Should Americans Pursue Equity?

As I continue to dig into what it means to be American, I stepped into the issue of equity, equality, social justice, and why these don't sit well with me.

I struggle with Native American reservations. Imagine this: you live in a house. Someone comes along and wins your house through force (i.e. war), then moves you to the backyard. Agreements are made that grant you some financial benefits, and I - victorious - move into the house. My children are born in the house, then come to find out the financial part of the concession has not ben honored. You are sitting there BOTH defeated AND cheated of your consolation prize. What are my children to do? How can my children enjoy in peace their inheritance, knowing that they are benefiting from my (the parents, ancestors, whatever) ill-gotten wealth? Furthermore, doe the people living in the backyard have a legal claim against the children living in the house? How about their children? And whose law is going to determine if there is a legal claim? This is where the "equity" conversation begins. Stick with me - I'll get to the point very soon.

I struggle with the concept of reparations for the descendants of slaves. Imagine this: Your parents are brought from Africa to be a slaves for the duration of their lives, and part of yours... In the course of daily labor, your parents create systems of production that ease work, increase volume, and therefore increase revenue...for the slave owner. You are not paid for your work, you are simply allowed to live. The "owner" increases in wealth, and leaves his inheritance to his children. You, the grown children, continue to make ingenious designs that increase revenues further. Then, you are emancipated, starting a new life "separate but equal". You have no money, no property, and a family to feed. You have skill, you have guts, and a very disparate access to resources (enter Jim crow). Fast forward three decades or five - your descendants are being compared to the descendants of your Whyte peers, wondering why Blach people just can't get it together. Your descendants propose that reparations - paying your descendants for the wealth created at the expense of your ancestors - can level the playing field. Slaves were emancipated but they were not free, and hundreds of years later we are still wondering how to practice equity.

Personally, I don't know how we can put a number on the generations that have been negatively impacted and the lives that have been traumatized due to the atrocity of African slavery and the disparity that it created in the United States of America. And how do we even begin to repair the damage done to the Nations (yes, nations) that were inhabiting the land before colonization?

Equity or equitable are the words we like to use to describe what the experience of Americans should be. Regardless of race, religion, political inclinations, gender, etc, you should experience equity. But what the heck does that even mean? I have seen images trying to depict what it can be - such as a tall Whyte man overlooking past a fence, and a child needing a prop in order to reach the same height as the tall Whyte man, therefore both are able to look past the fence into a beautiful sight.

My issue with this image/picture and even with the word: the experience of the tall Whyte male is the standard, and equity is, in reality, a measure of other people's abilities to live the life of the tall Whyte man. Equity is a mathematical formula with metrics focused on bringing other people groups (women, Hispanics, handicapped, etc) up to the "standard": Whyte men.

Although equity is better than equality, it focuses the attention on the Whyte experience and continues to center the conversation around what other peoples can do to be more like the stereotypically "successful" Whyte male. I've had people argue that they do not see Whyteness as their goal, yet when asked what metrics they use at their non-profit organization or their personal definitions of success, they inevitably say things like "I'd like to be the next Steve Jobs" or "We want to increase high school graduation to the level of Whyte students". Equity results in metrics that fail to measure intrinsically more satisfying indicators of success. And while I still believe that reparations are necessary (more on that next), these will not be useful nor productive unless we learn to value freedom more than equity, and even more than money.

On a separate article, I will discuss the difference between being and doing, which is at the heart of the American definition of success. In this article, I'm more concerned with doing - the American obsession with measuring success by what we produce, and how this affects our understanding of equity and freedom. I'll write a whole other piece on equity vs. freedome, so stay tuned if that topic is of interest.

Reparations are useful because they put financial resources, which is the main fuel in a capitalist economy, in the hands of people who were denied their due share through illegal or immoral means. We are super comfortable with the idea of taking someone to court for pain and suffering - we just don't have the legal means to do the same thing for slavery. Please note that the legal system does not appropriately make room for this because it was not built for this. Reparations defy the legal system itself because it was the legal system that allowed and sustained slavery. It was also the legal system that drafted and approved treaties with Native American nations. Without focusing on this point, let us just note that this is why justice and fairness in the American experience is inherently racist, still: it perpetuates the mechanisms by which people can be robbed and not compensated. You might disagree with this statement, if so, let me know in the comments. Yes, reparations would be great, and could only happen as a result of systemic change that turns justice on its head, creating a new legal system that punishes the old legal system and rewards new behaviors.

So how do we get there?

Honestly, however it is that we get there, I'm already exhausted. Regardless of how I slice this, the descendants of slave owners have to decide that they will part ways with their wealth and redistribute it to those to whom it is due, and willingly change the systems that either prevent this behavior or at least reward its persistence. In other words, I am delegating my power as a victim of racial oppression back to my oppressor. Ugh. I want to puke.

I cannot speak for African Americans, I am not one. So this article is not about what African Americans nor Native Americans "should" do about reparations. This is about equity as a virtue, and its basis on the Whyte male experience as the standard we are to measure against, and whether or not this is a worthy pursuit in the first place.

Equity demands reparations. And reparations require the current asset owner to either voluntarily give up at least a portion of their assets, or voluntarily take on the dismantling of the system that allowed for the inequity to be sustained, and ultimately return the "stolen" goods to the rightful owners. In both scenarios, the burden is on the oppressor, and leaves the one demanding reparations at the expense of the asset owner.

When equity does not demand reparations of some form, it does something worse: places the burden of "catching up" on the person who does not have the asset. It sounds like this:

• "Pull yourself from the bootstraps like my ancestors did!" Except those ancestors benefited from either being slave owners at some point in time. or from being Whyte during segregation, etc, as we explored above.
• "Come to this country legally, like my ancestors did!" Except those ancestors got on a boat and came over and there was no legal system in place to regulate immigration. These legal systems were put in place by the Whytes in governmental and legal power in order to regulate the influx of Blachs (primarily) and other groups.
• "Stop complaining. It is unfair to blame me (Whyte descendant of slave owners) for the sins of my ancestors! Except we are blaming the descendant of Blachs in the United States for their current circumstances [insert questioning emoji]

I could write a few more, but I think this makes the point that equity, though widely used, is still not enough for me. It doesn't create a conversation centered on Blach people, rather it continues to set Whyte as the standard, requiring either reparations conceded by the oppressor (unlikely) or catching up on the part of the oppressed (inherently impossible).

Do you have a more optimistic view of equity? Where did I go wrong with this train of thought? Tell me below.

Francesca is CFO/COO at The Allapattah Collaborative, CDC