Equity: The new face of racism, disguised as fairness

By Patrick Hall, Guest columnist

It is simply racism under new management. It’s become almost as egregious as when our family traveled south on vacation past the Mason-Dixon in the 1950s.  Unless we found accommodations or motels that catered to Negroes, we found ourselves sleeping and picnicking on the side of the road. As a child in the 1950s, I thought it was great fun, but my older siblings, whom I oftentimes refer to as the 1930s & 1940s kids didn’t share my enthusiasm or ignorance of segregation and racism. Unless you made it to a Negro motel, like the one my great Aunt owned in the South. Well?

It was blatant discrimination or racism, based on the immutable. 

Let us fast forward to 2025. The cultural Left in concert with left-of-center Democrats (a redundancy in terms), who call the shots in the DNC still maintain firm control of schools, the administrative state in Washington, DC, and elsewhere.  Equity catechumenates, within the movie industry, the art world, sports, K-12 education, and academia, have taken jurisdiction of language and how we communicate. It is about control.

Just look at how the word “equity” has been substituted for the word “equality.” This change is significant and has largely gone unchallenged. Why? I can think of two reasons. First, people may think equity and equality are the same. Hell, they even sound a bit alike. Secondly, anyone who questions leftists on this type of change is instantly labeled racist or some convenient “ism.” Supposedly, both promote fairness, but equality achieves this through treating everyone the same regardless of need.  By the way, the idea of treating everyone the same has been viewed as blatant heresy among the cultural left, many Democrats, and “difference theorist practitioners” since the late 1970s. It has been a staple in the teacher education program curriculum for decades. It is considered “deep thinking” among the liberal elites. 

However, equity achieves this through treating people differently, at the expense of others, and equality. For example, fairness through equality would mean giving all students the same support level to ensure fair competition. Equity would mean unequal support to some at the expense of others with the key objective of ensuring equal outcomes. 

Let’s face it! There aren’t equal outcomes even in one’s family, much less across cultural groups. Many of my older siblings (that is the 1930s and 1940s kids) were good at math. Some became engineers, and chemists, or worked in the biosciences and accounting areas. While yours truly struggled with algebra, theorem and plane geometry, trig, pre-calculus as well as calculus. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been placed anywhere near an advanced math problem.  

Equal outcomes, or “equity” simply don’t exist.  We all have different strengths, gifts, or critical socialization. Asian students who have recently won a landmark Supreme Court ruling over blatant discrimination against them, because they are high achievers have exposed “the lie” and intrinsic unfairness of the secular dogma known as equity. 

Equality is based on the fairness of opportunity. Equity is based on attempting equal outcomes at the expense of others through unfair treatment. Equity ignores the fact that individuals have varying abilities and aptitudes, which also impact outcomes. Those who support equity also “blindly” support affirmative action and quotas, both unfair and racist. These programs promote division and support the assertion that certain groups cannot compete and succeed because of systemic racism. Those who push equity, quotas, and affirmative action incubate and promote jealousy, envy, division, and disorder.

As I wrote in American Libraries Magazine in 1991, in an article on Affirmative action titled, Against Our Best Interests, preference policies, and race-based quotes will only serve to fracture us as a nation.  Affirmative action like the push for “equity” is mired in the critical difference between the “politics of identity versus the politics of performance.” Equity and preference policies based on race are shamelessly exploiting the fears and biases of the weakest members of society to maintain control over them. It tells blacks and other groups that they are far too dumb and mentally less capable than others. It fosters and deliberately nurtures a thinking pattern among many blacks that they cannot make it on their own without the DEI industry and organizations and people who have long ago worn out their usefulness, like NAACP,       Congressional Black Caucus, and assorted politicians like Jim Clyburn (D-SC) or former President Obama.    Equity is just another manifestation of what former President George W Bush identified as the soft bigotry of low expectations. Another unspoken reality of “unfettered” affirmative action is that it places an “asterisk” next to minority achievements.

Many politicians and organizations like the Southern Poverty Center and the NAACP aspired to tackle actual discrimination and, in time sought increasing influence, access, and “funding.” They became acutely aware that they could only get this if the problem was not solved.  In time this had the effect of making discrimination and racism against Blacks “appear” worse. This was being done during the post-Civil Rights Era (circa post-1970). It was a strategy followed by liberal Democrats both Black and White at the very time things were getting better. In other words, complaints and claims of systemic racism presented an opportunity for growth. To paraphrase one social critic of the equity and the DEI industry, satisfaction became a dying business.

The Liberal Black polity are seen or worst yet see themselves as selfless defenders of BLACK AMERICA!  They are vested in ensuring that “racism against Blacks” is not solved. That would be bad for their main business or product line, which is to keep racism, alive and vibrant.  Complaints against society or systemic racism present an opportunity for growth by the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus as well as the Critical Race Theory industry.

The verbal nomenclature of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) cabal, is the same type of language bastardization that is the lifeblood of all leftist propaganda. For example, think “homeless” instead of “drug addict,” “mentally ill,” “bum,” or “lazy,” “migrant” instead of “illegal alien,” “Minor Attracted Persons,” instead of “pedophiles,” or my personal favorite, gender-affirming health care for surgical mutilation of otherwise healthy children by removing their penis or breasts.  It is pure evil wearing a smiling face.

Patrick is a retired University Library Director. He graduated from Canisius College and the University of Washington, where he earned Masters Degrees in Religious Studies Education, Urban Anthropology, and Library and Information Science.  He has been published in several national publications. From 1997 until his retirement in January 2014, he served on the Advisory Board of Urban Library Journal, a CUNY Publication. Mr. Hall resides in Erie County PA.