Rich Lowry of National Review Online challenges the politically popular use of the word “equity.”
The idea of equity, as everyone knows, is all the rage.
It holds that any racial disparity is evidence of racism and also a stinging indictment of American society.
What, then, of the yawning disparity between black victims of homicide and everyone else? Why isn’t this at the top of the nation’s agenda, treated with the same urgency as the alleged crisis of racist policing?
It’s been the focus of studies — usually from gun-control outfits, several of which I cite in this piece — and local activists and journalists. But it hasn’t achieved anything like the liftoff of Black Lives Matters, or the opposition to voting reforms in Republican states, or the pervasive effort to snuff out microaggressions and the like from universities, corporate America, and every other corner of American society.
No, it just doesn’t rate.
And we are talking about a disparity that couldn’t be any more stark — black men are killed, usually gunned down, in cold blood at vastly higher rates than any other group in society (albeit overwhelmingly at the hands of other black men). If you are a progressive who believes that any racial disparity is a function of institutional racism, this is a devastating commentary on racial discrimination in America, but it is met with a relative shrug and certainly none of the passion of, say, the resistance to the Georgia voting law.
Of course, it’s worse than that. Progressives have made this disparity worse. It is their narratives, their policies, and their elected officials who have enabled the current surge in murder, making a long-standing phenomenon even more pronounced.
Do they feel guilty about it, abashed in any way? There’s no sign of it, and indeed while gun homicides have increased since 2014, they’ve kept hammering on the police.
