Hacker News Reader

Comment by coffeeblack | Hacker News Reader

Careful, “equity” is not equality. “Equity” requires racism and exclusion.

The same semantic Motte-and-bailey[0] game is being played in other languages too. In Germany, the job of the "Gleichstellungsbeauftragte" (equity officer, also almost exclusively women) isn't to further "Gleichberechtigung" (equality) but to do the opposite while making it sound fair and unassailable.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

Yep, correct.

Would be interesting to hear if other countries have similar word games?

That's a fair point – equity is a subtle one – but it can be both important in some cases and problematic in others.

Equality is only equal if everyone starts off at the same level

Not true. The typical trend is regression to the mean. Germans, Italians, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cubans, etc., all came to the U.S. at the bottom and over a few generations achieved equality with the original British founders of the country. The same thing is happening with Latinos today.

That’s not correct. But assuming it is, how far are you willing to go? Skin color? Family education? Neighborhood a person grew up in? Gene defects? There are billions of reasons why two people are not completely equal.

In the end, you need 999 bureaucrats to make sure one person get equity.

One reason why communist countries are poor. Nobody produces things because everybody in working in the administration of equity.

And in the end, everybody is poor.

Apart from the apparatchiks, of course!

What communist country? And come on, you are mixing up absolutely different things.. Economic left has absolutely nothing to do with this new-wave “liberal” thinking which is pretty much an American thing and is more of a propaganda to be able to point fingers.

Like, how “woke” China is in your opinion? Genociding Uyghurs doesn’t seem too “leftist” to me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com