' I am struck by the fact that equality is incredibly difficult to define as soon as we seek to address particular situations.' Photo: by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash
Same difference? G Gordon Steel on equality and ability
‘Equality is incredibly difficult to define as soon as we seek to address particular situations.’
The 2020 Young Musician of the Year was won by a brilliant seventeen-year-old Chinese player of the marimba. Ellie Downie is an outstanding sixteen-year-old British gymnast and gold medal winner. Ben Towers, at the age of nineteen, has been a remarkable entrepreneur.
Across all the areas of human activity we keep hearing about young people who stand out from the crowd: male and female, white and non-white, healthy and disabled. They are role models for the rest of us average performers. People excel at all sorts of human activity: sports, arts and crafts, sciences, caring professions, and humanists have rightly drawn attention to the remarkable potential of our species. We are aware of this diversity among people who we know personally: some are enthusiastic, self-assured, knowledgeable and able; many are not. Most of us are part of the broad spectrum of humanity. When we look at any group of humans or animals there are some things that we can measure: height, speed, intelligence, for example. If we then plot a graph of the number of individuals with any particular score we always get a bell-shaped curve. There are small numbers with very low or very high scores and a hump in the middle around the median. The bell-shaped curve describes what is patently obvious: we are all different according to whatever characteristic we care to consider. And the same applies to qualities that we cannot measure.
It is common among Friends to hear and read of our concern for equality. I share that concern but I am struck by the fact that equality is incredibly difficult to define as soon as we seek to address particular situations. Among a class of schoolchildren we always have a range of abilities (along with varied personalities and behaviour). What does it mean to treat them equally? If we were to do this literally we would either make it hard for those of lower ability or fail to challenge the brighter ones. So all sensible teachers seek, as far as possible, to tailor teaching to the needs of individuals – they teach them differently.
The challenging areas of difference are gender and age. Even here, to seek to treat people equally ignores the intricacies of difference. It may be better to say that we seek to treat women with sympathetic regard to their specific needs and to what for many has been their longstanding subjection to men. Culturally, not biologically, this is also true of race. Minority groups have been seriously maltreated in the past and as we seek to avoid this we must go further and address their consciousness of discrimination. It is also wrong to say that we should treat the elderly equally to younger people: they have their particular needs and we are aware that in countries like Japan the elderly are given special respect.
It seems to me that the Quaker angle on this complex issue is to treat other people with sympathy and understanding and to value them as individuals, not categories.
