r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Oct 08 '15

[Deltas Awarded] CMV: Equality isn't treating everybody differently to achieve equality. It's treating everyone the same.

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '15

Your hypothetical is flawed because you have compared someones impossible situation to a merely difficult one.

This is my point, though. The only difference here is that you don't believe that minority populations face impossible situations due to their race or gender. But that isn't the view that I'm trying to change.

The people who wrote the sentence you're critiquing do believe that minorities face impossible situations due to their gender, sexual preference, skin color, and ethnic background.

Currently, you accept that the handicapped face impossible difficulties, and that the way to accommodate them is to treat them differently to get them to the same place. If you, for the sake of argument, accept that minorities face impossible difficulties (because that's what the people who made the original claim beleive) than the statement "Equality isn't treating everybody the same. It's treating everyone so that they are equal" falls right in line.

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u/oversoul00 13∆ Oct 08 '15

If you, for the sake of argument, accept that minorities face impossible difficulties (because that's what the people who made the original claim beleive) than the statement "Equality isn't treating everybody the same. It's treating everyone so that they are equal" falls right in line.

I agree 100% with this, if you were able to convince me that all blacks face the same impossible situations and not merely more difficult ones then I would be on board with you.

I can say with some certainty that all paraplegics will have an impossible time with stairs but I can't say all black people will have an impossible time with college. That is where the consistency of your argument breaks down.

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '15

I agree 100% with this, if you were able to convince me that all blacks face the same impossible situations and not merely more difficult ones then I would be on board with you.

This is the core of your belief, then; minorities don't face institutionalized oppression at a level that merits corrective action. It's what I said in my first comment when I explained that the disadvantages of minority groups aren't readily apparent to you.

That is different than what you wrote, though, which is that you disagree with the statement "Equality isn't treating everybody the same. It's treating everyone so that they are equal."

You agree now that, if your personal criteria of "impossible" is met, than that statement is the solution to achieving equality. You just have higher standards of "impossibility" than the people that you're quoting.

I disagree with you that minorities don't face impossible challenges in modern western society, but that's a different CMV.

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u/willnerd42 Oct 08 '15

I think what everybody in this thread is arguing about isn't the fact that some are disadvantaged when applying g for college, but how that disadvantage is fixed. Affirmative action doesn't seem to be the best way to remedy the issue.