because everyone, being different, cannot be equal to one another. If you wish for equality, you should give people as much openness as you can to let them freely explore their options and paths.
So, in many ways, the first part of the definition of equity and the second part shouldn’t even go together. Why would you want equal outcomes if you, correctly, recognize that each person has different circumstances? Each person will go at different paces and explore different paths, if they are given the freedom. What good does an arbitrary line placed for every single person at the exact same position for every single aspect of life do to help?
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