The left's vision of "equity" is the opposite of equitable

Biden's student loan forgiveness program is a good example

“Biden’s equity vision on ropes.” So declares the Washington Post in the lead headline of yesterday’s edition (paper version). The Post’s assessment is based on the frosty reception the Supreme Court gave Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

The Post’s report suffers from an incorrect, backwards understanding of “equity.” The word has always meant the quality of being fair and impartial. There is nothing fair and impartial about Biden’s cancellation of huge amounts of debt that was voluntarily incurred. Biden is being partial to debtors.

His plan is especially unfair and partial given the vast number of people who incurred student loan debt and paid it off. And let’s not forget people who decided not to attend college rather than incur debt or who chose to attend state schools for reasons of cost.

To add to the absurdity of the Biden “vision of equity,” the Post says that his debt forgiveness order was intended to help blacks — a group less likely, it seems, to have paid off student loans. If this was part of the forgiveness program’s motivation, and I don’t doubt it was, then the program is even less impartial — and therefore less equitable — than appears from its face.

In their use of the term “equity,” Biden, the Washington Post, and the rest of the left-liberal and BLM crowd have pulled off a linguistic switch of Orwellian proportions. Equality of outcomes — a very hard sell — is packaged as “equity,” contrary to how the term has always been understood. (See a confused exchange about this between Bill Maher and Bernie Sanders.) .

Left-liberal BLM types may see debt forgiveness as equitable because, they would argue, slavery and Jim Crow produced income inequities that exist to this day. Under this view, a debt forgiveness program that favors blacks is a reparation.

If that’s the theory, then proponents of debt forgiveness should say so. But they won’t, and for good reason.

First, reparations don’t have much public support. Second, student loan forgiveness isn’t tailored to be a form of reparation. Whites benefit from it too, albeit not to the same degree, proportionally, as blacks. And there is no attempt to limit debt cancellation to blacks whose ancestors were slaves or victims of Jim Crow.

Third, what’s the limit on programs that favor blacks if the alleged justification is to remedy the effects of slavery and Jim Crow? There is none. That’s why reparations, if they are to granted, should take the form of a one-time cash payment, and nothing else.

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post ridicules several Supreme Court Justices for their focus on fairness during oral argument on the constitutionality of Biden’s debt forgiveness order. After all, Waldman notes, there are plenty of laws and programs that are unfair in the sense that they benefit one group to the exclusion of others.,

But Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme is easily distinguishable from these programs because it’s an obvious and unconstitutional abuse of power for the president to have taken this action without congressional approval. Even Nancy Pelosi acknowledged this.

There’s nothing inherently unlawful about programs that favor one group over another (but nothing equitable about them, either). However, such programs must be lawfully adopted, which in this case requires congressional action, as Pelosi said.

But what the heck? The Post notes that “Biden promised black voters he would be a different kind of president, one who did not just pay rhetorical tribute to equality but one who took concrete action to improve African-Americans’ position in society.” (Note how the Post slips into correct usage by saying “equality” rather than “equity.”]

If Biden truly wanted to improve African-Americans’ position in society, he would focus on freeing blacks from the grip of failing public schools and, of course, on protecting them from rampant inner-city crime. But Biden won’t go there. His debt to teachers unions, which will not be cancelled, and his desire to pander to the BLM movement outweigh any genuine desire to improve the lives and prospects of blacks.

Hence, Biden’s effort to buy off blacks with free stuff, even though his giveaways are inequitable. And in the case of debt forgiveness, unconstitutional.