- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Why YSK: because what seems like equal situation from surface isn’t always equal opportunity for all. And even when equal measure of help is provided, it might not be equally useful.
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This is a helpful explanation. The distinction between these terms is not so obvious and people believe they know the meanings without comprehending them.
Doesn’t the first panel also have equal tools and assistance?
Only if you consider no tools or assistance to qualify as “having tools or assistance”. So no, because while you’re correct that 0 == 0, you need values of greater than 0 to have something.
I did consider no tools on both sides to be equal tools.
Can you maybe eli5 why there is a need to have something in this example?
I just don’t get any real difference from the first two panels.The exact same circumstances that punish the one kid in the first panel still punish them in the second. If anything they are worse off in comparison since the additional provided tools don’t serve any purpose for them but do help the other kid.
Yep, so the point (I think) is to get you to contrast equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. It’s not hugely clear in the images, there are a few things that need to be assumed to make it clearer.
Firstly the goal is not 1 fruit, the goal is to have a many fruit as you need. For some reason these 2 kids both need a lot of fruit. Maybe they have huge seeds and 1 won’t sustain a small child, I don’t know.
Secondly, the tree in the first panel has fewer fruit to drop on one side, and it leans towards one person only. This is trying to communicate that they don’t have equality of opportunity on a systemic level. Both children have 1 significant barrier (height), but 1 child has an additional barrier of fewer fruit possible, and their height barrier is twice as tall. There is also an invisible forcefield preventing movement of children from one side of the tree to the other.
So in the first panel, yes it is unequal because one kid gets nothing and the other gets something, which is an inequality of outcome. The difference in tree lean and number of fruit provides an inequality of opportunity - which is often harder to see in real life too.
The second panel asks the question “what if we gave them equal assistance?” by providing equal ladders. Which is great, but if the assistance provided is only enough to help one child overcome the problem they both face while ignoring the other 2 problems the other child faces, you won’t have equality of outcome. And it can even cause greater inequality of outcome, because the left kid can reach a dozen fruit but the right kid can still only reach a few. For magic forcefield reasons.
The third panel is different to the second, because they’re no longer only being provided equal assistance. They’re both being provided assistance equal to their needs, but the kid on the right still has fewer opportunities because there are fewer fruit. They have more equal possible outcomes, but it’s still unlikely to be an equal outcome even though you’re (sort of) helping one kid twice as much.
And in the last panel, for some reason trees that are straight provide equal quantities of fruit on both sides? Whatever, the point us that the underlying systemic inequity has been addressed and you have proper equality of opportunity and potential for equality of outcome.
Sorry about length, I hope that reply doesn’t cause more confusion.
Thank you for taking the time.
I think I get now what panel 2 wants to tell me.
I still think it would make the same point (or a similar one) more clearly if the left child had a ladder from start on.Then you could see that just equalizing the tools is not enough.
Here I think it looks as if giving tools is worthless to even harmful, which I don’t agree with.But again thank you for writing it up, it was well written and very good to understand for me as a non native speaker.
Glad to be of use! It’s a pretty nuanced area of English, so I can understand how being a non-native speaker would make it even more difficult.
I think the reason they decided on the tree lean/fruit quantity was to try to contrast inequality stemming from historical reasons with inequality stemming from no assistance being provided in that moment. Actively withholding needed resources can have the same effect as a system providing unequal resources over time, even if the historical reasons for that inequality weren’t decisions anybody alive today is responsible for.
I did consider no tools on both sides to be equal tools.
only if both people have the same starting point, but they don’t (in the illustration they don’t because the tree gives more fruit on one side, in reality this translates in to privilege, or lack thereof - a white person has more “fruit” and “tools” available to them than a Black person. An abled person has more “fruit” and “tools” available to them than a disabled person, and so on).
The exact same circumstances that punish the one kid in the first panel still punish them in the second. If anything they are worse off in comparison since the additional provided tools don’t serve any purpose for them but do help the other kid.
That’s the point - merely providing superficial assistance or tools or whatever, without changing the core of the problem (here - the fact that the tree leans only to one side) doesn’t solve anything.
So providing a ramp to a building might help wheelchair users (but probably not a Blind or Deaf person for example) very superficially to access that one building, but it doesn’t change all the other inaccessible buildings, or the accessibility issues faced by the Blind or Deaf person (or whatever other disability that doesn’t require the use of a wheelchair), nor the system that sees disabled people as reasonable to exclude because we take “too much” work to cater to (which is a core and very real example of systemic ableism).
