{"id":42699,"date":"2023-03-02T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thelandmark.com\/?p=42699"},"modified":"2023-03-02T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T11:00:00","slug":"equity-argument-is-perplexing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/2023\/03\/02\/equity-argument-is-perplexing\/","title":{"rendered":"Equity argument is perplexing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"byline\"><b>Mark Flionis Holden<\/b><\/div>\n<p>After viewing the recent Wachusett Regional School District School Committee meeting and reading the reporting in The Landmark (Feb. 9 issue) regarding the new DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) policy, I found myself running for the dictionary (old school hard copy) to look up the word <i>equity.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>To my mind, equity means fairness. Merriam Webster defines equity as justice and impartiality. How this word became a sticking point in the DEI debate is, at the least, perplexing.<\/p>\n<p>One speaker at the WRSDSC meeting of Jan. 30 stated that \u201cequity is the same word used by every communist leader in the world.\u201d I would argue that equity (justice\/fairness) plays little role in any economic or political system, but that\u2019s a separate debate.<\/p>\n<p>I then looked up the word<\/p>\n<p><i>inclusion, <\/i>which is defined as taking in as part of the whole \u2014 in other words, not excluding. Certainly it couldn\u2019t be this word blocking support of the DEI policy.<\/p>\n<p>That leaves us with <i>diversity: <\/i>the condition of being different or having differences. I can\u2019t help but wonder if this is the word that really gets under the (mostly white) skin of the anti-DEI contingent. Of course, this could never be admitted without risking being labeled racist or bigoted.<\/p>\n<p>This leads me to one of two conclusions: Either the attack on the word \u201cequity\u201d is really an attack on the word \u201cdiversity\u201d in disguise, or I need a new dictionary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After viewing the recent Wachusett Regional School District School Committee meeting and reading the reporting in The Landmark (Feb. 9 issue) regarding the new DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) policy, I found myself running for the dictionary (old school hard copy) to look up the word equity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}