Comment by 9dev
3 hours ago
If you hold a race, but some people start further behind others, they have a longer track to run. I think we can agree that to call it a fair race, we'd want to accommodate for the track length.
3 hours ago
If you hold a race, but some people start further behind others, they have a longer track to run. I think we can agree that to call it a fair race, we'd want to accommodate for the track length.
Sure, but if some people are faster than others because they have longer legs or because they've trained more etc. then people without such advantages aren't given special accomodation. It actually runs in my family that we have very short legs in comparison to our torsos. For example I'm 6' tall but look like I'm 6' 4" or thereabouts when sitting down next to someone with more normal proportions. In spite of this disadvantage, one of my brothers did cross country in high school and still runs half-marathons every year or so. He doesn't demand to be given a head start or to have time subtracted to accommodate his inherent disadvantage, because that's the difference between equality and equity.
And that's commendable, but what if your brother would not have had time for doing cross country in high school because he had to care for his siblings as your parents were poor and working double shifts? Or so heavily indebted due to a cancer therapy that he couldn't afford running shoes?
> people without such advantages aren't given special accomodation
They are not - but I'm specifically talking about the reverse case, where people start with extra disadvantages that cause them to start even further behind their peers. Curiously, everyone seems to understand the purpose of handicaps in Golf, but it's an outrageously leftist concept in social contexts.
>And that's commendable, but what if your brother would not have had time for doing cross country in high school because he had to care for his siblings as your parents were poor and working double shifts? Or so heavily indebted due to a cancer therapy that he couldn't afford running shoes?
That's awful and unfortunate, but he still shouldn't have an extra hour shaved from his half-marathon times over his competitors, because the half-marathon isn't measuring "How fast could you have run this in an alternate universe where you had no disadvantages". It's measuring "How fast can you run this, full stop."
Poor Black kids who had uninvolved parents that didn't help them to learn math better aren't helped by affirmative action because you're just setting them up for failure in the actual college level math classes they end up in (and are woefully unprepared for). The SAT measures how capable you are at math because that's what matters for college, not how capable you might have been in a different reality.
>Curiously, everyone seems to understand the purpose of handicaps in Golf, but it's an outrageously leftist concept in social contexts.
If I try to join the PGA tour, they aren't going to consider my handicap.
4 replies →
Following your analogy, what equity efforts turn in practice is to not only accommodate for track length for those that start behind, but also to cut one leg off of those perceived to be ahead.
My point wasn't that every existing equity effort is justified and flawless, but that there is a clear reason why some kind of levelling is required if you want to live in a fair society - and I do believe most of us want that.
It's funny you mention fair, because to me a fair society is one where smart kids are not penalized for being so.
So yes, we all want fair, but what we think of as fair can be wildly different.