The Tyranny of Equity & an Elder's Prayer
Further Explorations of D.E.I. ideology in Workplaces and Schools
Equity, one of the latest buzzwords in the office, does not mean what you think it means. Some might say that I’m playing a pessimistic game here and only seeing the glass has half full so, I’m attempting to explore these ideas with people who will argue them with me so that I can assess if there are holes in my thinking or if I a missing something that I’m not seeing.
In my world up until ten minutes ago, equity meant a share ownership in a company or the amount of wealth you have in your home after you subtract the mortgage.
In the emerging world of DEI, Equity, like many words in this ideological framework, sounds nice in Theory but masks infantilizing, discriminatory and even divisive racist outcomes enforced by institutions.
Equity is the desired state. It is the utopian ideal. The current and pervasive state of our world however, according to this orthodoxy, is the belief that our society and our country today is racist and even white-supremacist. Consequent and connected to these so-called “Systemic Oppressions,” is the idea that whites in society have unearned privilege. White Privilege.
DEI is Critical Race Theory. It’s what we’ve been hearing about from American parents pushing back against school boards for the last year or so, and what we will continue to hear a lot more about as we approach the 2022 Mid-Term Elections.
DEI/Critical Race Theory is a set of cosmological, metaphysical and sociological assertions that claim that we exist in a consciously-created sets of structures of exploitation and oppression by “The Patriarchy,” a shadowy cabal of white men who apparently met to invent racism and to conspire to oppress and exploit women.
I have a great deal of difficulty with assertions of agency for the creation of systems of inequity in our society. It smacks too much of conspiracy theories about freemasons or the illuminati. There is simply no evidence that the state of so-called oppression in our world is anything but a naturally occurring emergent (and cyclical) property of human civilization.
The assignment of deliberate intent to an entire race of people historically reminds me too much of the same tactics used through history; from accusations of historic guilt for blood libels, to the debunked conspiracies of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion;” to narratives that the Bolsheviks used to overthrow the Czars that lead to the dekulakification of Mother Russia; and to the eradication of “The Four Olds” in the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Add Pol Pot to the list here, who also used in-group/out-group and victim/oppressor narratives and we can attribute more than 200 million deaths in the twentieth century to people who used identity politics (cultural or racial) to justify atrocities in the name of equalizing for historic injustice.
We worked for decades to eradicate racial stereotypes as a factor in our education, employment and social lives because focusing on racial stereotypes entrenched racism. Yet today, we have a neo-racist orthodoxy that calls itself “Anti-Racism.”
Equity policies are cropping up in workplaces and schools all over the developed world. These polices sound superficially like the concept of fairness but under the surface, equity policies are often used as cudgels by manipulative individuals to advance the rights and privileges of some groups while taking away rights of others.
The rights of gifted children are being taken away in the Toronto School district to qualify on merit, marks and talent to schools for gifted individuals. It is being replaced with a lottery system for those who express intent; combined with proportional equity for minoritized races.
The rights of girls to safe intimate spaces like washrooms and changerooms in Ottawa high schools have been taken away, the expectations of the protections of modesty for Muslim girls, who by religious and cultural practice cannot be in the presence of boys in any state of undress, including during the removal of hijabs, have been undermined in the name of prioritizing boys who simply “self-identify” as female.
Adherents of these DEI and Critical Theory beliefs may even acknowledge that there are some people who will abuse these affordances in the workplace and in schools, but the belief in the necessity of Equity policies just seems to override every instance and example of abuse.
This sounds very dark and pessimistic and so lets examine the glass of water we have debated since we were children. Is it half full? Is it half empty?
Human beings each have emotional set points for these things. Some of us are naturally more optimistic and some of us are more pessimistic. This is something we each develop as we grow up and engage with the world in an interplay between our natural temperament and the social and environmental inputs - a combination of Nature and Nurture.
I will say a short list of gratitudes here because that is my normal view of the world, to begin with gratitude and in spite of how my exploration is unfolding so far, my nature is to be happy and grateful more than critical and prone to complaining.
As a species we are at the pinnacle of human flourishing and we are extraordinarily fortunate to live in this place at this time in history. We have escaped war and political instability for many decades and compared to most of the rest of the human population, we are living at the very peak of human technology and accomplishment so far.
In the US and Canada the vast majority of the population is in the global 1% of income. The last time I checked, a two person household income of $50,000 easily qualified for this threshold and $30,000 household is still a member of the global middle class.
Black Americans today on aggregate are the healthiest, most educated, wealthiest and longest lived people of Black African heritage in the history of the world.
I’m not suggesting that our world and our society is perfect. Remember the glass of water.
We are currently living through the greatest degree of income inequality in one-hundred-and-seventy years. There have been many waves of institutional corruption exposed over the decades, from the recent billions in fines assessed to Perdu Pharma who aggressively marketed opioids when they knew they were highly addictive, to big tobacco who for decades deliberately covered up the addictive and toxic nature of cigarettes, to criminalization cannabis and the subsequent war on drugs that made the US the country with the highest per capita prison population in the world.
