Unity is the Outcome In The Pursuit of Equality of Opportunity

 

Wanted to follow up on a column I wrote nearly five years ago during the wake of the George Floyd murder. 

It is interesting to look back at the counterproductive movement that followed and the inevitable retreat that is happening now.

I appreciated the frustration at the time that society was not doing enough when people saw a live murder take place at the hands of police on their screens. What followed however, was a lack of appreciation for past progress made and the idea that everything done before was lost. Being colour blind was apparently wrong and we needed to wake up to now see everything through the lens of race. Equality of opportunity, an inspirational goal with broad support, was replaced with equality of outcomes, a concept that few believe in.

So it is not surprising that the over compensation has now been rejected. You probably heard about a former President who just won an election riding the wave of anti woke sentiment. Corporations whose only allegiance is to maximizing profit, have rolled back their unpopular Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs. Meritocracy is the word now. It would be a mistake, however, if this anti woke movement is not just a step back to 2020, but a full back pedal. Equality of opportunity is still a noble pursuit and the benefits to institutions that reflect the people they serve still remains.

As I wrote five years ago,

It’s too easy and may even be our human condition to surround ourselves with people who look the same. But we cannot let this be our fatal flaw.

Seeing identity instead of the individual was wrong, but doing nothing and not acknowledging our inherent biases will never get us to the mountain top either. Organizations should never hire anyone based on their race, but they should strive to make sure that pool of people that they choose from is representative.

It is more important than ever that our schools be the place where all the youngest members of society come together to learn with everyone. K-12 schools must be the ties that bind, never divide. The school body is diverse - but the lessons taught must be in common. Most outside academia now realize that celebrating diversity over unity only serves to drive us further apart. It’s time that our future creating schools get that memo or we will have a diversity of schools, but not students.

As we step forward and stop the token gestures of leveraging others pain to signal hollow virtue. We must continue the pursuit of equality of opportunity. It is an ideal that must always be pushed by progressives because it’s not in our instinct, but it does bring us together.

By Gregory Cawsey

Read the original post Fighting the Disease of Racism - Published June 2020