The "whole-of-government" approach to solving perceived inequities must include mechanisms for preventing ideological hardness from guiding public policy
This is a comment from Michel Bauwens in response to my initial short essay on "responsible equity".
Since I wrote this piece, I have changed the phrase "responsible equity " to "responsible inclusion" out of the recognition that the term "equity" is too controversial for productive conversations in the professional, personal, and public square. While I once thought the word could be rebranded and re-envisioned, but I no longer think it can.
As long as I remain in the education field, I will need to use the term "equity" and add the word "responsible" in front of the term when I use it during dialogues with colleagues, subordinates, and supervisors, and policy makers. But I will not be using it to define perspectives and practices that I believe can make a real life difference for all people, including those who belong to groups deemed marginalized.
The comment below was written on Michel's P2P/Commons Politics and Policy page on Facebook on February 23, 2023. For Michel's Substack writings on theory and practice in Peer to Peer (P2P) movements, navigating the commons, public policy, sustainability, and other related topics, please visit his link: https://4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/
Dear Steven J. Lawrence,
I believe I disagree with your too positive assessment of Equity, you see that equity implies sending more resources to disadvantaged groups , but that is NOT what they are doing; this was in fact what the old left and the socialists wanted: give more resources so that the 'bourgeois rights' became real, and this is exactly what the woke approach to Equity abandons, and instead, changes by:
1. active discrimination
2. changing the entry requirements and abandoning any merit-based selection
And it does so by mis-identifying where the privilege is located:
(bear in mind I have not read yet your article carefully, I am reacting to a phrase in the beginning of your text)
"For the general populace, the word “equity” is often taken to mean “equality”, but that there are some key differences. While equality is about creating equality of opportunity for all people, equity is about ensuring equality of outcomes whenever disparities are detected by giving a boost to groups whose outcomes in any given category of experience, policy, or rights are less beneficial to that group than to other groups. Put another way, the general approach to equity is to “even the odds” by allocating more resources to the groups that are found to be negatively impacted by the disparate outcomes."
Michel Bauwens, I hear you. The essay brings attention to the ways in which the practice of equity can be potentially done irresponsibly.
Here are two paragraphs in the middle of the essay:
"With such a strong level of authority and a highly centralized structure with potentially far-reaching consequences (either good or bad), we can only hope that maturity, restraint, and charity will be the reigning passions of these Agency Equity Teams. But, as history has shown, when we give unchecked power to those who are charged with the responsibility to decide who gets helped and who doesn’t, we open the way for abuse and mistreatment at best and tyranny and large-scale dehumanization at worse.
I don’t know where this is all leading. But I do know that we have to insist that the Agency Equity Teams established in all of these Federal departments are guided by the Constitution and the responsibility to provide public service for all people and not solely guided by the zealous commitment to fulfilling the tenets of a rigid ideology. If we do not insist upon this, people who have an axe to grind and who wish to use an ideology to justify the abuses they wish to carry out in the name of their grievances could seize the levers of power without accountability. This could surely set our country on a path that we do not want to go down."
Steven J. Lawrence : thanks for the precisions earlier. As for my moniker, I would say that I am a 'commons advocate'. Commons are inherently and by definition based on self-governance and hence participatory indeed.
In this follow-up comment, I make reference to the 2022 Counterweight Conference on Liberal (unifying) Approaches to Diversity and Inclusion, where both Michel and I presented. Here is the link to an essay I published on the event on the Ground Experience Substack page:
Also, I need to know what to call you, Michel Bauwens, in terms of your work in the peer to peer/commons movement. I'm currently writing an essay on positive and unifying approaches to diversity and inclusion. I mention the Counterweight Conference in the following paragraph:
"The purpose of the conference was to bring together the many emerging voices that represent a “third way” of bringing diversity and inclusion into interpersonal relationships, families, organizations, communities, and classrooms in a way that transcends the reactionary extremes we have seen in recent years. The conference featured professionals and public policy advocates from a wide variety of fields, including participative democracy advocates, legal experts, organizational consultants, educators, journalists, jazz musicians, leadership scholars, social psychologists, researchers on police violence and race statistics, and many others."
When I mention "participative democracy advocate", I am referring to you. Is there a more accurate description I could use?
This is a comment from Michel Bauwens in response to my initial short essay on "responsible equity".