Edit just to add: the one main flaw I find with this illustration vs the one with the boxes (here is my personal favourite example), where the obstacle is man made, is that the tree, ie the system, is made to look natural, when in reality it is anything but.
Capitalism (the core system that is the tree, and it’s branches are racism, sexism, ableism, queerphobias and so on) has done a fantastic job convincing society of the lie that humans are naturally greedy and selfish, and of “social Darwinism” and all that eugenicist crap, when in reality humans are hardwired to work together.
No since the tree is leaning to one side, so more apples will fall that way.
What stops the other person from choosing a different spot…
Myriad factors, many of which are out of their control. The illustration could have added fences and other barriers, but that would have sacrificed clarity for unnecessary accuracy.
The tree is a metaphor. In reality it could be job market, one being man and other a woman applying for jobs that traditionally want/prefer men to work.
Or any number of things.
The image needs better ideas. Maybe make the right kid has broken legs so that kid could not freely move to the correct spot
I don’t know. What stops you from living in any house you want?
Nothing equivalent of that is depicted. What makes you see things…?
Clearly they are restricted to their own property. It’s unambiguously implied. So property ownership is at least somewhat depicted. Maybe they don’t own the side of the tree, but clearly they aren’t allowed on each others. Plus, there’s the whole thing about how analogies work. They all break apart if you stretch them beyond their point. Might as well just ask why equality isn’t just burning the tree down. It’s as nonsensical as your question and just as valuable to discuss.
I didn’t think the tree was either a tool or assistance.
Especially since it is still the same in the second panel where tools or assistance are supposed to be equal.But I am not good at those things. I just don’t seem to get it.
Tree is the situation, that is benefiting one person more than other.
Equality means you provide equal help to all and expect them to be equally benefitted. Sometimes that doesn’t work.
Perfect example would be a Spaniard and Frenchman learning a new language, say Italian. This would be easy for a Spanish person because Italian is similar to Spanish. Not so much for French. Providing them both with 10 hours of language classes will be equality but results won’t be equal.
You said the quiet part out loud. “Equally benefitted” is another way to describe equity.
Providing them both with 10 hours of language classes will be equality but results won’t be equal.
Again, you’re just arguing for equity and against equality. Equality and equity are fundamentally incompatible, since achieving equity requires unequal treatment. Presumably your example ends with the Italian person getting more than 10 hours of lessons because of his nationality. You seriously need to acknowledge that you’re advocating for one person to receive better treatment because of their nationality, and consider the consequences of that being an acceptable practice. You’re trying to reverse over a century of human civilisation’s progress.
Yeah thank you.
The part that I still don’t quite get is why giving both people 10 hours of classes is equality but giving both 0 hours of lessons isn’t.
(Or giving both kids 1 ladder vs. giving both kids 0 ladders.)I get that the analogy to a real situation would be to just let inequality run its course and that is obviously not the same as giving everyone the same assistance. I still don’t think the picture makes this point very well.
No. The system leaning in favor of one group is very much a type of assistance.
It represents unintentional assistance though, not a bias that exists on purpose. Ex: old building entrance is higher than sidewalk, there’s stairs to go up, it wasn’t the intention to cut access to the disabled, it’s a consequence of the default choice.
Even if the inequality is completely accidental, shouldn’t we do something about it? Like, we don’t have to make everyone millionares, but if the system accidently makes some people suffer, shouldn’t we try to change that?
Never said nothing should be done about it, just pointing out that there’s in fact a difference between panel 1 and panel 2 contrary to what people are arguing.
Some of it IS intentional, though, or (as in your own example) lack of intentionality from another time with a lot less attention being paid to equal access for people outside of the “standard human” powerful people had in mind when building structures both physical and societal.
There being a default at all is a form of discrimination and harm against the people that it disadvantages, whether or not it’s intentional.
The inequality wasn’t intentional, people didn’t put stairs so disabled wouldn’t have access, they put stairs because that’s what you do when you want people to go up and it had that unintended effect.
The tree didn’t grow leaning on one side so the kid on the wrong side wouldn’t get apples, it grew like that because nature made it.
Giving them ladders was intentional, building a ramp too narrow for wheelchairs that’s intentional… And that’s the difference between panel 1 and 2, they don’t have tools that are supposed to help them at first, then they are given a tool and they’re inappropriate for one of them.
The kid can literally walk 3 meters to the other side doe
Do you know what an analogy is?
Yes and I can even see if theyre any good or not. This one is pretty weak analogy since the kid can walk to the other side. Its not the trees fault its a bit askew
As I explained in another reply, the illustration could have added fences and other barriers, but that would have sacrificed clarity for a degree of accuracy only necessary for pedants like yourself.
