It’s not my plan to make all Thinky Thoughts with Aly a Something vs. Something Caged Death Match, but thinky thoughts have a mind of their own (ha) and that’s just how they thunk this week. Actually, now that I think about it (double ha), pitting related concepts against each other to duke it to the death is one of the the ways we sort shit out. Maybe it’s part of the system Michael mentioned: “We take in data, organize it into a structure that makes sense of it, then use that structure to gather more data.” Maybe Conceptual UFC (RESPECT) is a good idea after all.
We’ll see. Onward…
This week I began editing Tony Campolo’s new book, Red Letter Christians: A Citizen’s Guide to Faith & Politics. (I’m excited and alternately petrified. This is My First Big Book.) I’m not very far into it yet, but it’s already got me thinking. [Side note: In days of yore, I used to think and write about politics a lot. This was until I came to the painful realization that obsessing about civics was a substitute for working out my issues, and I had to put on the kibosh to avoid the looneybin. Now that I'm fractionally less crazy, I'm allowing myself to put politics back on the cooktop, albeit on the back burner. Hey, they're important, but they're not Life.]
So I’ve been musing on the difference between inequality and inequity. In the U.S., “inequality” gets a lot of airtime, I suspect because we’ve got the holding of these truths to be self-evident thing going on as the bedrock of our democracy. (That would be “all men are created equal,” for any of you just tuning in.) But I’m not sure what ol’ Benji Franklin was thinking…it’s pretty clear to me that all people are not created equal. You’ve got tall people and short people, female people and male people (and sometimes in-between people), athletic people and clumsy people, smart people and dumb-as-a-stick people, musical people and hey-I-can’t-lift-this-tune-bucket people. If God created all men equal, She must be using a different dictionary.
To be fair, I’m pretty sure ol’ Benji wasn’t thinking that all people are actually created equal — he was just trying to find a poetic way of saying “Georgie, you’ve got about as much divine right to rule me as I have to fart on your face.” But we seem to forget the circumstances under which The Equality Clause came into being, and have a very bad habit of taking the words at face value, sometimes almost believing that we’re all the same with the lights off. But we’re not. And we’d do well to remember it.
Because aiming social reform at erasing our God-given inequality is about as smart (and effective) as using a paintball gun to screw in a lightbulb. It don’t make no sense.
I hate that “inequality” is so much more of an emotionally loaded word. I think that must be why we keep using it in place of “inequity,” which feels dry and math-ish in comparison. Dry or not, however, inequity is the real Nasty, the bugger we ought to strap on big boots to stomp out.
But it’s hard, and hard is difficult. Inequity is much less abstract than inequality, and that makes it uncomfortable. The numbers don’t lie. (CEOs getting paid 400% of the average worker’s annual salary, anyone?) It’s so much nicer to toss around Big Ideas like “All men are created equal” and golf clap until our hands bleed than it is to sit down with our slide rule and abacus and do the work.
Yee haw! I love idea vs. idea caged death match.
What I don’t love, however, is the idea that we need to charge the hill against inequity. Unless we’re using the term very differently, then I don’t see how inequity is necessarily an unfair state.
Equality, as espoused by the deists and humanists who framed the constitution, is the idea that each person has the same right to ownership over their time, their energy, the pursuits of their own free will; that no person can be compelled to participate in any economic relationship except by their own consent. They were imperfect at expressing it (who knew that non-whites and chicks would get all uppity and think they had those same rights!), but the idea is fundamentally, morally, rationally defensible.
No person should be set on unequal footing in their participation within the community by virtue of race, sex, or creed. No person should be compelled to participate in economic transactions without their own consent. These are the hallmarks of equality.
Equity, on the other hand, says that not only do we have the same equal right to participate or not in any economic relationship, but that I should not be responsible for the personal consequences of that decision. Whether I work, or do not work, I ought to receive the same economic results of the choice. I should have exactly the same resources as the person who chooses to work. We should exist in a state of perfectly equal consequences, regardless of the choices that we make prior to those consequences.
Am I making too much of an assumption about how you’re using equity? Forgive me if I am, and feel free to correct my assumption.
I work. I work a lot, actually. I spend time away from my family doing things that add value to the broader community, both things that I love to do and things that I would rather not do. I am rewarded for this choice with income. This is not immoral, unreasonable, or unfair.
How is it a more moral state of affairs to say that I and my family should receive no benefit from the hours I spend away from them at work? Or to say that I ought to receive the same exact benefit as the guy down the block who works just enough hours at the AM/PM to buy his pot? That, to me, seem unequal.
I think equity and equality are incompatible states, at least here on earth, and I think equality is the more moral of the two.
Didja read the my links to dictionary dot com? I’m basing my thinkiness on the premise that “inequity” means:
1. lack of equity; unfairness; favoritism or bias.
2. an unfair circumstance or proceeding.
I’m all for each of us getting paid an honest wage for an honest day. That’s equitable, to put an awfully fine a point on it. I’m also in favor of that honest wage being DOE, which is why you get paid the big bucks.
Inequity (in the sphere of work) happens when a person equal to you in intelligence, talent and determination is not afforded the same opportunity to make your pay grade, due to an inequitable — that is, unfair, biased or unjust — circumstance or proceeding. That circumstance might be an accident of birth (location, socio-economic status, race, gender) or a more insidious system of bias/favoritism (based on some, all or more of same).
I think we’re on the same team here, but that we’re using these two words in different ways.
[quote comment="116232"]I think equity and equality are incompatible states, at least here on earth, and I think equality is the more moral of the two.[/quote]
As I said, I think we’re using these words differently, but whether inequality or inequity is the Big Bad (here’s where the “faith and theology” tag cashes in), I strongly believe it’s Kingdom work to make stop. Yeah, we probably won’t bring heaven down to earth and see all God’s children join hands across continents to sing “We Are the World.” But if “the kingdom of God is at hand” and the new Jerusalem is even now making its belated way downtown, we oughtta start acting like citizens…even if it’s just for practice.
Sorry, Als. I jumped way left with what I thought you were saying. Consider my tirade held in reserve, to be copied and pasted on some future, more appropriate post. Like, say, when Teri decides to jump in and argue for global communism.
Maybe I’m not in a very thinky place these days (probably), but I’m having a hard time getting the distinction between equity and equality in the way you’re talking about them. Can you take it out of the thinky realm and make it practical for me? What’s an example of an inequality vs. an example of an inequity in the way you’re delineating them? I think that would help me make sense of the distinction.
Writing syllabi. Writing code. Filling out loan applications. Not thinking lofty thoughts. Brain stuck in binary mode. Help. Please help. 0010 1101 1000 0101
Three random comments unrelated to the inequity versus inequality discussion:
1. You’re editing Tony Campolo? I’m totally impressed!!
2. I’m pretty sure it was Jefferson who wrote the “all men are created equal” line (along with the rest of the Declaration of Independence), rather than Franklin.
3. We’ve had lots of arguments around our house about the proper use of the words “lie” and “lay.” I hope we can do thinky thoughts about these three-letter guys. And how about “flammable” and “Inflammable” meaning the same thing — what’s with that?
Sorry, it’s late…
Hey, is anyone going to watch the eclipse in the middle of the night tonight?
I may have spoken too soon — apparently Franklin was involved in editing the Declaration. Maybe he did in fact coin the famous phrase… I’ll feel like an idiot if that detail is set forth in Campolo’s book.