In a quiet executive order issued last week, the Biden administration is now making a more formal push to institute left-wing “equity” policies throughout every level of the federal government.
The order, which builds on Biden’s previous critical race theory equity edicts, is intended to install the “equity” lens in every decision-making process, hiring process, and policy of every level within federal agencies. On the surface, achieving “racial equity” sounds like a laudable goal, and it would be if it were simply about equality.
The idea of “equity,” on the other hand, is not about equal opportunities but about adjusting the playing field based on race to enforce equal outcomes. It’s an idea that is quintessentially anti-American and anti-meritocracy at its core. It’s the same set of beliefs that some school districts in Fairfax County, Virginia, have relied on recently when they withheld or delayed notification of National Merit Scholarships to high school students because the award winner pool simply wasn’t diverse enough.
As the Heritage Foundation explains, “equity” sounds like “equality,” but they’re not interchangeable and not the same concept:
Equity Replaces Equality: “Equity” sounds like “equality”, but under critical race theory, it has become its functional opposite. “Equality” means equal treatment of all Americans under the law. CRT’s “equity” demands race-based discrimination. Because systemic racism has produced disparities between the races and because the system will only deepen these disparities by rewarding the “wrong” criteria, government must treat individual Americans unequally according to skin color to forcibly produce equal outcomes. Advocating equity over equality is part of CRT.
This is specifically the belief set and ideology that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg is referencing when he complained that there are too many white construction workers on projects in areas they don’t belong in, a remark he was roundly criticized for.
While some of what Biden ordered in the past was simply aspirational in nature, the new executive order directs and demands that agencies figure out how to implement the left-wing “equity” agenda into their corner of government:
President Joe Biden’s order launches a White House Steering Committee on Equity to raise the profile of racial discrimination and other issues of inequity. The order also directs the Office of Management and Budget to consider updating governmentwide guidance, directives, and other internal processes to move agencies toward more equitable decisions “wherever possible.”
The president’s action builds on his January 2021 order on advancing racial equity that called for a “whole of government” approach to respond to economic, health, and climate change impacts, which it said have only worsened historic inequities.
But the new order is broader in focusing agencies on efforts to “combat discrimination and advance equal opportunity” and address disparities and remove barriers to government programs and services for all.
Again, so much of it sounds innocent on the surface, and anytime the government can make improvements to programs that benefit all Americans, it’s something to be applauded. In this case, however, the order strictly deals with how to transform various government agencies and policies so that they disproportionally benefit one group of citizens over another based entirely on skin color.
Here are some excerpts direct from Biden’s order, announced on Feb. 16:
Executive Order on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government
Executive departments and agencies (agencies) have engaged in historic work assessing how their policies and programs perpetuate barriers for underserved communities and developing strategies for removing those barriers. They have made important progress incorporating an evidence-based approach to equitable policymaking and implementation, and they have crafted new action plans to advance equity. In short, my Administration has embedded a focus on equity into the fabric of Federal policymaking and service delivery. Our work to transform the way the Federal Government serves the American people has been complemented by Executive Order 14035 of June 25, 2021 (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce), which continues to help ensure that my Administration — the most diverse in our Nation’s history — reflects the growing diversity of the communities we serve.
. . .
Delivering Equitable Outcomes Through Government Policies, Programs, and Activities. Each agency head shall support ongoing implementation of a comprehensive equity strategy that uses the agency’s policy, budgetary, programmatic, service-delivery, procurement, data-collection processes, grantmaking, public engagement, research and evaluation, and regulatory functions to enable the agency’s mission and service delivery to yield equitable outcomes for all Americans, including underserved communities.
The order specifically directs agencies to craft policies and strategies to achieve “equitable” outcomes meaning the government picks winners and losers not on merit but on race.
What this means in practice is that if one group of people seems to be benefitting too much from a government program or policy, then that group’s access should be limited and curtailed until it matches the benefits being received from other groups, all based on skin color. The program is deemed “broken” until the outcomes are “equitable” across the entire ethnic spectrum.
It’s a game the federal government should not be playing and has been coming under greater legal scrutiny as of late.
In the case of the high school merit scholarships mentioned above, “too many” students of Asian descent were receiving awards which, according to the “equity” lens, means the entire national merit scholarship award system is broken until an equal number of students from other nationalities are receiving the same number of awards in every school district. It’s a warped mindset that intrinsically views skin color as the overriding and deciding factor in every aspect of life.
It’s not the way the goal of looking at people by the content of their character rather than skin color is supposed to work. Then again, Democrats have become obsessed with race as the only thing that matters in life.
This remains yet another example of the Divider in Chief further working to create racial barriers and resentment based on skin color. It’s inherent to the goals of the modern Democratic Party up and down the line.
In Biden’s view of the country, all Americans are equal, but some Americans are more equal than others.