And yes, it ABSOLUTELY is the fault of the system and those in charge of shaping it if it’s crooked and nothing is done to straighten it out or at the very least compensate for the disparity.
I’m not sure if you’re being disingenuous or just genuinely obtuse, but I’m leaning more and more towards believing the former.
Having barriers would be unequal, sure. But my brother, trees just grow last time I asked they said they dont really give a shit what a couple of hungry kids think of it.
OK, definitely either the former or both so I’m gonna stop trying to explain the obvious to you. Have the day you deserve.
No, it would have added clarity because it would show that the kid on the right is prevented from going to the left side, which is a necessary assumption for the given metaphor to work.
However, that would make it obvious what the real problem and the solution is. Which would be detrimental to the political message the comic is trying to push, because then instead of giving assistance (putting up boards to move the tree), the obvious solution would be removing something (the literal and metaphorical barrier). The author clearly intended to show that providing assistance is justice, not removing barriers.
It’s a disingenuous comic, because equity and “justice”, while appearing differently in the comic, in practice would be exactly the same thing.
Besides, anyone portraying their position as “justice” is a massive red flag.
There are myriad rules and individuals keeping that tree crooked while erecting barriers both visible and invisible. Removing official barriers doesn’t remove the unofficial ones. The only way that those can can be overcome without infringing on anyone’s rights is by empowering the disempowered to be able to scale them.
Also, maybe not the best idea to bring up red flags when your username heavily implies xenophobia and a complete lack of respect for international law…
Wouldn’t then in the second panel still not be equal assistance?
No. “Except for the basics of the system itself” is implied.
I really don’t mean to be contrarian but I simply don’t understand how a leaning tree can be assistance in panel 1 but not in panel 2.
It is assistance in both, but the point is that “equal” assistance in an unequal world (the tree still leaning one way) doesn’t actually provide justice, since those the tree is leaning towards still benefit more, even when the others have “extra” assistance.
The leaning tree represents things that are unintentional, the tree just grew like that, it wasn’t on purpose.
The second panel represents intentional assistance, it was given to them on purpose.
I really don’t mean to be a contrarian
I’m not sure I believe that, but I’m gonna continue to give you the benefit of doubt for a bit more.
The assistance being alluded to is assistance on top of the system to correct the negative effects of the system.
The vast majority of the reasons any group of people is marginalised at all are systemic and stem from powerful people in the past (and, to a much lesser but still abhorrent degree, the present) writing the rules to give themselves and other people like them advantageous conditions compared to others.
Thanks for the benefit of the doubt I guess.
I think I will stay at my own conclusion that this picture doesn’t do a good job of pointing out the differences between the panels.
They could just as easily have given the left child the ladder from panel 1 on. That would show that just equalizing the tools and assistance doesn’t create real justice in a flawed system.
I am not convinced that starting with no tools and assistance (aside from the tree that somehow is assistance in panel 1 and isn’t in panel 2) and then giving them both the same ladder makes that point very well.But maybe I still just don’t quite get it.
Key takeaway: Always blame the system
Every time I see this quaint but misleading image reposted it’s necessary to make the same comment: the words attached to each image are do not exclusively represent those images. “Equality” could apply to all but the first; nobody uses “equity” this way; and most people use “justice” to refer to criminal justice and punishment.
It’s an infographic for children…? I think it’s meant to be simple.
I’m sure 18+ people should already have a more nuanced view of what those words mean. And if they don’t I’m sure there are other materials they can peruse to help them understand.
Apparently not simply enough for people to understand it’s point here.
The OP comment did not criticize the comic for being too simple. He called it misleading. You’re both arguing with a strawman.
Someone disagreeing with something doesn’t mean they didn’t understand it. It’s a really poisonous mindset that hampers intellectual discourse and development.
It’s not misleading. If you can explain it better in an easier way by all means…
How would you label the different concepts?
I wonder if it was written by a non native speaker or a non American because the literal translation in French sounds right.
Plenty of people use equity this way. Maybe not in your circles, but it’s not a new definition, it’s been around for decades. Millions of people in the US alone do not equate the criminal Justice system with the concept of Justice. Perhaps you should recognize that your perceptions are not able to be applied to the entire population. If you ever find yourself using “nobody” or “everybody” and you have no definitive data backing that up, I would recommend re-examining your biases, because what you appear to be doing is attempting to normalize your beliefs while otherizing the beliefs of others who do not share your view.
What if one person is more skilled at apple picking or the other just wants to stand on the ground
YEAH BUT WHAT IF ONE PERSON IS MADE OF APPLES AND IS PSYCHIC? WHAT IF THE TREE WAS ABORTION? WHAT IF BEER WAS VODKA AND GOD WAS A CHICKEN?
