Equality of Being Verified

A panel appointed by NYC Mayor De Blasio has advised that the city's schools phase out all gifted programs and "stop most grouping by academic ability." This is in response to recent claims that the city's gifted schools are racially biased, since they are mostly populated with whites and Asians.

Former NYC mayor Michael R. Bloomberg enacted education policies that allowed school choice, while boosting the amount of gifted and screened schools. These measures were implemented to combat decades of low performance, and they worked. Now, de Blasio wants to undo these policies and make the classroom more inclusive – even if that means shaming people of a certain race (white, Asian).

Kamala Harris recently praised the California city of Berkeley's compelled integration programs, where school rosters where driven more by desired racial mixes than residential proximity. That is, they didn't allow kids from white neighborhoods to go to most white school, and so on, instead busing kids around for maximum diversity points. The result has been not only subpar performance, but one of the largest racial gaps in academic performance in the whole country. On the other hand, New York City has done fairly well for a major city with its particular demographics.

Progressivism is not interested in using data to drive programs that benefit everyone, but in making sure that no one ever has to feel bad - at least not anyone with an oppression narrative. This ties into an idea put forth by this blog in Equality as a Gauge for Political Stance, where we showed the use of the term equality as it has progressed through four different definitions in our national history. We noted that the trajectory left for one final, hypothetical definition of equality: equality of being. Under equality of being, it's not merely enough that all outcomes are equal - all incomes equals, for example, which liberals call equity - but that people must be inherently equal.

In development, children with natural talents will be subdued, either psychologically or chemically. Society will strictly enforce conformity, and citizens will strive to downplay their status, wealth, or abilities at all cost.

That seems close enough to tally as a successful prediction. In New York, high achievers will not be allowed to move towards their true potential; they must be held back with the slowest in the pack. If the radical left have their way, America will cease being a productive country lead by its best & brightest, but a failed state restrained by its dullest & laziest.