- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Why YSK: because what seems like equal situation from surface isn’t always equal opportunity for all. And even when equal measure of help is provided, it might not be equally useful.
That’s not the point of equity. The point is to compensate for disadvantages people couldn’t prevent and can’t fix on their own. Stairs are equal. They work the same way for everyone. But someone in a wheelchair can’t climb stairs.
But you can reframe it. People don’t have equal mobility but everyone has an equal right to access a place, so you have stairs and ramps. You can’t make everything a ramp or stair to create equality.
That’s not how equity works in practice. It doesn’t examine anyone’s actual capabilities or disadvantages. They bucket large groups of people into categories they deem worthy to receive resources, despite their actual need. Every person has their individual story, challenges, and priveleges yet equity assumes otherwise, that you deserve compensation based on the group you were assigned to, not what you actually need.
It may work like that in practice in fields where it is extremely difficult to design solutions that are adapted to each person. Imagine you have to tailor laws and their application specifically to many millions of individuals, how do you do that without creating more manageable categories?
That’s just not true. That’s how a person would feel if equity didn’t specifically help them.
In practice that’s equity programs work by hurtingsomeone. Some California schools cut advanced math classes because they weren’t diverse enough, or it was contributing to an educational gap, or some bullshit. Equity requires adding burden to someone, it may be in an attempt at fairness, but that doesn’t make it right.
[citation needed]
Equality people: “Let’s fund these people who are objectively poor, they are disadvantaged and need it.”.
Equity people: “let’s fund people part of this group I can clearly identify by looking at them. They are likely to be disadvantaged.”
Not sure why everyone is downvoting any opinion that isn’t “give minorities all the available resources!”.
It should not be: you need x% of your classroom seats to go to minorities. That’s silly because talented and driven people will be sent away to make space. It should be more like: “you must provide an avenue to help those who can prove disadvantaged status to take extra classes and then reapply to your program.” These classes could be online or whatever to make it as easy as possible for someone with less means but still driven to succeed have a way to better themselves.
Uh… they don’t identify by looking at them you braindead fool. They do means testing. As in - actually seeing if they need it.
Firstly, be respectful.
There is a huge range of equity implementations in the US. My company, for example, has not done any “means testing” when recruiting for racial equity. Nor when it donates to blanket racial programs. There was no means testing when internships were offered to high school students of particular demographics.
Lmaooo the only people who use that California talking point are people who have never been inside of a school in California. They aren’t cutting math classes they are offering alternatives to high level math courses like calculus, stats, and data science. Explain to me how that’s burdening anyone??
When you’re so used to privilege, equality feels like oppression.