A video of Vice President Kamala Harris pitching what the left in academia term “equity” in a 2020 speech reemerged Thursday in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
“Equality suggests, often, everybody should get the same thing. Well, that often assumes everybody started out in the same place,” Harris began.
“As opposed to equity, which is: Everyone should end up in the same place, and if you then understand not everyone started out in the same place, you understand some people need more so we all end up in the same place,” she concludes in the 2020 stump speech.
Kamala Harris defining equity: "It means everyone ends up in the same place"
Equity is identity-based Marxism and is one of the most dangerous political ideologies facing the US today.
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 4, 2024
Harris was reiterating a message she proclaimed in a video that went viral on Twitter shortly before the election, in which she narrates a cartoon illustration by explaining: “So if we’re all getting the same amount, but you started out back there, and I started out over here, we could get the same amount, but you’re still going to be that far back behind me.”
The video portrayed a Black man watching a White man climb a mountain while Harris narrated. “It’s about giving people the resources and support they need so that everyone can be on equal footing, and then compete on equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place,” she said in closing.
There’s a big difference between equality and equity. pic.twitter.com/n3XfQyjLNe
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 1, 2020
Conservatives panned the video in 2020. then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) wrote, “Sounds just like Karl Marx.” A Trump campaign official said, “Full blown Marxist.” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) wrote, “The false promise of the left, in 1 minute.”
“There is absolutely no reason to expect different individuals and therefore different groups, on average, to achieve the same economic outcomes or even be equally represented when everything else about their upbringings, education, work experience and more is the same,” read a response to the Harris video on the libertarian Cato Institute blog.
An article that appeared in Reason Magazine explained the dangers of equity as Harris framed it: “In accordance with this thinking, the authorities might be justified in giving some people more rights than others. Indeed, this would arguably be strictly necessary, in order to create a society where everyone ends up in the exact same situation.”