Since I wrote this piece, I have changed the phrase "responsible equity " to "responsible inclusion" out of the recognition that the term "equity" is too controversial for productive conversations in the professional, personal, and public square. While I once thought the word could be rebranded and re-envisioned, but I no longer think it can.
As long as I remain in the education field, I will need to use the term "equity" and add the word "responsible" in front of the term when I use it during dialogues with colleagues, subordinates, and supervisors, and policy makers. But I will not be using it to define perspectives and practices that I believe can make a real life difference for all people, including those who belong to groups deemed marginalized.
The comment below was written on Michel's P2P/Commons Politics and Policy page on Facebook on February 23, 2023. For Michel's Substack writings on theory and practice in Peer to Peer (P2P) movements, navigating the commons, public policy, sustainability, and other related topics, please visit his link: https://4thgenerationcivilization.substack.com/
Dear Steven J. Lawrence,
I believe I disagree with your too positive assessment of Equity, you see that equity implies sending more resources to disadvantaged groups , but that is NOT what they are doing; this was in fact what the old left and the socialists wanted: give more resources so that the 'bourgeois rights' became real, and this is exactly what the woke approach to Equity abandons, and instead, changes by:
1. active discrimination
2. changing the entry requirements and abandoning any merit-based selection
And it does so by mis-identifying where the privilege is located:
(bear in mind I have not read yet your article carefully, I am reacting to a phrase in the beginning of your text)
"For the general populace, the word “equity” is often taken to mean “equality”, but that there are some key differences. While equality is about creating equality of opportunity for all people, equity is about ensuring equality of outcomes whenever disparities are detected by giving a boost to groups whose outcomes in any given category of experience, policy, or rights are less beneficial to that group than to other groups. Put another way, the general approach to equity is to “even the odds” by allocating more resources to the groups that are found to be negatively impacted by the disparate outcomes."
https://groundexperience.substack.com/p/responsible-equity-is-what-we-need?
My Response on the same date:
Michel Bauwens, I hear you. The essay brings attention to the ways in which the practice of equity can be potentially done irresponsibly.
Here are two paragraphs in the middle of the essay:
"With such a strong level of authority and a highly centralized structure with potentially far-reaching consequences (either good or bad), we can only hope that maturity, restraint, and charity will be the reigning passions of these Agency Equity Teams. But, as history has shown, when we give unchecked power to those who are charged with the responsibility to decide who gets helped and who doesn’t, we open the way for abuse and mistreatment at best and tyranny and large-scale dehumanization at worse.
I don’t know where this is all leading. But I do know that we have to insist that the Agency Equity Teams established in all of these Federal departments are guided by the Constitution and the responsibility to provide public service for all people and not solely guided by the zealous commitment to fulfilling the tenets of a rigid ideology. If we do not insist upon this, people who have an axe to grind and who wish to use an ideology to justify the abuses they wish to carry out in the name of their grievances could seize the levers of power without accountability. This could surely set our country on a path that we do not want to go down."
Michel's concluding comment reponse:
Steven J. Lawrence : thanks for the precisions earlier. As for my moniker, I would say that I am a 'commons advocate'. Commons are inherently and by definition based on self-governance and hence participatory indeed.
In this follow-up comment, I make reference to the 2022 Counterweight Conference on Liberal (unifying) Approaches to Diversity and Inclusion, where both Michel and I presented. Here is the link to an essay I published on the event on the Ground Experience Substack page:
https://groundexperience.substack.com/p/ending-discrimination-through-unity
***********
Also, I need to know what to call you, Michel Bauwens, in terms of your work in the peer to peer/commons movement. I'm currently writing an essay on positive and unifying approaches to diversity and inclusion. I mention the Counterweight Conference in the following paragraph:
"The purpose of the conference was to bring together the many emerging voices that represent a “third way” of bringing diversity and inclusion into interpersonal relationships, families, organizations, communities, and classrooms in a way that transcends the reactionary extremes we have seen in recent years. The conference featured professionals and public policy advocates from a wide variety of fields, including participative democracy advocates, legal experts, organizational consultants, educators, journalists, jazz musicians, leadership scholars, social psychologists, researchers on police violence and race statistics, and many others."
When I mention "participative democracy advocate", I am referring to you. Is there a more accurate description I could use?