From the New York Times news section:
Biden Seeks to Define His Presidency by an Early Emphasis on Equity
Only two presidents before him have used their first weeks in office to push for equality with the same force, according to one historian.
The New York Times reporters and, perhaps, Joe Biden, don’t seem to know that “equity” has replaced “equality.”
Please note that “equity” is the term now used to dog-whistle to the woke that you intend “equality of outcome” rather than “equality of opportunity.” Politicians who demand “equity” are demanding, in effect, quotas at the expense of the careers of competent white men and their families.
By Jim Tankersley and Michael D. Shear
Jan. 23, 2021WASHINGTON — In his first days in office, President Biden has devoted more attention to issues of racial equity than any new president since Lyndon B. Johnson, a focus that has cheered civil rights activists and drawn early criticism from conservatives.
In his inauguration speech, the president pledged to defeat “white supremacy,” using a burst of executive orders on Day 1 to declare that “advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our government.”
He has ordered his coronavirus response team to ensure that vaccines are distributed equitably. His $1.9 trillion recovery plan targets underserved communities by calling for paid leave for women forced out of jobs, unemployment benefits that largely help Black and brown workers, and expanded tax credits for impoverished Americans who are disproportionately nonwhite.
And the new administration is preparing to take sweeping steps in the months ahead to directly address inequity in housing, criminal justice, voting rights, health care, education and economic mobility.
“Racial equity is not a silo in and of itself,” said Cecilia Rouse, Mr. Biden’s nominee to lead his Council of Economic Advisers, who would be the first Black economist to oversee the council if confirmed by the Senate. “It is woven in all of these policy efforts.”
The actions reflect the political coalition backing Mr. Biden, who was lifted by Black voters to his party’s nomination and who won the White House in part on the strength of Black turnout and support from women in the suburbs and elsewhere. They also reflect what historians see as a unique opening for Mr. Biden to directly address issues of inequality — in contrast to President Barack Obama, under whom Mr. Biden served as vice president.
Mr. Obama, the nation’s first Black president, took pains to be seen as a president for “all Americans,” as opposed to Black Americans, said Nicole Hemmer, a Columbia University historian and associate research scholar with the Obama Presidency Oral History project.
“You got less of that overt racial equity language from Barack Obama than you get from Joe Biden,” Ms. Hemmer said. “The challenge to Biden is how he makes clear the universal benefits of focusing on racial and gender equity. He is going to face real pushback on this.”
The benefits of discriminating against white men are universal.
The backlash has already begun. Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, told Fox News that Mr. Biden’s Inaugural Address had attacked Republicans with “thinly veiled innuendo, calling us white supremacists, calling us racists.” The columnist Andrew Sullivan, who writes a Substack newsletter, accused the president of “culture war aggression” in a recent post, saying Mr. Biden’s focus on “equity” would give “named identity groups a specific advantage in treatment by the federal government over other groups.” …
Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, who is leading Mr. Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, is charged with ensuring that the new administration embeds issues of racial equity into everything it does. In an interview, she rejected the idea that doing so is a “zero-sum game” that benefited some groups of Americans at the expense of others.
We’re doing this to white men for their own good. They’ll thank us in the end.
… Mr. Biden made racial and gender equity promises a central theme of his campaign. He nominated a cabinet that has more women and people of color than any president before him, though he drew criticism from the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus for not appointing any Asian-American or Pacific-Islander secretaries.
But he didn’t draw any criticism from the Straight White Protestant Caucus for not nominating a single Straight White Protestant. That’s because there is no Straight White Protestant Caucus. In fact, the very concept of such an entity existing in some alternative timeline universe is intolerable.
The president’s legislative proposals to advance equity include trillions of dollars in new spending on coronavirus relief and, in an ensuing package to be announced next month, infrastructure, all of which are loaded with provisions meant to help Americans who have historically suffered discrimination.
I.e., Americans (and non-Americans) who have not personally suffered discrimination in their own lifetimes.
… Ms. Rouse said the focus would help all Americans, regardless of race or gender, by improving the performance of the economy.
“We maximize growth, we maximize productivity in this country when we maximize all our productive assets,” she said in an interview. “Embedded in that is a recognition that we have a lot of talented people whose skills, whose knowledge, whose innovations and creativity are not being brought to bear to help their country.”
She went on, “We must follow The Science: countless studies show that Blacks and Latinos are absolutely equal in cognitive ability to Asians.”
The president and his top aides describe the broader effort to achieve equity through the government in grand and sweeping terms: a pledge to begin “embedding equity across federal policymaking and rooting out systemic racism and other barriers to opportunity from federal programs and institutions.”
In an executive order he signed in the first hours of his presidency, Mr. Biden directed top officials across the federal government to examine how they could reshape the federal work force to ensure that people of color, the poor, rural residents, the disabled, L.G.B.T.Q. people and religious minorities are not denied opportunity or government benefits.
It also establishes efforts to break down federal data, including economic indicators, “by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, income, veteran status or other key demographic variables” to measure progress on equity goals, a move praised by many economists.
Finally, the FBI will be forced to reveal how Non-Hispanic Whites are the real murder offenders!
[Comment at Unz.com]