Language expert rips City's proposed "equity" definition as dangerous gibberish

Noted forensic linguist Dr. Alan Perlman applies his expertise in BS-identification (see nearby) to city staff's recent redefining of "equity" and finds that, well, it's full of it. City staff drafted this definition at the request of City Council to help clarify the mission of San Jose's new Office of Racial Equity.  Perlman believes the bizarre definition will create a radical expansion of affirmative action commitments that will torment San Joseans for decades. Perlman provides a line-by-line exegesis of the daft definition below. City staff language is in normal font, Perlman's comments in italics. (City Council will vote on approving this incoherent inflation of its affirmative action obligations on Tuesday, January 25).

City staff draft language: "Both a process and an outcome..."

Alan Perlman: This is logically contradictory: an outcome can derive from a process, but it can't be both.

Staff draft: "...racial equity is designed to center anti-racism, eliminate systemic racial inequities, and is rooted in the acknowledgement of the City of San Jose’s historical and existing practices that have led to discrimination and injustices to Black, Indigenous, Latino/a/x, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities."

AP: A great example of a nice sounding sentence that has a grammatical sequence and suggests it's saying something--but actually isn't. Note the vague, undefined buzzwords ("anti-racism, systemic racial inequities") which imply that there are documented metrics and scholarship to support their assumptions, but they're not provided or even hinted at. Everybody knows there are complex sociological forces at work to explain disparate impacts, but this formulation just waves that complexity away in a series of jargon-tinged obfuscations. It asserts a definitive world view but does nothing to validate it. 

Staff draft: "The racial equity process explicitly prioritizes communities that have been economically deprived and underserved..."

AP: Who in the community? How do you determine the criteria for being deprived and underserved? This series of assertions screams out for metrics and footnotes, yet none are provided. This is using loaded buzzwords to conflate individuals who have experienced dramatic injustices in history with those who have had a very different experience.  And as mentioned above, creating a label in the absence of agreed-upon reality is one of the essential strategies of BS.

Staff draft: "...and establishes a practice for creating psychologically safe spaces for racial groups that have been most negatively impacted by policies and practices."

AP: This is a buzzword salad: is the city getting into the psychological safe space business? What on earth is that? And the "negative impacts" require metrics, scholarship, examples and footnotes, which of course are not provided. 

Staff draft: "It is action that prioritizes liberation and measurable change and centers lived experiences of all impacted racial groups."

AP: This is where it starts getting especially ominous. The authors don't tell us what the groups are being liberated from, or how expansive that liberation might be. Additionally, it suggests that if your group suffered any historical oppression ever--that is all that matters. Metrics, logic, individual life decisions, talents, and opportunities don't count--only the narrative of oppression matters. This formulation rejects the accumulated knowledge of civilization and replaces it with a mannered, exotic, and arcane worldview in which “lived experience” is valued over the enduring insights of the past. 

But note that "measurable change" phrase: “Measurable change” is left undefined – what kind of change? how is it measured? – again leaving the power of interpretation in the hands of the BSer. While the authors don't get specific about the metrics they don't like, they are suggesting that they won't rest until outcomes meet their specific criteria, which are neither presented nor justified. They sound scientific here, but they're not. 

Staff draft: As an outcome, racial equity is achieved when race can no longer be used to predict life outcomes. 

AP: Ironically, this is the missing premise of this piece of writing. It assumes, with absolutely zero proof, that racial background is the sole factor in determining what happens to you. This is wildly overstated and not self-evident at all, as anyone will realize who has done a moment's worth of study of the issue (see Thomas Sowell and other economists). This sentence reveals the author's real intent, which is affirmative action on steroids for San Jose city government, which will go on forever. Your citizens should know this is very expensive theater. 

In summary, this is not a definition. A definition relates the term in question to equivalent words or ideas. For example, you could say that "equity means fairness in all government dealings."  A real definition supplies alternative words that exist in the same intellectual reality environment that the audience and authors live in and that represent the same reality.

This piece of writing, on the other hand, is just a discursive rumination from a very particular and mannered worldview. It can't be pinned down--in fact it doesn't want to be pinned down because it's just about creating the right feelings that will compel its readers to just give more and more and more: more preferences, more quotas, more reverse racism, more race/gender obsession, more favoritism, more Critical Race Theory -- forever. 

Dr. Alan Perlman is a PhD and forensic linguist based in NH. Read more of his work here.

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