Q: not to be cheeky... but today i really need to know what EQUITY means when we are talking about addressing and redressing historical disparity... thoughts welcome... A: thanks to everyone who made this a robust conversation. thanks to all for weighing in. so much for me to process and think about. i agree, equity is about outcomes. it is the evaluation mechanism which indicates that our institutional transformation toward social and racial justice has allowed historically oppressed, underserved, marginalized, empoverished and neglected people living in depravation parity or equality with the privileged, overserved, hyperincluded, uberresourced and asset-holding strata of society supported by systems, structures and institutions of white supremacy. with this frame, it is easy to see that inequity is the outcome of highly racialized, restricted, subjective and discriminatory allocations of resources. as the definition of the word implies, in its purest form, as borrowed from economics, equity is related to assets. when we speak of inequity and disparity, i believe we are also speaking about assets and the lack thereof. the issue for me isnt so much the meaning of the word, or the principle, it is that equity - even in allocation of resources measured in outcomes - does not include a methodology to achieving these ends, whereas justice provides multitudes of actions and approaches, and includes various ways to change processes. equity is about equalizing asset holding, justice is about righting wrongs and giving a fair allocation of resources based on the evidence of historic and contemporary inequity - lack of parity of assets i.e. power, property, wealth, respect, etc. therefore, in my mind, to work toward equity there needs to be a massive shift in asset allocation to historically disinvested, ie. deprived, groups. where i get caught up in our quest for equity, as a principle, concept and outcome, is that, as a city, state and country (though arguably, on the macro scale, justice is still the frame), we have not yet attempted any redistribution of resources to fill the gap caused by overt and covert discrimination. in pdx, as anywhere, the first step of this process would be to assess the loss of equity for specific communities targeted for de jure and de facto discrimination - through disinvestment and equity stripping (ie. foreclosure, eminent domain of business and residential neighborhoods, and other forms of takings) to determine what would be a fair share of resources - land, allocation of public monies, dividends from private investment, governmental representation and employment positions, bargaining power, decision making opportunities and authority, control of community development and cultural preservation. getting to equity is further complicated by the overwhelming health disparities wrought from contemporary and historical empoverishment, neglect, structural violence and abuse, as it is very difficult to quantify qualitative impacts. at this moment, we, as a city have embraced the notion of equity, over justice, for several years, however, i have yet to hear of any grand redistributive scheme to redress historical disinvestment, no moratorium on allocating resources until a fairer process has been created, no massive resource infusion into underserved populations. this means, to me, that at the very same time we are embracing the notion of equitable outcomes, we continue to participate in the very systems that created the inequity and disparity in the first place. without reformation or transformation, they trundle on. for me, equity and justice are verbs. they are intentional shifts in behavior, a break from the status quo and business as usual, as we have learned that even with the best intentions, our impacts unfairly burden POC whilst simultaneously benefitting white people, exponentially. claiming a different moral framework does not make an outcome come to fruition if the behaviors and actions of those in power remain the same. whilst changing hearts and minds is of the utmost importance, improving the material reality for empoverished and underserved people is supreme. -- Cat Goughnour
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 17:00:12 +0000
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