{"id":26827,"date":"2022-07-30T09:38:02","date_gmt":"2022-07-30T16:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=26827"},"modified":"2022-07-30T09:39:41","modified_gmt":"2022-07-30T16:39:41","slug":"cartoon-equal-opportunity-not-equal-outcomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=26827","title":{"rendered":"Cartoon: Equal Opportunity, Not Equal Outcomes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If you like these cartoons, you’ll probably also like sticking your toes into a mud bank and wiggling them until the neon worms come to nestle between your toes. If you can manage to stay like that for 30 hours straight despite the exhaustion and increasing pain from not moving (lifehack: bring a pillow to sit on), you’ll gain the power to walk across water. The downside is, you’ll leave glowing neon footprints everywhere you go, making it easy for the secretive government agency to track you down and throw you into their secret facility for studying people with powers. And the worst part is, the smooth-faced people in low-end businesswear who run that agency don’t like cartoons at all. So to pre-emptively get revenge on them, remember to subscribe to my patreon<\/a> before they lock you up. (And say hi to the neon worms from me!)<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe should want equal opportunity, not equal outcomes\u201d is something I\u2019ve heard people say for decades, especially regarding the racial wealth and wage gaps. \u00a0It\u2019s something that sounds extremely sensible until you really delve into it – and, many times, people don\u2019t<\/em> delve.<\/p>\n

Despite the harshness of my cartoon, I don\u2019t believe that everyone who has ever said \u201cequal opportunity, not equal outcomes\u201d is a racist. But there are racial implications to the idea that need to be unpacked.<\/p>\n

What does \u201cequal opportunity\u201c mean? Martin Luther King Jr, in his book Why We Can\u2019t Wait<\/em>, wrote \u201cIt is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Equalizing opportunity is a worthwhile goal – but it\u2019s difficult. Truly equalizing opportunity would require making radical<\/em> changes to our society at many levels – in inheritance laws, and education, and health care, as the cartoon points out. And in many other ways – we\u2019d have to look at housing, at access to jobs, in access to financing, and so on.<\/p>\n

(And we\u2019d have to ask what to do about intangible inheritances – the advantages aside from material goods<\/em> someone gets by being the child of people who are already well-off. Like learning from example, since birth, to be fluent with navigating systems set up for well-off people; like speaking with an accent that says \u201cI am well off and must be treated well\u201d to stores and employers and government officials. I don\u2019t know how we\u2019d even start<\/em> to equalize that stuff.)<\/p>\n

But usually, if you bring these things up, it becomes clear that virtually no one who says \u201cequal opportunity\u201d wants the changes required to equalize opportunities. On the contrary, they\u2019re usually defending the status quo. They\u2019re arguing against affirmative action, typically, but also against other ideas meant to mitigate the effects of racism, like reparations.<\/p>\n

What they\u2019re saying, in effect, is that we should just declare that opportunities are now \u201cequal\u201d because the laws are equal, and therefore current-day racial inequality isn\u2019t something we can or should try to fix. Dig a little deeper, and many of them subscribe to so-called \u201crace realism\u201d – the view that Black people are inherently intellectually inferior and so cannot and should not hold an equal place in society. (A more genteel version of the same argument made by slavery apologists in the 1800s.)<\/p>\n

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON<\/strong><\/p>\n

This cartoon has four panels. Each panel shows the same two people walking on a path on a hillside as they talk. The person walking in front is a Black man, with a mustache and beard, wearing a t shirt with a sort of smiley face on it, except the face has a neutral expression rather than a smile. The second person is a white man with black hair in a tidy haircut, and a plaid sweater-vest over a collared shirt. For purposes of this transcript, I\u2019m calling these two characters TSHIRT and VEST.<\/p>\n

PANEL 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vest is speaking seriously as he talks to Tshirt. Tshirt is very enthused about what he\u2019s hearing, smiling big and spreading his arms expansively.<\/p>\n

VEST: It\u2019s stupid to expect equal outcomes, because not everyone is equal. Some people are just born with less ability than others. What we need is equal opportunity.<\/p>\n

TSHIRT: \u00a0\u201cEqual opportunity\u201d sounds great!<\/p>\n

PANEL 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

A close-up of Tshirt and he turns to look at Vest, enthusiastically smiling as he holds up a finger while making a point.<\/p>\n

TSHIRT: Let\u2019s start with a massive inheritance tax. Nothing\u2018s a more unequal opportunity than some people being born with millions while others start with nothing.<\/p>\n

PANEL 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

A longer shot shows more of the environment; we can see plants with long leaves in the foreground, and trees in both the foreground and background. Tshirt, still very enthused, slaps a fist into a palm as he anticipates what might be done. \u00a0Vest looks panicked, holding up his palms in a \u201cwhoa there!\u201d gesture, eyes wide.<\/p>\n

TSHIRT: We can use that money to make other opportunities equal. Like free college! And free health care for all! And\u2014<\/p>\n

VEST: STOP! \u00a0I didn\u2019t mean any of that stuff! I just mean Black people are less intelligent so we shouldn\u2019t try to fix race inequality!<\/p>\n

PANEL 4<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tshirt, looking calm but also angry, has turned to face Vest, with his hands on his hips. Vest has turned away from Tshirt, arms crossed, nose held high in a snooty expression.<\/p>\n

TSHIRT: Oh, so you\u2019re just a complete fucking racist.<\/p>\n

VEST: Intolerant reactions like that are exactly why I prefer to say \u201cequal opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This cartoon on Patreon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you like these cartoons, you’ll probably also like sticking your toes into a mud bank and wiggling them until the neon worms come to nestle between your toes. If you can manage to stay like that for 30 hours … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-comics","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26827"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26830,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26827\/revisions\/26830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}