Yes, there are words like that: they have fun confusing us. That they get a place of privilege and are pronounced and repeated boldly and, yet, no one knows exactly what they say when they go and say them; no one, least of all, when they hear them. In that game the word equality has no equal.
Let’s be frank, it’s French: equality also started there, 1789. It was the ham in the sandwich: between I liberated and fraternity there was something that seemed indispensable, the famous égalité. Then it was clear what it meant: the equality of the Parisian bourgeois of the Revolution was equality before the law, that no man had more rights than another due to his mere birth, that medieval feudal privileges disappeared and all men were supposedly equal. I said men and I should have said white men: at first it didn’t even occur to them that black slaves had those rights, nor that women had them. But it was a strong idea and it began to spread.
Half a century later, the French Revolution seemed to have failed and there were, instead, movements that called for another equality: those socialists wanted all men to be socially and economically equal. That there were not a few potentates and millions of poor people, that everyone could enjoy his life equally, that everyone contributed what they could and received what they needed.
The idea was madly seductive: for much of the 20th century, millions died in the hope that their deaths would serve to bring it to fruition. But, towards the end, it was evident that its achievements were its failures, that this supposed equality was the disguise for the concentrated power of a few, radically unequal.
After that failure—”the end of history”—equality lost all defense and great fortunes took hold of more and more and we knew—we know—one of the most unequal times in memory. It was so exaggerated that many began to worry: the big capitalists said that this inequality was not good for business; the well-intentioned said it was intolerable for morality. In different ways, very different sectors began to condemn inequality. The problem is that they don’t know what its opposite is.
It would be obvious to say that the opposite of inequality is equality: after the failure of “egalitarian” systems, almost no one says it. So, for the right wing, equality has received a pretentious surname: “Of opportunities.” What they demand and proclaim is “equality of opportunities”, an implausible entelechy. That equality should consist of, at the beginning, everyone having the same chances: that the starting line is one for everyone. To begin with, the metaphor of the race is sad: it assumes that its departure is equal only to legitimize the inequalities that may occur along that journey. In other words: the purpose of this equality is to legitimize the resulting inequality. And, on the other hand, this supposed equality from the beginning is false: no matter how much a young person accesses public schools or scholarships or aid, he will never be able to recover the advantage of someone who has educated and rich parents, books and contacts, talks and trips and accommodations. —the products of inequality.
For the left wing, however, equality has been greatly reduced. Just as “memory” became the memory of the atrocities committed by some dictatorship, “equality” is the need to equalize the treatment and options between women and men. It is essential; It is reducing. In Spain, without going any further, there is a “Ministry of Equality” that basically dealt with that: not the equality of workers with their employers, not that of the unemployed sitting on a bench with the owners of the banks. ; No, almost everything has become a gender issue. It is logical that, with women being half of the population, they occupy half of the parliamentary seats. It would be logical, then, also, that with immigrants being 10%, one in ten would go to them. And the same for workers, the elderly, those saddled and other non-autonomous communities. The Congress would be full of members and, to reduce it and make it fit, the intersections would have to be worked on: a lame gypsy woman of Romanian origin who cleans houses would have every chance of being a deputy, as we well know.
Or maybe not. Between genders and opportunities, the result is that never, since 1789, has the word equality been used so little. If we don’t manage to recharge it, give it a strong value again, it will end up meaning almost nothing. And the problem will not be yours but ours.
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