What is Equality?

I often don’t know what people really mean when they talk about “equality”. Let alone “equity”.

People talk about “equality of opportunity” vs “equality of outcome”. But both are impossible.

Equality of opportunity is impossible. The accidents of our birth influence the opportunities we will have in life. There will always be rich and poor, and we can’t prevent the rich from giving their children greater opportunities. We can try to reduce the gaps, but achieving complete equality of opportunity is impossible.

And or course equality of outcome is just as impossible. Even if we achieved equality of opportunity, we are all different. And I don’t mean just individually. Groups are different. Men and women are different. Japanese and French people are different. City people and country people are different. This group-level differences will result in different group-level outcomes.

So we will have neither the same opportunities, nor the same outcomes.

Equality of Rules

But I still believe in equality. But not equality of opportunity or equality of outcome.

Rather I believe in equality in the sense that we should all play by the same rules. We should be equal before the law, and society should not grant special privileges based on any demographic attribute (sex, race, religion, etc).

In other words, I believe in intrinsic inequality but normative equality.

Four Views of Equality

Viewed along these dimensions, we can roughly arrange the views that people have of human equality in four quadrants.

Intrinsic and Normative Equality

Before the rise of “woke”, there was a tendency on the political left towards endorsing intrinsic equality: attributing most differences in group outcomes to oppression and injustice. Steve Pinker called this view “Blank Slatism”. But this was only taken to the extreme by the most progressive. And the majority of liberals still held to the principle of normative equality for a long time.

Intrinsic Equality and Normative Inequality

The term “woke” was originally self-applied by a group of people who believed themselves to be particularly aware of the degree of oppression and injustice in society. And they believed that justice would require abandoning the principle of normative equality and actively discriminating against groups perceived as privileged in order to counter the cumulative effects of historical injustice. In other words, they believed in normative inequality despite intrinsic equality.

Intrinsic Inequality and Normative Equality

This is where I fall, and I believe most people in the west share this view. They believe that cultural and even genetic differences are not all superficial: that men and women tend to want different things, that people from different cultures have different values, and that all these different contribute to different outcomes. And even though they may also recognize the cumulative effect of historical justices, they don’t believe these justify current discrimination. They believe in normative equality despite intrinsic inequality.

intrinsic and Normative Inequality

This is where the fascists, white supremacists, etc. Like most of us, they believe people are intrinsically different. Like the woke, they believe that some people deserve special treatment. But for very different reasons.