Equality or Identity

“All men (sic) are created equal.” So wrote our founding fathers (sic) as they birthed a nation that relied on slavery to drive its predominantly agricultural economy. 

It was a stunning act of hypocrisy! And yet, it is my belief that a majority of the men (sic) present at the signing of the Declaration were on balance reasonably ethical, at least by today’s jaded standards, and some perhaps even virtuous. They would not have condoned such hypocrisy in their private lives.

Some were already calling for Abolition; others sensed a contradiction but resolved to live with it, however uneasily. The majority, however, saw no conflict between the language of the Declaration and social reality in the American South.

We have rightly rejected the ethos of slavery and the moral hypocrisy that accompanied it. We are still working to dismantle its institutions and correct its social legacy. 

We are recommitted to equality, and we have learned to apply that concept to everyone, regardless of race or gender. In a justifiable reaction to abuses, historical and ongoing, we are skittish about any residual distinctions based on race or gender.

(Look what happened to Larry Summers when, as Harvard’s Head, he listed gender differences as one of a smorgasbord of possible reasons why women statistically seem to lag behind men in STEM studies. He simply wanted to cover every logical possibility regardless of its physical improbability…and that act of intellectual honesty cost him his job.) 

In our zeal to eliminate any lingering vestiges of discrimination, we run up against a different problem: How do we make sure we don’t compromise the cultural diversity that makes our society, or any society, strong? How do we keep equality from degenerating into homogeneity? 

As we know from biology, the adaptations needed for species’ survival are normally not invented from whole cloth; rather they come from recessive traits already present in the population. Yesterday’s recessive trait is dominant tomorrow. A healthy genome, or a healthy culture, always has a bunch of untried adaptations on the shelf. 

In today’s commerce, ‘just in time’ inventory management is all the rage. That may work for Walmart, but it is not Mother Nature’s way. She (sic) was a Depression baby. She’s a hoarder; she hates to throw anything out: “Who knows? It might come in handy someday, e.g. if we need to recover from a thermonuclear holocaust.”

Genetic and cultural diversity is essential to the long term survival of a species…or a civilization. Unfortunately, homo sapiens has an unusually low level of genetic variety; to survive we need to make up that shortfall with robust cultural diversity. So how do we avoid homogenizing society into a raceless, sexless monolith? How do we protect the cultural diversity we need to grow and adapt to changes in our environment? 

Look to Title IX as a paradigm. This 1972 law mandates ‘equal’ treatment in federally funded college athletic programs. Here’s how Claude from Anthropic describes it: “Requires schools to provide equal athletic opportunities for male and female students. This doesn't mean identical programs, but rather equitable treatment in areas like scholarships, facilities, coaching, and support services.”

This does not mean that women are automatically allowed to play on men’s teams…or vice versa...or share showers, etc. It does require universities to provide students with ‘equal opportunity’ to develop athletically, regardless of gender.

Oft times, government sponsored ‘social engineering’ ends in disaster. Consider, for example, court ordered efforts to achieve racial desegregation in primary and secondary public schools. Known as ‘forced busing’, these initiatives were center stage beginning in the 1960s and continuing well into the ‘90s. 

Most observers consider these initiatives a disaster. An entire generation of American youth had their educations disrupted and, in the end, it’s unclear whether busing contributed to any meaningful, sustainable, reduction in racial imbalance.

Not so, Title IX. These programs have had massively positive effects on university life and the knock-on effects have led to explosive growth in women’s sports far beyond the confines of academia (e.g. the WNBA). 

Court ordered busing was grounded in Brown v. Board of Education, a 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools. A series of subsequent decisions (2000 – 2010) largely gutted Brown and ‘court ordered busing’ is now seen as a relic of an unhappier time. 

The Court’s decision in Brown overturned the principle of ‘separate but equal’. The Court quite correctly concluded that involuntary separation of students by race was inherently incompatible with equal educational opportunity.

Brown was right, of course; and yet, many cherished educational institutions thrive on ‘concentrating’ their student populations based on race, religion, or gender. Few would suggest, for example, that faith-based schools (e.g. RCC parochial schools) or Historically Black Colleges or non-coed secondary schools be shuttered.

Equality is a good thing, homogeneity is not. Mao is famous for saying, “Let 1,000 flowers bloom,” in response to China’s autocratic Cultural Revolution. But how do we ensure genuine equality of opportunity without undermining diversity and without drifting back to the abuses of ‘separate but equal’?

Again, Title IX can be a guide. Requiring institutions to demonstrate verifiable equality of opportunity is preferable to enforcing equality of results. “Let 1,000 flowers bloom.”

Lest this seem a bit New Agey, it is useful to note that the Title IX ethos goes back more than 3,000 years, to the Old Testament Book of Leviticus. This section of Torah includes a prototypical constitution and perhaps the first ever revolutionary political platform.

Leviticus established the principle of Jubilee, the equal redistribution of all productive property every 50 years. Between Jubilees, the economy is laissez-faire, limited only by the ethical guardrails of Torah. 

This ingenious social program transformed the politics of the Middle East (and arguably of the entire Western world) and led to the establishment of what is still perhaps the longest and most successful theocracy (c. 1300 – 1050 BCE) in Western history. 

Joshua used the promise of Jubilee, and other social reforms embedded in Torah, to precipitate a popular uprising in Jericho so that its famous ‘walls came tumbling down’.

The promise of equal opportunity is powerful, even when equality of result is not guaranteed. Case in point: The Lottery, specifically Powerball. At the time of this writing, the Jackpot stands at just under $2 billion. The eventual winner will have the option of converting the scheduled annuity payout to an immediate lump sum of about $1 billion. Not a bad ROI on a $2 ticket.

Of course, the odds of any one ticket winning the Jackpot are 1in 300 million (but the odds of winning a smaller prize are 1 in 25). In Powerball, every $2 has an equal opportunity to win the Jackpot; but in all likelihood, one ticket will win it all. This is a paradigmatic case of rigorous equality of opportunity with no expectation of equal results.

So what do we think of something like this? Well, in the last 3 days approximately 80,000,000 tickets have been sold. I guess most folk don’t have a problem with it…at all. Of course, our nannies are telling us not to bet: “It’s a fools’ game, the odds are terrible, you might just as well put a match to your money.” 

Let alone the fact that much of what they say is blatantly false! For example, because the Jackpot grows with every unsuccessful draw (while the odds remain unchanged), after a certain number of draws, the advantage flips to the players. 

But what’s more important, it’s not their $1 billion that I’d be risking if I don’t play. Bottom line: I already bought my tickets for the next draw and I suggest you stop reading this article and go do the same.

But back to Jubilee. Compare Leviticus to the so-called ‘revolutionary’ programs of the 19th and 20th centuries. In a nutshell, these ideologies sought to guarantee ‘equality of result’ but did so at the expense of opportunity.

Few of them succeeded and none of them survived, at least not in their intended forms. For better or for worse, today’s Vietnam is not Ho’s nor is the  PRC Mao’s.

If we are to survive as a species, we need to evolve, both genetically and culturally. Equality of opportunity gives evolution its best chance to succeed, quickly and efficiently; enforced equality of results hobbles evolution, effectively abolishing natural selection and reducing future variation to random fluctuations.

Both individual justice and collective survival require equality of opportunity; neither benefits from artificially imposed equality of result. So go exercise your God and Constitution given right to equality of opportunity…right now. Invest in Powerball!

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Jacob Lawrence’s The Library (1960) portrays African American men and women reading in a structured, geometric interior, using bold colors and angular forms to emphasize order and focus. The painting highlights the library as a place of equality, where access to books symbolizes empowerment and collective progress through education.