Kerby Anderson
The term “equity” has caused great confusion, perhaps because many social justice warriors intend it to be ambiguous. Sometimes I have been told by my fellow Christians to stop criticizing DEI and equity because Christians should be for equality. Of course, that is not how the term is used.
We began to see its meaning during the pandemic. Noah Rothman reminds us that some public health experts talked about the notion of “grounding” vaccination access “in equity.” What that meant was to provide vaccinations first to the disadvantaged along with providing it to public servants.
Further back in line would be white people, which would include the elderly, who were at the greatest risk. According to one University of Pennsylvania ethicist, that was fine. “Older populations are whiter” because society “enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.”
The wildfires in Southern California provided another example. One newspaper editorial criticized the fact that some wealthy residents were able to hire their own firefighters but complained they didn’t suffer the same consequence of others. The real problem was the shortage of fire fighters, water, and common-sense fire management.
Heather Mac Donald addresses the use and misuse of equity in her book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. The subtitle of her book might seem like hyperbole until you dig into some of the stories she tells. The word equity shows up in science, medicine, music, and the criminal justice system.
We have seen this dangerous drift to equity. It is time for it to end.