The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
For whatever reason, the city of Tucson is in the process of creating an βOffice of Equityβ with an annual budget of $500,00 and three staff members.
Weird, because the fact is that Tucson already has the equality thing, and the equity thing, covered with the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs (OEOP). According to the city of Tucsonβs website, βThe Office of Equal Opportunity Programs (OEOP) is responsible for implementing and enforcing equity policies for the City of Tucson and is a branch of the City Managerβs Office.β
So, why does the city of Tucson need a new Office of Equity?
Thatβs an excellent question. I think the key to answering it lies in the special use of the term βequity.β It does not have the same meaning in this context as, say, it would when discussing your financial holdings. It clearly does not mean the same thing as the described purpose of the OEOP, why else would we need a new office?
When we think of equal opportunity and equity in city government, we think of an even playing field in which all internal personnel issues β employment, compensation, advancement β are race and ethnicity neutral, meaning no discrimination based on those aspects.
Externally, we think of providing services on the same basis. It also includes monitoring compliance with internal, state and federal regulations.
My search for indications of how the new Office of Equity might treat βequityβ different from the OEOP took me to Tucsonβs online recruiting ad for the Chief Equity Officer position. Under the heading βThe ideal candidate will haveβ I found these descriptions: βA passion for advancing equity and social justice solutionsβ and βAn understanding of systemic and institutional racial bias.β
Under the heading of βExperienceβ I found: βAt least five (5) years of demonstrated success in the administration of community, government, educational or social justice programs; performing racial equity, diversity, and inclusion program and/or policy planning and evaluation.β
βSocial justice,β βracial equityβ and βsystemic and institutional racial biasβ are terms of art from the Critical Race Theory (CRT) philosophy.
Early expositors of CRT asserted that there is no such thing as race; rather, it is a social construct designed to divide people into the oppressors and the oppressed. Harvard Universityβs website explains, βCritical race theorists reject the idea that βraceβ has a natural referent. Instead, it is a product of social processes of power.
βPeople do not have a race, writes Kendall Thomas; they are βrace-d.β Unveiling the legal, social, and cultural operations by which people are assigned and invested with races is one central project of critical race theory.β
They also dismiss all the achievements of the Western world as fake, and actually designed to maintain the power of those βof whitenessβ over people of color.
In Tim Stellerβs May 5 column on the proposed Office of Equity, he quoted University of Arizona Ph.D. student Jamie Utt-Schumacher, who was brought before the City Council by Lane Santa Cruz. βIf I am of whiteness, there is no hope for me to be able to act toward equity or to act toward justice,β he said. βThe reason this is so important is that, it tells us, no matter how great our intentions might be, no matter other aspects of our identity that make us marginalized β whether itβs our LGBTQ identity or our disabled identity or what have you β we can still make choices that invest in systems that were built to serve the idea of whiteness.β
Itβs bad enough that CRT has infected the local university; letβs keep it out of our municipal government.
On a personal note, my heart and mind lie in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, in the Rev. Martin Luther Kingβs βI Have a Dreamβ speech delivered in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial.
There are those who would deny any progress against racism since before that time. They are wrong.
There is nothing more offensive to a racist than the idea of interracial marriage. Gallup has conducted polling on black-white marriage approval going back to 1958. According to Gallup, in 1958, 4% approved; in 1968, the year the Rev. King was assassinated, 20% approved; in 2013, 87% approved. Not bad for a βsystemically racistβ culture.
CRT is fighting that success. I am haunted by an article by Bari Weiss, βThe Miseducation of Americaβs Elites,β which ran March 9 in City Journal. It talks about CRT being taught to kids in elite prep schools.
The article ends, βOne day at home, in the midst of the application process, she was drawing with her daughter, who said offhandedly: βI need to draw in my own skin color.β Skin color, she told her mother, is βreally important.β She said thatβs what she learned in school.β
That breaks my heart.