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Dr. Jordan Peterson is controversial, with large camps of fans and detractors. He offers opinions on a wide range of topics. By accident, I ran across his opinion that equity is the same as equality of outcome.
According to dictionary definitions and previous research, he’s misusing the term. Unintentionally, I would suspect, because whether you agree with him on a topic or not, Peterson does seem sincere.
However, many others also misuse or misconstrue equity and its place in society, so let us start with some definitions.
What Equity Means
Merriam-Webster offers the following major definitions:
- The fair or just treatment of people.
- The value of some property over and above claims against it. Some examples are someone’s house, a publicly held company’s common stock, or any ownership right or interest in something of tangible value.
- A concept from English common law that provided for courts to ensure justice in cases when normal legal solutions cannot properly ensure fair and just treatment of people.
The etymology traces back through Middle English, to Anglo-French, and ultimately to the Latin aequus, meaning equal or fair.
The second and third definitions aren’t close to a concept of equality of outcome. At most, one might argue that equity would mean getting a share of something purchased, earned, or previously owned. The third, again, focuses on fair treatment.
The first meaning shows the heritage of the original Latin.
What Equity Doesn’t, Or Shouldn’t, Mean
To my hearing and reading, Peterson disagrees with directing or legislating equality of outcomes. In many cases, that can be a reasonable stance. Excluding people from positions or forms of access, no matter their qualifications, to give those less qualified opportunities as a form of favoritism is wrong. As was frequently done to non-whites before the civil rights laws of the 1960s.
Since the passage of those same laws, equity is not about equal outcomes. It is, or should be, about equal opportunities. Universities found themselves embattled by claiming racial quotas and limitations were forms of equity.
Around that time, I was reporting on diversity, equity, and inclusion — the parts of DEI — and spoke with many experts and lawyers. The reason companies didn’t get into legal trouble is because they had approached things differently.
As Kathryn Youker, director of the Economic Justice Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told me at the time, many stories about the business implications failed to mention “that race-conscious actions in business are already severely limited.”
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which pertained to business, is much stricter than Title VI, which governs education. “Employers have an affirmative duty to avoid practices that have negative impact on any covered group,” she said.
Corporate DEI programs typically have never included hiring decisions. Instead, they concentrated on creating funnels to bring in potential job candidates. The concept is to broaden the potential pool of available talent.
This neither guarantees nor even contemplates equal outcomes. It doesn’t even ensure fairness, as many large organizations that have issued DEI reports over the years didn’t necessarily see big changes in employee makeup. Many experts in DEI have said that many approaches that began in the 1960s haven’t been effective.
But to dismiss the idea of equity as code for everyone getting equal outcomes, as it isn’t the case in theory or practice, is unrealistic.