By Anthony Trevlac
Unfortunately for people who are smart and knowledgeable, most public policy, even at its highest levels, is determined by something other than logic or facts. Examples abound.
Equality is a foundational value in our country. Historically, that has meant equality of opportunity and equality before the law. Those are defensible, widely loved elements of the American Dream. They fit cleanly into a society where people can be as successful as their ability and effort will take them.
Equity (the “E “in “DEI”) is an entirely different concept. Its supporters use it interchangeably with words like equality, in an effort to obfuscate its true meaning. But equity, as practiced by the Biden Administration, means treating certain races more favorably than others. It is the opposite of equal opportunity.
Equity rests not on any identifiable, defensible, or constitutional principle, or even on any generally accepted social norm. There is no tenet of traditional liberal thought that supports discrimination based on membership within a group. And discrimination is the core concept behind equity.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits that, as SCOTUS has ruled. But that is what Biden and Harris repeatedly did, hiring and promoting people based on race, appointing judges or selecting candidates based on race, and even allocating governmental largesse based on the race of the recipient, and not on need.
Emotions always come into play. Anyone brave enough to question equity is at risk (or inevitability) of being accused of racism. Equity, as practiced by Biden-Harris under the orders issued on “Day One,” proscribes that government benefits and opportunities be allocated based first on race, not merit.
If you weren’t a preferred sex or race, Joe Biden didn’t consider you for his VP slot or for his SCOTUS appointment. He said so. Both selections were therefore made, in a nation of about 330 million people, from a pool of less than 8 million. Equity is the enemy of equal opportunity and merit.
Calling someone names is the go-to tactic for people who have lost an argument. Calling someone racist is possibly the most egregious charge that can be made against them in contemporary American. If you ask questions about DEI, you are very likely to be called a racist. Very few people are brave enough to even ask questions about what is meant by equity. Even asking the question can result in raised voices and pointed fingers.
Emotion is powerful. If you convince an audience that you are on the side of love, compassion, and justice you will probably prevail. But if emotion isn’t tied to facts and reason bad law inevitably results.
Leftists are obsessed with viewing everyone in groups. Very little of their agenda can survive even a cursory dose of common sense. The left prevails when voters make decisions on broad emotional appeals rather than details and facts.
This just in: Groups don’t do things, people do. All members of a group – any group – are not the same. Yet we use broad categories like Hispanics or Asian Americans, that suggest they are uniform.
Asian Americans are…. well, what? Is a Korean the same as a Japanese person? Are all Chinese people the same? If not, why do we lump them into categories as if they were? The reason is that emotion is an easier tool to wield when the facts are made deceptively simple.
A friend once said it is “…easier for people to believe a simple lie than a complex truth.” The leftist narrative maintains that all Black people are victims, and all white people are oppressors. That is the core of Critical Race Theory and the driving force behind the Democrat agenda. But in America, Black Americans are not the only group that has suffered economically compared to their neighbors. Neither are white people outperforming everyone else. The most successful groups in America are Asians and Indians, not whites. But those details are inconvenient to leftist race-baiters.
The emotional and group-based appeals of the left fall completely apart once people start considering what their policies really mean. No reasonable person argues that every person of any group is oppressed or that every person of any group is privileged. There are too many examples that prove otherwise.
I know people of Cuban heritage who hate Mexicans, Mexicans who hate El Salvadorans, and Cubans who hate some other Cubans. Should this surprise us? Only if we haven’t been paying attention. People act as individuals, not groups, and no policy developed for broad group appeal can ever bring justice. Stop pretending it will.
The theory is that equity will make up for past injustices. The problem is that isn’t possible. We might as well dedicate ourselves to preserving unicorns. It can’t happen and never will. It is not possible to make up for past injustices or to make it as if they did not occur in the first place.
Two reasons: you can’t change the past (if this is news to you, please report to the Department of the Obvious for further information). Plus, the supposed “cures” aren’t applied to the people who were injured. In the case of slavery, for example, those people are no longer among the living. Neither are slaveholders. You can’t atone for injustices to one person by giving benefits to someone else.
There is also the inconvenient fact that not all slaveowners were white. Records aren’t particularly reliable – we can’t look up their Instagram accounts – but it is certain several thousand Americans owning slaves were themselves black or of mixed race. Some also held white indentured servants. Irish people were among America’s first slaves.
Modern equity programs maintain that all members of certain groups are victims, they have all been held back and have all been denied a chance to succeed. They also maintain that all white people are oppressors and themselves advantaged. Really? Neither of these points are true.
When you elevate one group, you devalue another. That has always been the catch-22 behind affirmative action and equity, and law has finally come to grips with it. SCOTUS says so, as do the federal statutes. Will the woke left ever stop viewing the whole world as a Marxist struggle of the classes? Don’t count on it.
