Anonymous wrote:It seems to me that if you actually care about diversity - diversity of cultures and beliefs - then you can't also take the idea of "equity" seriously.
Different cultures prioritize different things in life, and not all of those choices translate into money at the same rate when comparing (artificial) groups to each other.
In fact, some may translate into other things that are much more valuable than money, but impossible to measure - like close families, robust friend networks, belief in an afterlife, etc.
This seems trivially simple & true, but you don't hear it much.
Am I missing something? It it wrong to apply logic to these ideas?
“Equity” means different things to different people. I’ve come to understand that most people use it to mean that resources should be allocated in way that is more “fair”, but are very ambiguous about what that means and how to achieve it. I can look at the state of US education system and think it’s not really “fair” that lower-SES children, which also happen to be disproportionately POC, seems to be afforded worse educational opportunities, but not have concrete solutions for fixing it. Indeed, I’ve also come to accept that in a capitalist society, higher SES parents can provide their children better educational opportunities, which they either pay for directly (through private school tuition) or indirectly (by purchasing a house in a higher-achieving school district, likely for more money than a house in a lower-achieving school district). I’m not sure that is a solution—attempts to achieve “equity” will run directly into parents, who will find ways to provide the best education they can afford to their own kids, thus maintaining a divide where higher SES kids get a “better” education than lower SES kids. I just don’t see parent altruistically withholding opportunities from their kids so other kids can have more.