National media picks up SJ's Office of Racial Equity follies at City Council

Local social media certainly had fun mocking the wild statements of progressive city councilmembers and staff at the 2.1.22 council meeting about the Office of Racial Equity. But the festivities continued on the national level as well, as commenters at center right community site ricochet.com joined the party with some incisive comments on the OppNow coverage of the meeting, below.

"To me, racial equity is a completely meaningless phrase. Equity is in the mind of the beholder. There is no measurable standard to equity. Equality, on the other hand, presents a measurable standard."

--David Carroll

"Ah, the incredible lightness of being … equitable. When did the illiterate manage to slip the new “equity” into our dictionaries? Has it been there all along, with me just too privileged to realize it? This is not new. It goes back to the distinction between courts of law and courts of equity, in jolly old England, centuries ago.

"Courts of equity are sometimes called courts of chancery, as the practice began with petitions to the English Lord Chancellor. In most US jurisdictions, the courts of law and equity have been merged. Certain claims and forms of relief remain equitable, and this can affect things like the right to a jury trial, which generally applies to legal claims but not equitable claims. I seem to recall that in the 1980s, “equity” was used to refer to equality of opportunity, when the term “equality” was generally used for equality of outcome in many instances. This usage appears to have flipped on recent years."

--Jerry Giordano

"I was taken aback the first time I heard 'equity' to mean something other than amount of ownership. I was embarrassed for the speaker, sure they’d misspoken, but certain considerations kept me from speaking up. The speaker was a simpleton in high dudgeon; to correct him would have invited conflict to no useful end.

“I looked up 'equity' this morning, and sure enough Miriam-Webster puts the “fairness” definition first. The Free Dictionary defines it as “just and fair” twice: once as the state of being just and fair, and again as something that is just and fair. Ah, the incredible lightness of being … equitable.

“When did the illiterate manage to slip the new 'equity' into our dictionaries? Has it been there all along, with me just too privileged to realize it?"

--Barfly

Read the whole thread here.

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