🗯️ Equal Chance, Equal Footing

Yesterday, while writing my post on Trump’s meaning of the “American Way”, the phrase “Equal Chance, Equal Footing” when mentioning White privilege. Society has been pushing the “Equal Chance” notion for years — essentially, it is this notion of color-blind and other forms of supposed race / sex / gender / etc. blindness in academics, hiring, promotion, policing. But aside from the fact that it has never been truly and consistently implemented, it is also a meaningless notion unless everyone starts from the same place.

But this is where Equal Footing comes into play, and it is often the most important piece of the puzzle. You can’t have equal chance if your starting point isn’t equal. Equal footing means, for example:

• Equal risk of the police targeting you and your family
• Equal opportunities for education in schools that provide the same learning experience
• Equal economic comfort for families so that parents have time to spend with children
• Equal access to job
• Equal pay for equal work
• Equal appraisals of home and people, independent of racial and economic factors

When we talk equality, often the focus in on the legal aspects. Do these groups have the same rights as others? Can a woman, LGBT…, black, hispanic, asian, … do the same thing as {white, male, straight) can do? But equality is more: It is equal chance, and most importantly, having an equal footing.

 

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along the Road as 🗯️ Equal Chance, Equal Footing by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link to the left. You can sign in with your LJ, DW, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. Note: Subsequent changes made to the post on the blog are not propagated by the SNAP Crossposter; please visit the original post to see the latest version. P.S.: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.