This is the article that appeared in the September 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.
Utopians throughout the ages have dreamed of an egalitarian society where everyone is equal. Add Kamala Harris to the list. But given her entitled background, it makes us doubt her sincerity.
When she was running for president in 2020, Harris said in a video that “There’s a big difference between ‘equality’ and ‘equity.'” She is right about that, but her interpretation of what these terms mean is deeply flawed. She thinks, as do all those on the Left these days, that equity means equal outcomes. It does not. It means fairness. Equality means sameness.
No matter, the most important thing Harris said in her video was, “Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.” In the real world, her idea explodes.
Let’s say everyone is given the same salary. Now we achieved the “equitable” society Harris wants—we all end up at the same place. No one has any more than anyone else. But for how long?
What if Jones sees a portrait that Smith has drawn and wants to buy it. What if others observe what is happening and want to compete with Jones to buy the portrait? After the bidding war is over and Jones wins, Smith is richer than everyone else. Bingo—inequality rears its ugly head again.
The only way to ensure this doesn’t happen is to deny all the Joneses the freedom to spend their money the way they want, thus making sure everyone remains at the same place. In other words, the quest for an egalitarian society can never succeed and always winds up oppressing the masses.
In a track meet, all runners start at the same spot. But they don’t finish at the same spot. We can, and should, do what we can to ensure that everyone who wants to compete should have an equal opportunity to do so, but we should never jimmy the race to force all runners to cross the finish line at the same time.
It is strange that Harris would even want such a society. She is the product of black privilege. Her late mother, Shyamala, was raised in a caste society in India where upward mobility does not exist. She occupied the top tier—she was a member of the Brahmins. Critical race theorists label them oppressors.
She boasted about it. “In Indian society, we go by birth. We are Brahmins, that is the top caste. Please do not confuse this with class, which is only about money. For Brahmins, the bloodline is the most important. My family, named Gopalan, goes back more than 1,000 years.”
It would be hard to find a more full-throated celebration of inequality than this.
What about Kamala’s dad, Donald Harris? He traces his ancestry to slavemasters. The Stanford University professor of economics, who has accused his daughter of smearing his Jamaican ancestors by saying they are a bunch of potheads, admitted in 2018 that his grandmother was a descendant of Hamilton Brown. He was a plantation and slave owner in northern Jamaica. He owned scores of slaves, most of whom were brought from Africa, which has a long history of slavery.
Given her pedigree, this raises the question: Is Kamala suffering from black guilt? More important, however, is why anyone running for president of the United States would want to craft a society where everyone ends up in the same place. Not only is that impossible, attempts to do so yield totalitarian results.
