Design for Equity

Equity means giving everyone what they need to succeed, understanding that our shared histories and traditions mean not everyone has had the same opportunities or ability to raise their voice. In order for everyone to succeed, civic processes must ​plan for fair results from the beginning.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.…”

The Founding Fathers of the United States wrote and agreed to those words in the Declaration of Independence. But even though our nation was established on the idea that all people should be treated and protected equally, we have not always upheld this truth.

What’s more, our history and the world’s history have shown we believe the opposite. Entire societies and those in power have often systematically denied, whether intentionally or not, the equality, dignity, and rights of people different from themselves. In the United States, the history and legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow South continue to haunt us.

The call for equity in creating new democratic and civil processes is a call to recognize our past histories. The world has not been and is not a level playing field. In our case, the American Dream has not been and is not equally available to all. Your odds of achieving success depend on who you are and where you were born; your zip code alone is the best predictor of both how healthy and wealthy you’ll be.

Equity is a call to level the playing field. Equity means giving everyone what they need to succeed, understanding that our shared histories and traditions mean not everyone has had the same opportunities or ability to raise their voice. Equity means defining success by how equal and fair our outcomes are.

But fair results must be planned for.

When the Interstate Highway System was built in the 1960s, the newspeedways were constructed through low-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color in cities. They benefited richer, whiter communities in the suburbs. Why? In part it’s because communities of color were politically expendable and had little or no voice. But it’s also because the processes that decided where the highways should go did not include these communities in their discussions.

Civic processes must begin by asking who’s not at the table and why they aren’t there. Only by including missing communities can we learn how to guarantee the success, participation, and well-being of everyone in our society. Only then will we truly understand what it means that all people are created equal.

Originally published at themove.mit.edu on July 6, 2018.