Equality in Opportunity and Equality in Outcome

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Recommended: Fairness and equality

Diversity, equality and fairness are the latest buzzwords being kicked around in academia and the media. Everybody is supposed to achieve the American Dream today, regardless of who you are, where you came from, or what you do to get there. According to their math, equality of opportunity equals equality of outcome, and if it doesn't, rig the formula so it does.

I read a couple of articles in nj.com recently. In one, a Rutgers-Camden professor of Public Policy published a study that found that more poor people were being concentrated in small to mid-size cities today compared to ten years ago. OK, the economy collapsed and the housing market tanked: poor people always lived in crappy neighborhoods with other poor people, and rich people live in upscale 'hoods with their fellow 1%ers. But the professor feels that isn't fair, and advocates moving the less fortunate into the suburbs in order to ease the hardship on the cities that are being disparately impacted. This isn't new, the New Jersey Supreme Court mandated that the suburbs provide their fair share of low-income housing in the Mount Laural Decision handed down in 1975, and the federal government got in on it in 1977 with their Community Reinvestment Act which was designed to "encourage" banks to lend money to people they would normally kick out the door because they didn't think they would get paid back, or maybe because of their lack of cultural sensitivity.

The other article published the results of the latest college assessment tests in Camden: only three students were ready for college ... that's right, three, not three percent or three out of ten. Three. The "city invincible," with 80,000 residents and two public high schools can only come up with three students who ca...

... middle of paper ...

...Avenue and east of 3rd Street. I knew a guy who lived in that area forty years ago, a little east in Fishtown. He was trying to get the hell out back then. Today it's a "mixed use," gentrified neighborhood, made up of refurbished row-homes, old warehouses, and new town-homes. Its blue-collar residents have been replaced by artists and professionals attracted to its location near center city and more affordable real estate. I checked out the available home prices on Trulia, and realized I'm about 15 years too late. Today the average home is going for $400,000 to $500,00 dollars. Being I can't afford to live in places like Morristown and Haddonfield where the New Jersey Supreme Court judges reside, I'll have to kick back, grab a beer, and hang in the 'hood with my homies until I hit the lottery.

Merry Christmas everyone, and Hanukka, Ramadan, Kwanza, and Festivus.

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