Austin: The Biden-Harris Ticket's Goal of 'Equity' Is Illogical, Discriminatory and Totalitarian
Today’s left is utterly opposed to equality of opportunity and equality under the law.
Instead, its policies pursue the goal of equity, also known as equality of outcomes.
Seeking out such a goal is not only undesirable, it is also immoral, because the only way to attain equal outcomes among diverse cultural groups is through totalitarian means.
The Left’s Push for Equity
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, aim to enact “equity” policies across the U.S. if they are elected.
Kamala Harris is an incredible talent with unlimited potential. Her career has been defined by taking on those who abuse power and seeking equity and justice for all people. Her intellect and insight will continue to be needed by the Democratic Party and the country.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 3, 2019
Kamala Harris breaks down the difference between equality and equity pic.twitter.com/sVKiTzJQN8
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) September 27, 2020
“So, there’s a big difference between equality and equity,” Harris said. “Equality suggests, often, everybody should get the same thing. … As opposed to equity, which is everyone should end up in the same place.
“And if you then understand not everybody started out in the same place, you understand some people need more.”
Harris’ analogy is based on the assumption that all groups have the same demographics and cultural norms.
That idea is demonstrably false.
Ethnic/ Racial Group Differences
Because different groups act differently, finding total equity among all groups is virtually impossible.
No person in his or her right mind would argue that the Asian, black, Hispanic and white communities in America are culturally homogeneous.
Subsets of those communities aren’t even homogeneous with one another.
The groups have varied cultural norms, traditions and attitudes.
The differences don’t stop there.
In 2018, the median age for white people in America was 44, whereas the median age of U.S. Hispanics was 30 and the median age of black Americans was 34, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.
Obviously, 44-year-olds are better wage earners than people ages 30 and 34: they’ve been in the workforce much longer, have likely received more raises due to time on the job and have more work experience.
A huge part of the racial economic divide, then, can be attributed to age differences among these groups.
A man is not even equal to himself from different points of his own life.
Even if you removed age as a factor, there remain huge cultural differences between racial and ethnic groups that inevitably lead to more differences in outcome.
Sex Differences
It isn’t only racial group outcomes that leftists want to equalize.
According to them, men and women should be equally represented in all occupations and they should be equally compensated overall.
That’s what the whole “gender pay gap” argument is about, after all.
Pay gap disparities means women on average lose out on $400,000 over the course of their career. That number is even higher for Latina, Native American, and Black women, who lose almost $1M in wages. My equal pay plan will end this fundamental unfairness.https://t.co/LEnuRWRmvC
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) May 23, 2019
However, as with racial/ethnic groups, the measure of outcomes between the sexes doesn’t take into account other factors.
Women and men make different choices in education, occupation and hours worked.
When you account for these variables, along with a few others, the gap shrinks to nearly zero percent, proving discrimination is not a primary driver of inequality in this case.
Nevertheless, most people on the left blame the gap on “sexism.”
False Comparisons
A popular, widely-spread left-wing meme illustrates the left’s argument for equity perfectly.
Inequality vs equality vs equity vs justice pic.twitter.com/icrS4NwzOy
— Alvin Foo (@alvinfoo) October 1, 2020
It is incredibly misleading.
Two identical kids standing on a ladder is not an honest comparison.
Although minorities who grow up in poverty do have some inherent disadvantages (as does any community born into poverty, although poverty caused by welfare incentivization disproportionately affects minorities), their racial identity is not even close to the most important factor.
The graphic fails to account for numerous group differences, which is also a failure of Democrats and most left-wing equity policies.
In a more accurate illustration, sometimes one kid wouldn’t even try to reach for the apple (differences of choice).
Or maybe it’s not one kid but one adult and one kid (mirroring the age differences between groups). The adult can reach the apple because he’s older and taller, not because the other party has fewer systemic advantages.
In any example, teaching the disadvantaged kid to climb the tree or build a ladder would help that kid become more independent.
Giving him a ladder every time makes him dependent on whoever is giving him that ladder.
He’ll never learn how to do things for himself.
Problems Caused by Equity
This is exactly how equity policies work in the real world.
Affirmative action, for example, gives extra advantages to some groups over others, although in the end such policies have been shown to hurt the very people they purport to help by, for example, placing minorities into schools for which they aren’t academically prepared.
Entrance exams were made to determine whether the student is ready for the coursework he or she will face when going to a school.
Whereas minorities are set to succeed if placed into a school based on their scores, if you artificially inflate their scores simply because of the color of their skin, those students will be, and have been, put into more rigorous schools for which they aren’t prepared.
This creates higher dropout rates and lower grades overall, as reported by The Atlantic.
Another example of equity-gone-wrong is the 2008 housing crisis.
Because of equity policies, lenders were pressured into lending to minority communities more often, even if the constituents of those communities were unable to pay back their loans.
In the end, neither of these policies actually helped; they only exacerbated the problem.
Diversity, Equity Can’t Coexist
Jordan Peterson, a renowned clinical psychologist and University of Toronto professor known for his stand against radical leftism, explained the faults of equity quite thoroughly in an essay on his website.
“The emphasis on ‘diversity,’ for example, is in direct logical contradiction to the dogma of ‘equity.’ The two simply cannot co-exist. If people are in fact ‘diverse,’ for whatever reasons (and, according to the collectivists, primarily for reasons of race, ethnicity, sexuality and sex) then they bring distinctly and important different talents and abilities to the table, in precise proportion to their diversity,” Peterson wrote.
“The inevitable consequence of encouraging that diversity and giving it free play in the world will thus be an exacerbation of inequality, rather than its elimination. If equity were the goal, then diversity would have to be done away with.”
“But such elimination of differences is by definition an elimination of diversity, although the latter is apparently laudable (as it is, when the diversity is based on difference of opinion rather than difference of immutable physical characteristics) and vital to the proper functioning of social and political organizations at all levels,” he wrote.
Equity Will Destroy Freedom
Furthermore, Peterson pointed out that far-left, communist, totalitarian regimes throughout world history have enacted equity policies. They have never worked.
“We know the left can go too far. The Soviets taught us that. The Maoists and the Khmer Rouge taught us that. The North Koreans, and the Cubans, and the Venezuelans continue to teach us in the same manner. We don’t know exactly when and where the ‘going too far’ begins. But I’m willing to stake my claim on the equity doctrine,” he wrote.
“In a word, it’s inexcusable, both morally and practically, and should be regarded, in my estimation, as an ideological position that should be roundly rejected by anyone who wishes to be taken seriously in any reasonable political discussion.
“And we should well remember that ‘reasonable political discussion’ is the only alternative we have to outright strife and the kind of conflict that tends to degenerate rapidly and dangerously.”
These regimes eventually did create equitable outcomes for the majority of their citizens — everyone had the same number of crumbs to eat as they died of starvation and everyone was equally likely to be executed for treasonous, capitalist oppression if they kept too much money for themselves, for reasons such as feeding their families.
If Americans don’t want their country to end up like this, they must reject the far-left, Marxian goal of equal outcomes.
If taken to its logical conclusion, it can only end in utter oppression, totalitarianism and a massive death toll.
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