Inequity

  A word I hear over and over again is inequity. There's income inequity, educational inequity, racial inequity, religious inequity, and whatever equity has been legislated or codified itself is inequitable! And all I can say is, if everyone is equal there are no exceptions. So what we have to decide upon is, what is equal? Does being equal mean everyone has the same thing regardless of effort, talent, opportunity, luck or circumstance? That appears to be what I keep hearing. It's combined with the "what if" syndrome. If this hadn't happened and this had happened I could have had this or that. But that didn't happen so it's not fair, an inequity exists. In order for me to be equal to you I should have advantages over you to make me equal but better. Yes, equal but better is the plan these days. It's a new twist on the separate but equal theory that was championed during reconstruction in the south. Equal but better is the same thinking! It creates a de facto situation where one group is "inferior" to the other. If your group is receiving special consideration , for any reason, that group is not equal to the others! So how do we make everything equal? 

 What is inequity? A synonym for that term is unfair. It's not fair. So how do we make everything fair? It's obvious that equal opportunity doesn't guarantee equal results. That is the pitfall we find ourselves in these days. I call it, what if, and that's is just what we are talking about. What if my parents had been wealthy? I would have gone to college, become a successful business man, possibly a millionaire. But they weren't. Was that fair? I wanted to win the race but someone ran faster than me, was that fair? Shouldn't others have been handicapped to give me a fair chance? The truth of the matter is I had just as much opportunity to go to college, be successful, earn a million dollars as everyone else but I didn't do that. It isn't anyone else's fault, it wasn't unfair, it is life. That is the American way! That is what the American dream is all about. Well, that is what the dream used to be but that dream is fading away. It isn't fair.

 How do we make it fair? We grade on a curve and we handicap the successful. Everyone gets the trophy, everyone is a hero, and everyone is the same. We are even setting aside gender insisting we can be neutral on that as well. Why? Aberrations and abnormalities are being normalized to be fair? It doesn't change the reality, they are still abnormalities and aberrations. Life isn't fair.  And then I hear the term restorative justice being flung about like arrows from a quiver. A person I never knew, two centuries ago, that may or may not have been my ancestor was unjustly treated. I should receive restorative justice for that. I hear that all the time. Why? Because it wasn't fair? Well you can't "restore" the past. There is no going back and making it right. Restorative justice can only benefit the one that was injured! That's why it is called restorative, to restore the individual to the "equal" state they were in when the injustice occurred. Giving me a new cat because my great grandfathers' cat was killed by his neighbor in 1968 isn't restoring anything to anyone! All that is; I'm getting a cat for free. That's what I got, not justice for my great grandfather.

 In Plessy v Ferguson in 1896 the Supreme court ruled that separate but equal was not unconstitutional. The thought there being that law only applied to civil rights, not social rights. Basically the thinking was this, if the accommodations are equal, but restricted to one group or the other that is not discrimination. If one group feels inferior to the other because of that separation that is a social issue, not a legal issue. Separate but equal. There was one justice that dissented in that court. It wasn't until 1954 in Brown v The Board of Education that the decision was overturned. In that case the lawyers really used the argument that Justice Harlan had dissented with in 1896. He was saying that arbitrarily separating people on the basis of race goes against the Constitution of equal protection under the law. He was talking about civil rights. 

 Can we legislate social rights? No we can not and we shouldn't be trying to do that. I know of no civil law, no civil authority in America today that is denying anyone of anything based on race, creed, color or national origin. It is against the law to do so! Civil law. Inequity in social rights will always exist. They have done so since the beginning of time and will continue. But I'm not talking solely about race in this thinking. I'm talking about perceived inequities. Fact is we are all different, we are told to celebrate our differences. Celebrate inequity? If we are all different can we all be the same? Government, civil law exists for what purpose? A government establishes a people and a national identity. The government exists for the common good of the people. In our government we have the separation of church and state. Often misunderstood, what is it really? It is the separation of civil from social. Legal from moral. Inequity in the law is dealt with in the civil justice system. Inequity in our social lives? Well, how do we legislate that?