We stare into the future uncertain about the environment, and what to do about the outputs of a society that has been driven by consumerism and a disposable mentality for decades. There are big problems, in fact we face numerous existential risks, any of which could destabilize and even tear down the scaffolding upon which we have built this towering civilization at any time.
That’s the glass half-full and half empty as I see it. No questions if we want to make the world a better place we are grappling with big problems.
The Equity people however approach the glass very differently. They don’t want to talk about the water in the glass. If you accept the claims of the DEI people, and your immutable characteristics like skin color and gender fit into the category of victims of oppression, they tell you that those white people over there stole the glass from you.
Seeking Equity then is the justifiable set of practices and the policies that seek redistributive justice to compensate for historic sins. Underneath “Equity” is social justice, a fueled sense of indignation, claims to entitlement to restitution, resentiment and revenge. DEI people will clutch their pearls here in indignation that this would never happen but one only has to look at what has happened to university campuses in the last decade to see how the Diversity and Equity people act.
The presuppositions of existence in this philosophy are as follows:
Life is systemic oppression when it is supposed to be fair. This injustice must be remedied through anti-racist activism and policies. The evidence of success will be that all minorities are equally represented at all levels of society.
Children are being taught this in school. It’s called Critical Race Theory.
How, if you could imagine, would a child who is taught, that in spite of living among the global 1% of income, even in a home with a single-mother being economically in the global middle-class, at the pinnacle of human achievement, where they can expect a healthier life living nearly double the average life-expectancy of 150 years ago, how would that child form a view of the world?
Not glass half full. Not glass half empty. How will the child move through the world as an adult if they are taught that the system is stacked against them, that racism and systemic oppression are the normal state and they are generationally victims of oppression.
See those people there? the white people? They stole your glass!
That’s how and why 200 million people died in the twentieth century. Resentiment
Another way of thinking about Equity is that the desired outcome is that everyone is the same. There is a political ideology closely tied to the idea of making everyone equal and eliminating economic class. It’s called Communism. But it works just the same when we seek to make all races the same.
Someone asked me what we should have instead of DEI if we want to make the world a better place? First of all, DEI will not make the world a better place.
What we need to do is to bring back some simple ideas.
The core and common principles of every religion in the world tell us the same thing.
In human relationships we begin with good faith as the default setting; not with the presumption that society is oppressive and hostile and that some people have undeserved advantages and unearned things. Beginning any encounter with suspicion, resentment, false beliefs and prejudices about what someone else may or may not have experienced in life, or categorizing people based on their group identities is destructive to our workplaces, our communities, our educational establishments and our children.
We also have to teach and act out the simple Golden Rule; Or perhaps understand that it is a description of a human phenomenon about consequences of our actions. If we treat people with hostility, suspicion and contempt, we will end up with that coming back upon us. The world will respond to our beliefs and behaviors and give back to us the commensurate consequences.
On the safe side, Love your neighbor and your classmate and your colleagues as yourself regardless of what nation you're from.
In the words of wisdom often shared by the late Anishinabeg Elder, William Commanda,
“For All My Relations. I am You and You are me.”
This reminds me of something I read in a pre-internet book about the differences in business culture between the French and the Americans. The American would say: "It may work in theory but does it work in practise?" The French would say: "It may work in practise but does it work in theory?". I'm sorry I cannot credit the author. Critical Theory is just that: a theory. A dangerous theory that divides people and can only end in tears. A teacher doesn't "teach" critical theory. A teacher teaches geography, math, music, biology, art and history by way of a Critical Theory Framework. Any subject/topic/theme/thesis can be framed through the lens of CT, intersectionality, marxism, capitalism, socialism, racism, feminism etc. Today, the Anglosphere is blinded by theory that is shockingly retrograde and damaging in practise. The French are still able to practise discernment between the two. The cartesian mindset is alive and well but wobbly. And they don't expect people to be nice.
Loved this, Shannon. Thank you for writing it!
Yes, DEI is essentially Critical Race Theory. I, like many people across all races, am sick to death of the protestations of the media here in the U.S. and elsewhere that "Critical Race Theory isn't taught in public schools, only in graduate school," and that anyone who dares to suggest otherwise is obviously a flaming racist.
The argument seems to be that teaching/advocating the underlying arguments of CRT as if they were established fact (white privilege! microaggressions! systemic racism! oppressors vs. the marginalized!) is not actually CRT as long as you never actually REFER to it as "CRT."
And you are absolutely correct about the appalling, tragic, and apparently repeatedly unlearned lessons to be drawn from historical use of in-group/out-group and oppressor/victim narratives to justify screaming atrocities in the name of "equalizing for historic injustice." What is happening to women's and girls' rights in the current climate is horrifying to me.