Equality: A Definition

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Let’s have an honest conversation about equality. Honestly, I don’t think we are capable of equality until we change how we understand it. Okay this is what it looks like to me. Remember how we were taught about equality when we were children? In Math class? I’ll provide you with a refresher.
1.       So we were taught than equal means that both sides of the equation are the same (hence the ‘=’ and from that flows all of algebra).
2.       When we moved on to proportions and we were asked to divide x among a specified number of people, we would take x and divide it among that specified number of people and get our answer. Hope I’m not moving too fast for you.
3.       Lastly, when we were told to make equal 75 and 25, knowing the value of x is 100, we knew that we had to take 25 from the 75 and give it to the 25 so that both become 50.
It is this last model that we based our understanding of equality in society upon, especially racial and gender equality. That to make white and people of colour equal would mean taking from white people and giving it to people of colour. Or that the empowerment of women would be to disempower men in return. That rectifying a situation of injustice and inequality is a question of rights reallocation not the endowment of rights. This idea speaks to a fragile hyper masculinity or hyper-whiteness which perceives the encouragement of its, for want of a better word, ‘antithesis’, of its opposite, as a threat.
It leads to an attitude wherein equality is not an intrinsic right by virtue of you being a living breathing, existing thing on our planet, but a privilege that must be earned. It contributes to the idea that multiculturalism is bad because to encourage it would threaten the white population and the rights they have.  Or that encouraging women and forging a path for female advancement somehow threatens men when studies have shown that to empower women is to empower men too.
Ultimately, the way I see it is that we, as a people, always need a group of people to feel superior to. A group that allows us to say, and/or feel like, “at least I’m not ‘so and so.’” So because we want to be able to say that, the empowerment of that disenfranchised group feels like it occurs at our expense. At the involuntary loss of our superiority. So we need to first realise, and believe, that equality is not about us, it’s about them. Then we need to realise that when we support and encourage the least of us, is to strengthen all of us. Equality is not about taking from the rich and giving to the needy (Robin Hood style – level Shrek 1). It’s about taking care of our own. Simple as that. Of course I have glossed over the mechanisms of wealth – be it social or economic capital – distribution (which may very well involve taking from the rich and giving it to the needy) but if we stop perceiving it as taking my toys away, it will no longer be a struggle to help each other up.
Look, you may agree or disagree with me on this. But the truth is, until we change what we understand to be equality, it’ll be hard to achieve until we stop thinking about it as the reallocation of rights but rather the empowerment of fellow human beings who do not deserve to be treated as less than.

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