676. What Is the Difference Between Equity and Equality? And Why It Matters

[Rachel]
Hi, Brittany. Hi, Rachel. So today I wanted to talk about a kind of buzzword that's come around in the past, oh, three or four years or so.

Five years, it's COVID. Yeah, yeah, it used to mean something totally different, but the word is equity. Equity versus equality, and what is the difference?

Now, in our country, we're promised equal treatment under the law. Equality, and that's a value that we hold very dear as Americans.

[Brittany]
14th Amendment.

[Rachel]
Yeah, is equality, but what does that mean versus the concept of equity? So what it means is not that everybody is the same. It means that in the eyes of the law, in front of a court- Wait, which one, equity or equality?

Equality. Okay. We'll deal with equality first.

Equality means that rich or poor, black or white, male or female, you are all viewed the same, and justice is blind. In other words, you get treated the same, no privilege, the law applies equally to everybody. And that's good.

That's good. We don't want privilege of being born a certain place or to certain people. No one is above the law, as a lot of people like to say about Trump these days.

And no one is above the law. In an equal form system of government where we value equality, we're all viewed the same. It doesn't mean that we are born with the same talents or the same abilities.

We're all different in that way. And how hard you work and your ability, that's going to make a difference on your outcomes, like how much you're able to earn, what you have in life, and your choices. All of this is going to shape where you end up.

But when you're dragged before a court of law and in the eyes of the government, you are the same as everyone else as far as your rights and whether the law applies to you or not. Is this always done perfectly? No, but that's the ideal.

Now, let's talk about equity. What is the difference? Equity deals more with the outcome.

I don't know if you've ever seen this meme that's gone around, which kind of explains it. It has three or four kids looking over a fence to see a ballgame. And the way they explain it is equity is like they're standing on different stools to lift them higher so they can see over the fence versus the way they present equality is everyone is standing just on the same platform.

And some of them can't see and some of them can. So that's the way it's pitched. But in practice, what it means is you're not treated with equality under the law anymore.

You're treated differently based on some idea of fairness versus unfairness, whether you're historically underprivileged or whatever. And a lot of things, these things don't really pertain to you as an individual, but they pertain to some kind of idea of the past and how the past is affecting people now and whether it's unfair. But the end result is it's not equality anymore.

Certain people are given extra benefits to try to make the outcome equal for everybody. And then comes the question, who is deciding what benefits to give to who? Who is deciding what's fair?

So that becomes a big problem when we're trying to figure out how to treat people and government regulations and red tape. For example, school admissions policies, a lot of this has entered into getting into colleges and universities. Sometimes they decide that one group has been historically advantaged and another group has been historically disadvantaged.

So they'll require higher test scores for one group or the other so that they don't admit, in this day and age, Asians. It's almost impossible under the rules of equity and DEI for an Asian to get into a good school. They have to have super, super high scores because they adjust the standards.

[Brittany]
Or what they were doing was taking away test scores in general so they just don't look at them anymore. So they do a lot of schools and a lot of even government charter or what they're called magnet schools will say, we're going to take a holistic approach to admissions. So where these schools are supposed to be academically rigorous and you're supposed to want to get in, right?

You're supposed to spend a lot of time studying. Instead, they throw that out and say, let's instead do a holistic approach. Tell us your life story.

Tell us what your background is. And that's how they filter. So they find these little like loopholes.

[Rachel]
Yeah. So I mean, topic for discussion. Is this a good thing or not a good thing?

And who decides? Who decides? And I mean.

[Brittany]
I always think it's you know, we should everybody should have. First of all, let's remember this only applies to government stuff. If there was a private school, let's say that did not take any funds, they could accept whoever they wanted to.

But let's say I think everybody in the way equality is supposed to be, everybody has the right to apply to a school. They can't say you can't apply because you're a girl. If it's a government school that gets funds, they can't do that.

But that does not mean everybody has the outcome that they want. That doesn't mean everybody or because you're a girl, you're automatically going to get accepted to Harvard or something. Right.

You have the opportunity, but that does not guarantee you the outcome, especially when it comes to a characteristic you have no choice over. I don't have a choice over being, you know, born a girl or being born my nationality. Like these are things that happened to me.

I didn't have a choice over them. That just happened. Right.

If somebody is born, you know, black, that just happened. If somebody is born in India, that just happened. These are called immutable characteristics.

You don't have any control over them. And so the government can't say, well, we're going to judge you based on that. So that, you know, that's what it's supposed to be.

It's supposed to be like you said, justice is blind. There's a blindfold over. You don't see the race.

You don't see the gender. You don't see the religion of people.

[Rachel]
And another place that it enters into is in workplace, like in hiring decisions sometimes. And sometimes businesses try to have these quotas where they have to hire like a woman because, you know, they're typically all male or all white or one thing or another. So they make a quota so that they have to find, you know, like this particular type of person to put into that spot so that they're more representative of like the population.

But, I mean, what does that do? Like, is that person really the best person to do that job? Or are they chosen only because of those immutable characteristics?

And then what does that do to the quality of the work that that company produces? And like who's benefiting from all this is what I wonder. And I think the tide is turning the other way.

Like we're seeing some results in places like air traffic controllers and Boeing planes falling out of the sky. And people are pointing to things like DEI.

[Brittany]
I don't know that we can say that for all of them. I think there's some other other things there, too. But.

Oh, sure, sure.

[Rachel]
But it makes people suspicious. Yes. Like if if you see somebody on that board who, you know, has some of these characteristics that DEI is looking for, then you you automatically wonder, was that person hired?

Because they're like top of the tier and like just excellent student. And or were they given a leg up because of equity? And so I don't know.

I think it doesn't do them any favors to to be in that position. And people always wondering, are you actually good at your job? Are you actually smart and competent?

Or were you just given this job so that we can fill a quota? So and you you can't stop people from wondering that. Yeah.

[Brittany]
And you're yeah. And you're leaving it open to that. You're almost kind of inviting that in.

No, it's a it's a tricky area. It's you know, we look back to Martin Luther King, who said, you know, I have a dream that my children will be judged not on the color of their skin, but the content of their character. And somehow that is switched to now they're saying, no, the content of their character should even be completely based around the color of their skin.

And, you know, they didn't get this privilege, especially because their ancestors. It just it is such a weird, distorted system. And it's an attack on merit is what we call it.

And a merit based system is the system of the the best people qualified should be the ones who, you know, get the job or get the whatever it is. And we've moved away from that. And let's you know, people like Thomas Sowell, who was an amazing economist, you know, grew up a poor black kid in New York and was able to get into I think it was like a charter school or something like he was able to make something of himself.

And he never let his race keep him or hold him back. Right. This was something he's always believed if he wanted it, he could.

And he and he did. So there's so many instances of people being able to achieve great things without having to rely on equity.

[Rachel]
Yeah. Yeah. So I think we'll wrap it up just by saying, you know.

Merit matters. And Tuddle Twins has a great book called Medals of Merit, which is all about this. It matters.

And equity, as it is being presented in today's kind of sphere, is not the ideal way to run a society kind of undermines and degrades quality in unfair ways.

[Brittany]
So, yeah, no, it's there. You're absolutely right. And I hope we can get to a place where we're focusing more on equality and equity.

I think we're maybe getting a little closer. Please don't forget to like and subscribe to the podcast, share with your friends. And until next time, everybody, we'll talk to you later.

Talk to you later.