{"id":98890,"date":"2021-01-25T08:28:49","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T13:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=98890"},"modified":"2021-01-25T08:53:49","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T13:53:49","slug":"andrew-sullivan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=98890","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Sullivan–Joe Biden’s Culture War Aggression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Biden has also signaled (and by executive order, has already launched) a very sharp departure from liberalism in his approach to civil rights. The vast majority of Americans support laws that protect minorities from discrimination, so that every American can have equality of opportunity, without their own talents being held back by prejudice. But Biden\u2019s speech<\/a> and executive orders<\/a> come from a very different place. They explicitly replace the idea of equality in favor of what anti-liberal critical theorists call \u201cequity.\u201d They junk equality of opportunity in favor of equality of outcomes. Most people won\u2019t notice that this new concept has been introduced \u2014 equity, equality, it all sounds the same \u2014 but they\u2019ll soon find out the difference.<\/p>\n

In critical theory, as James Lindsay explains<\/a>, \u201c\u2018equality\u2019 means that citizen A and citizen B are treated equally, while \u2018equity\u2019 means adjusting shares in order to make citizen A and B equal.\u201d Here\u2019s how Biden defines \u201cequity\u201d<\/a>: \u201cthe consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such treatment, such as Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.\u201d<\/p>\n

In less tortured English, equity means giving the the named identity groups a specific advantage in treatment by the federal government over other groups \u2014 in order to make up for historic injustice and \u201csystemic\u201d oppression. Without \u201cequity\u201d, the argument runs<\/a>, there can be no real \u201cequality of opportunity.\u201d Equity therefore comes first. Until equity is reached, equality is postponed \u2014 perhaps for ever.<\/p>\n

Helping level up regions and populations that have experienced greater neglect or discrimination in the past is a good thing. But you could achieve this if you simply focused on relieving poverty in the relevant communities. You could invest in schools, reform policing, target environmental clean-ups, grow the economy, increase federal attention to the neglected, and thereby help the needy in precisely these groups. But that would not reflect critical theory\u2019s insistence that race and identity trump class, and that America itself is inherently, from top to bottom, a \u201cwhite supremacist\u201d country. Biden just endorsed that with gusto.<\/p>\n

The paradox, of course, is that to achieve \u201cequity\u201d you have to first take away equality for individuals who were born in the wrong identity group. Equity means treating individuals<\/em> unequally so that groups<\/em> are equal.<\/p>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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I want Biden to succeed. I voted for him. I want Republicans to moderate. I want to lower the temperature. But none of that can or will happen if the president fuels the culture war this aggressively, this crudely, and this soon.https:\/\/t.co\/N0SlKd4j8g<\/a><\/p>\n

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) January 22, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n