You've see this one, right? The three kids on the left are "equality," because they all have the same size box. The kids on the right are "equity," because they have an equal outcome.
Seems nice, right? Everyone's happy. This poster has been used in endless DEI sessions. (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, if you haven't been keeping up.)
I just have so many problems with this.
For starters, the poster is misleading. The boy on the right has been given the help he needs to reach a goal, and that's great. This is what all our schools should be doing.
If only this were a good metaphor.
It isn't. This is a better one:
Okay, a bit graphic, but it makes the point. Critical Race Theory, the guiding force behind the DEI movement, is cultural Marxism. It is about equal results, achieved by tearing standards down. Saying things like, "striving for excellence" is now considered a microaggression. Not kidding.
Look no further than the faculty demands at the Dalton School (chronicled in previous posts). One of the demands is to eliminate AP classes (euphemistically called "layered" classes) by 2023 if black students are not qualifying in the same percentages.
In other words, bring down the high achievers (including some blacks) if the numbers aren't equal. "Equity" is all about assuming racism exists wherever the numbers for racial groups aren't equal. It doesn't require that one find actual discrimination. If you don't have a proportionate number of blacks at your company or on your faculty or in your AP classes - presto! - there's systemic racism. Cue the hiring of an immense DEI infrastructure. Yale alone has 150 DEI officers. I have no idea what they do all day, other than sow division.
Which brings me to my next issue with poster #1. It shows three individual boys, which is highly misleading. The "equity" movement is about groups; it cares not about the individual. The original intent of the civil rights movement - that we be judged as unique individuals, not by the color of our skin - has been thrown on its head.
Now, one's defining characteristic is color.
Here's a great example. A few decades ago, symphonies began using "blind" auditions. The idea was that judges would only hear the quality of the music and not be influenced by race or gender. Now, the New York Times, among others, is demanding that this practice end. They want racial preferences to make sure orchestras are diverse. Never mind tapping the best musicians.
The word "meritocracy" is also considered a microaggression. Yup.
Don't get me wrong, I strongly favor getting people the help they need to be the best they can be, and that needs to start at a young age. To do this, there has to be an honest conversation about teachers unions and fatherless homes, but just try to go there with a Critical Race advocate or DEI brown shirt. You'll be on the fast train to Canceltown.
Lastly, while the boy on the right is definitely height-challenged, perhaps he's a math genius, or a great artist. We all have different talents, and it's ludicrous to suggest we should all achieve the same in every area of endeavor.
In closing:
'Nuff said.
It's a reasonable inference that what we're looking at is the intersection of several poisonous phenomena:
ReplyDelete1. The self-aggrandizement of the latter-day professional-managerial bourgeoisie contra previous generations. I was acquainted many years ago in Rochester with the deputy headmaster of one of the local academies. He was born in 1941, had a wife and four children by 1964, and was still working as of 2014 (though he'd departed the world of school administration 30-odd years earlier). His boss was 20-odd years his senior, a combat veteran with four children. Whoever Jim Best is as a person, he lives in a world where the previous generation was remarkably disciplined and adaptable and the generation previous to that was chock-a-bloc with men who had paid their dues in blood. They're not inclined to remember their debts to previous generations, but to condescend to them and to trash them.
2. In real time, we see that each generation seems to be sillier and more other-directed than the last, as if high-school never ends for most people. So many sh!tty little p's and q's now define in-groups and out-groups among the professional-managerial set and uniformity of opinion is so very stultifying. Consider Dr. Paul Church in Massachusetts, who was dismissed from one salaried position and removed from the attending list of four hospitals around Boston for the crime of composing and circulating an intra-office memorandum stating that male homosexuality was an unhealthy way to live. Most fancy bourgeois people in our time would defend what was done to him if they were pressed on it.
3. The narcissism and megalomania of black chauvinists. The notion in their head is that blacks are some sort of aristocratic caste and it's illegitimate for ordinary people to hold them to ordinary performance and behavioral standards.
4. The notion among our professional-managerial bourgeoisie that blacks are their clients and the rest of us are getting above ourselves by contesting their discretion to confer benefits on their clients.
Note, one thing all the patronage distribution over the last 50 years has done is robbed from capable blacks the capacity to asset that they are as good as their headline accomplishments suggest and that in turn vitiates their capacity to deviate from group consensus.
There is nothing good about any of this. At all.
Tall poppy syndrome. Cut all the poppies, until only the smallest poppies are left
ReplyDeleteThe original image is perfect because it projects what is really wrong here. Three people within the system wanting something without paying for it when others have to. I see this and wonder why they dont work together and find a way to make money so they buy seats to view the game. CRT obfuscates the real problem.
ReplyDeleteTY! That was my first thought as well - "why are these kids stealing a game for free?"
DeleteI thought the same.
ReplyDeleteThat toxic ideology mass manufactures cheating and abuse. To extend the meme, over time they’d be no paying customers left, games would stop. Then, people would miss baseball, and central government would create a league 100% financed by stolen property, where high earning players would be friends to the dictators, rather than the most skilled players.
Kinda like the history of chess in the soviet union? Don't get me wrong, Botvinnick and Petrosian were fine players, but do they get and retain the title without "help" from the kgb? Let's ask David Bronstein his opinion on this.
ReplyDeleteThis last picture is ridiculous. The trickle down effect of capitalism is a fable. The current reality of capitalism is well-rendered here: https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ ("Wealth shown to scale").
ReplyDeleteYour analysis is spot on.
ReplyDeleteNothing is more insidiously racist than the disguise that colored people are not smart enough to achieve their full potential.
This teaches mediocracy, entitlement, and frankly laziness.
Just so that this site does not perpetuate an echo-chamber effect: this has to be one of the most "pick and choose" efforts I've seen. If you look at the other "third" image for equity, it's them all standing at a see-through chainlink fence, all able to see the game without needing boxes; the system is simply built so that all sizes (ages, abilities, etc.) can participate. And no, there is nothing in the image that shows whether they are "inside" or "outside" the paid game. That's beside the point of the image.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the ideas and thoughts of past years are changing. We no longer fully subscribe to the "melting pot" idea, but rather choose to celebrate other cultural heritages. Why should this be seen as wrong? It's simply progress as we see bigger and bigger pieces of the elephant from each blind man's perspective.
Lastly, this statement confuses me: ""Equity" is all about assuming racism exists wherever the numbers for racial groups aren't equal." Uh, no. It's assuming that we (individuals) didn't start out at the same "starting point" and that some of us have huge barriers in our society that exist because they were made without us in mind (see image above with fence). It has nothing to with numbers. Racial groups aren't equal in countries with insititutional racism because they were made that way, not because there are fewer of them in certain spaces. Which, btw, there are now more "minorities" in America than white people. Why doesn't it feel like that? Because White people predominantly occupy positions of power.