‘EQUALITY OF
OPPORTUNITY’
HAS THE
ADVANTAGE
OF TAKING
ACCOUNT
OF NATURAL
DIFFERENCES.
EQUALITY IN ALL
THINGS? WE
DON’T NEED
TO WATCH THE
SUPER BOWL TO
DISMISS IT AS
FANCIFUL
VIEWPOINT
Ken Masugi
THE DEBATE OVER AN AMERICAN IDEAL
Those five famous words from The declaraTion of
Independence sound simple enough: all men are created equal.
For nearly 250 years, the U.S. has leaned on that founding
proposition. In theory, its meaning is clear. In practice, battles
have raged—sometimes literally—over what it means, not just
for American government but for American life in general.
The false simplicity of the “self-evident” truth has led to di-
vergent attitudes toward that fundamental proposition. Today,
equality has become a cliché, drained of fire and revolutionary
fervor. Any sort of perceived inequality—income, racial and eth-
nic differences, gender distinctions—will raise an accusation of
injustice from some. But another view has it that the equality
of the declaration is best expressed as equality of opportunity,
a gradually expanding ideal that has come to erase distinctions
that previously divided. We see this in the change from “may the
best man win” to “may the best person win.”
Each side has strong points in its favor. The passion of those
who see oppression today in this or that long-standing practice
mirrors that of the 19th century’s fire-breathing abolitionists.
Meanwhile, “equality of opportunity” has the advantage of tak-
ing account of natural differences. Equality in all things? We
don’t need to watch the Super Bowl to dismiss it as fanciful.
The utopians might respond that prioritizing this supposed
equality results in the very inequalities that they question:
racial privilege, elite colleges, losers, sexism. They would
argue that true equality requires taking from some and giving
to others, to even out the differences. And so equality seems
absurd. Either it doesn’t exist or, if we claim it exists, it seems
to defy reality. But Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln
were not fools. They were neither cynics nor utopians.
For clariFication, we should return to Abraham Lincoln’s
subtle and profound teaching about equality, at a moment when
that foundation was threatened by a form of inequality everyone
today condemns: slavery. He once gave an instructive exercise in
trying to prevent civil war. In opposing the recently announced
Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court deprived Af-
rican Americans of not only citizenship but of human dignity,
Illinois Senate candidate Lincoln parried the vicious racial
demagoguery on the part of incumbent Senator Stephen Doug-
las. When Douglas accused him of being in favor of inter racial
marriage, Lincoln acknowledged that most of his white listen-
ers opposed “amalgamation” with black people. (Running for
office in a state that prohibited slavery but also discriminated
against black people in innumerable ways, he could not dismiss
that fact.)
Careless listeners then as
now might conclude that Lin-
coln shared this “natural dis-
gust.” But in fact, his explana-
tion defends liberty for all and
justifies equality as an ideal.
Just because he did not want
to enslave a woman, he said,
did not mean he personally
wanted to marry her. “In some
respects she certainly is not my
equal; but in her natural right
to eat the bread she earns with
her own hands without asking
leave of anyone else,” he went
on, “she is my equal, and the
equal of all others.”
His listeners did not have
to change their racist views
in order to be antislavery;
they did not have to want a
world in which everyone had
what amounts to an equal ex-
perience to believe everyone
should benefit according to
her own work. In fact, Lincoln
would define slavery in five
words: “You work, and I eat.”
And those who would stop oth-
ers from enjoying the full earn-
ings of their own work, even
in the service of more equal
outcomes, defy the most basic
equality.
From that equality can grow
a new political future not only
for those freed from slavery but
also for those who were for-
merly masters. It might take
generations to create that mu-
tual respect, in which we are a
nation of equal individuals, not
a nation of fixed tribes, incapa-
ble of change. Lincoln brought
his audience—people who may
have been morally vicious, in-
different or even fanatically
against slavery—together on
the side of the founders. We
today are only human, but they
were too.Masugi, who was an adviser to
Justice Clarence Thomas when
Thomas was chairman of the
Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission, is a senior fellow of
the Claremont Institute