Equality is not sameness

[Ilya Shambat]

One of the longest-running errors in American society is that of
equating equality with sameness. This error has been used and
continues to be used for extremely destructive, invasive and malicious
behaviors - such as for example forcing everyone to be the same person
believing the same thing living the same life and exterminating anyone
who is in any way different. In fact equality was never meant to mean
sameness; and the use of the concept of equality to force sameness is
a gross abuse of the concept of equality.

Equality means this: Equal rights, equal opportunities. That is it. It
doesn't mean that everyone has to live the same life. It doesn't mean
that everyone has to dress the same way, think the same way, speak in
the same tone of voice, or believe the same errors. It doesn't mean
that nobody can be distinct, or special, or eccentric, or different
from people around them. Equality means: Equal rights, equal
opportunities. That is it.

In its original intent, the idea of equality was meant to assist
freedom by leveling the field for people who come from rougher
backgrounds. But the misuses of the idea of equality have been used
instead to sabotage freedom. If everyone is forced to be the same
person and live the same way, then there is no freedom. And the misuse
of the idea of equality to mean sameness has been used just to do
this: Destroy freedom in the communities in which this misuse of the
idea of equality is being practiced.

The same is the case also for the idea of women's equality. Once
again, equality means: Equal rights, equal opportunities - in this
case between women and men. But many feminists have again misused the
concept of equality to mean sameness. So they have been teaching women
to act like the worst of men. In the process they have been training
women to deny themselves the better qualities that are more natural to
women than they are to men: Qualities such as beauty, tenderness,
warmth, elegance and ability to produce and to nurture life. Instead
they have put women into a race of becoming the same as the men - a
race in which they can only be second - while denying them the right
to what is uniquely feminine, or what is more natural to women than to
men.

In both cases, we see a vast misunderstanding of the concept. Equality
does not mean sameness; equality means equal rights. Equal rights
benefit freedom, fairness and human advancement by creating a fair
field for everyone. Coercion toward sameness destroys personal freedom
by forcing everyone to be the same, even as it undermines human
advancement by destroying what is at the root of human advancement:
Innovation that is in all cases a function of work by innovative minds
that think differently from what is thought around them. The error of
confusing equality with sameness is saboteurial to America and
undermines its best qualities. And if America is to regain the world
leadership in innovation or to live up to its promise of freedom, then
this error must be confronted and overcome in every place that it
exists.