On this episode of Speak Out with Tim Wise, I offer an extended analysis of the issue of equal opportunity and its real meaning. Often the right insists that they are the ones who believe in equal opportunity while the left is calling for “equal outcomes” or “equal results,” and that these notions are fundamentally at odds with the reality of individual differences in ability and the requirements of a free society. But this framing is fundamentally dishonest.

First, the left does not claim that everyone has the same abilities, or that everyone should have exactly the same “stuff” or expect the same outcomes. But the reality of inequalities and the normalcy of certain disparities in outcome cannot justify the vast gaps between the haves and have-nots in this society or the world, especially since those gaps have grown in recent years. And as regards race, there is no reason for individual-level ability differences to cluster by so-called racial group unless one presupposes racial inferiority or superiority: fundamentally racist notions that most all conservatives insist they reject.

Second, for real equal opportunity to exist, a certain equity of access is a necessary prerequisite. Simply passing civil rights laws and proclaiming the competitions of life fair and equal doesn’t make them so when generations of sedimented inequality have been built up and transmitted. To simply rely on procedural equality of opportunity would be like expecting those who start out 5 laps back in an 8-lap race to catch up to those with a built-in (unearned) advantage, and thinking such an expectation fair and just.

Justice requires that correctives to intergenerational inequality be developed and carried out so as to provide the groundwork for any meaningful and operational system of equal opportunity.

Bottom line: the right’s version of equal opportunity is a smokescreen intended to sound as though it is rooted in a commitment to fairness, but one which in truth is intended to rationalize the maintenance of existing hierarchies of power and privilege.

This extended personal commentary is an important corrective to common conservative propaganda and right-wing talking points.