by Dan Eichenberger M.D.
For most of history, the word “equity” meant something simple and good: fairness. It meant treating people justly, looking at the real situation, and not applying rules so rigidly that they caused harm. Today, many on the progressive left use the same word to mean something different. They claim that true fairness requires equal outcomes. If one group ends up with more money, better jobs, or higher test scores than another, they say the system is unfair, and the only fair response is to treat people unequally until the results look the same.
That is a major change in meaning. To understand how big the change is, we need to look at where the word came from.
The English word “equity” comes from the Latin word aequitas. That word meant evenness, fairness and justice. Roman lawyers used it to fix problems when strict rules created unfair results. They said the law should be “the art of the good and the equitable.”Equity helped judges do what was right in a real case instead of blindly following every letter of the law.
The idea goes back even further to ancient Greece. The philosopher Aristotle wrote about a similar idea called epieikeia. He explained that laws have to be general. They cannot cover every possible situation. When a strict rule produces an unfair result, equity steps in. It looks at the particular facts and the purpose of the law. Aristotle said the equitable person is not someone who demands every last right the law gives him. He is reasonable and willing to be flexible for the sake of real justice.
Christian teaching carried the same idea forward. The Bible describes God as a judge who acts with equity. He does not play favorites. He judges the poor with fairness and shows no partiality based on who a person is. Verses in Proverbs, Isaiah, and the New Testament stress that justice means treating people without favoritism. Later Christian thinkers, including John Calvin, used equity to mean applying God’s moral law fairly and with mercy. In English law, special courts of equity developed for the same reason: to give fair remedies when the regular courts were too rigid.
In all these cultures, Greek, Roman, Christian, and English, equity meant fairness in the concrete case. It corrected rigid rules so that real justice could be done. It never meant making sure every group ends up with the same results.
In recent years, progressive activists, politicians, academic institutions, and some corporations have redefined equity. They now say that equality is not enough. Equality means giving everyone the same rules and the same chances. Equity, they claim, means giving people different amounts of help or different treatment so that groups end up equal.
You have probably seen the famous cartoon. People of different heights stand behind a fence watching a baseball game. In the “equality” picture, everyone gets one box to stand on. The short person still cannot see. In the “equity” picture, the short person gets two boxes and the tall person gets none. Now everyone can see. Progressives use this picture to argue that fairness requires unequal treatment.
Their basic claim is this: If outcomes are unequal, the system must be unfair. Differences in average income, test scores, hiring rates, or college admissions between racial or identity groups are treated as proof of injustice. Therefore, the fair response is to treat people differently based on their group until the numbers match. This is why we hear constant calls for “racial equity,” equity in hiring, equity in school discipline and equity in medical care.
This is not a small adjustment. It is a complete reversal. Classical equity said: Treat the individual fairly according to the facts of the case. Progressive equity says: Treat individuals unequally according to their group so that group results become equal.
When fairness is redefined as equal outcomes, several dangerous things follow.
First, equal treatment under the law becomes the enemy. Color-blind rules and equal standards are attacked as tools of oppression (Marxist ideology). Preferential treatment based on race or identity is defended as the only moral path.
Second, success itself becomes suspicious. If one group achieves more on average, that achievement is often explained as the result of unfair advantage rather than hard work, culture or ability. The focus shifts from helping people improve to rearranging results by force.
Third, the idea of individual dignity is weakened. People are no longer primarily judged as unique persons with their own choices and responsibilities. They are treated as representatives of groups that must be balanced against each other.
History shows that this approach has been tried before under different names. Attempts to force equal outcomes usually require growing government power, discrimination against some groups in favor of others, and the loss of honest standards. They rarely produce lasting fairness. They often produce resentment and lower standards for everyone.
True equity is still what Aristotle, the Roman lawyers, the Bible, and centuries of Western law said it was. It is the effort to do justice in real situations without favoritism. It means applying rules carefully, correcting them when they produce clear unfairness in a particular case, and treating every person as an individual who deserves fair judgment.
Fairness does not require identical results. People make different choices. They have different talents, different family backgrounds, and different levels of effort. Free societies produce unequal outcomes because free people are not identical. Trying to force equal outcomes requires treating people unequally, and that is the opposite of fairness.
The progressive left has once again taken a word that once stood for careful, impartial justice and turned it into a demand for engineered results. They tell us that equal outcomes equal fairness. History, common sense and clear thinking say otherwise. Real equity still means treating people justly, not rearranging society until every group looks statistically the same.
We should reclaim the older meaning. Fairness is not the same as equal outcomes. Confusing the two does not create justice. It destroys it.
Dan Eichenberger, M.D., M.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, is an Indiana native with 30 years experience as a primary care physician, physician executive and healthcare consultant. He is the recipient of the Indiana University Southeast Chancellors Medallion.