FIRST ONE WOULD BE REALLY NICE BECAUSE THEY WOULD HAVE UNLIMITED ACCESS TO APPLES AND KNOW WHEN I WANT AN APPLE SO PROBABLY WOULD GIVE ME FREE APPLES. SECOND ONE DOES NOT MAKE SENSE BECAUSE TREES CANT GET PREGNANT SO THEY CAN NOT BE ABORTED EITHER. IF BEER WAS VODKA WE WOULD JUST WATER IT DOWN IF WE WANT A MILD BUZZ. IF GOD WAS A CHICKEN CHICKEN WOULD BE BETTER OFF.
WHY ARE WE SCREAMING?
then they’d still have the same opportunities and one could choose to stay off the ladder instead of picking apples?!
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Society isn’t a tree it’s a machine so we can bend it all we like.
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pannel 2 only kindof makes sense. I mabe wrong, but I beleve it leaves out somthing along the lines of “we all have access but for some are their harder to use”
humans typically consider it righteous to reduce the amount of human suffering, including at the expense of plants and for some, including at the expense of animals
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Why should we alter the tree just for the beneficiaries liking
We designed the tree, so we should fix the tree now that we realize it has problems. The analogy is to the society that we created.
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Well, technically, through selective breeding over thousands of years we kinda did design the tree.
Capitalism: hire an apple picking expert to pick the apples and sell them at exorbitant prices because there is a monopoly on apples.
Communism: send the apple picking expert to work in the steel factory and get a random university professor to pick them instead
No mate, communism is having state managed Apple pickers that pick apples and give them to manager. Management keeps 40% apples for themselves and then divide rest between the whole town, so that everyone in town gets one tiny piece of apple, whether they like apples or not.
Ew
Communism: send the apple picking expert to work in the steel factory and get a random university professor to pick them instead
Why? He’s an expert in that, if we don’t have steel mill experts we can train willing participants. Experts should always flow to their field of expertise
Experts should always flow to their area of expertise
That state of affairs is called “free market”.
The steel mill experts were purged for saying that sending literally everyone to work on smelting steel is unsustainable.
I love that the commies on here ignore the fact that every communist government to date had to rely on mass purges and persecution to rule and STILL became utterly corrupt and generated an elite ruling class. I’m not saying capitalism is the way, truth, and light, but holy fuck for as smart as the fediverse commies think they are, they are woefully blind to history. At this point, even western european-style socialism is a reach for the US but these guys want a commie revolution? These idiots want blood on the walls and meanwhile I just want my four year old to have a decent future.
There’s an argument to be made that some people need a guiding hand when it comes to caring for others or to act in ways that are beneficial for others and themselves, but it seemed like most tankies on Reddit at least were anti-west contrarians. Nominally they were anti-imperialist but always ignored non-western imperialism.
Which people need a guiding hand?
Sociopaths and the extremely greedy are two groups off the top of my head.
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Communism is a paradise where everyone gets along and nothing goes wrong. Anything else is not true communism. I just don’t get why that’s so hard to understand.
Obviously communism is when blatant red scare propaganda.
Communism, as an American, is everything I don’t like or understand
Instead of being a fucking asshole, why don’t you educate me? Can you point me to a real life example of a vibrant communist state that didn’t need to metaphorically or literally crush people to further the communist purpose? I’m well aware of the ideals of Marxism, the history of workers movements, and the historical reality of Stalin, Mao, the Khmer, etc. So please tell me what I know nothing about.
Why is that my job? You have access to the internet, fucking do it yourself.
I think he’s referring to Soviet Russia specifically, where farmers were sent to factories or turned into impromptu pig iron producers because of misguided heavy handed top down policies.
Feudalism: A lord owns the land and the trees growing in it. He has a bunch of peasants who will pick the apples for him. The lord gets all the apples and the peasants are allowed to live on his lands another day. Later that night, they go work on their own farms that hopefully give them enough food to keep going. In the long term they’ll probably starve to death or get kicked out of the house they themselves built. I guess living as s hunter-gatherer in the forest isn’t that bad compared to the other alternatives.
return to monke
Nailed the feudalism.
Missed where they had to tithe their crops to the Lord, besidey that, was very good
Hey, please edit your post to follow rule 1 and rule 2. Thank you (:
Justice is killing the little boy.
Reddit is that way sir
anarcho primitavism: climb tree oo oo aa aa
lmao
Putting supports on trees weakens them. The swaying makes them stronger.
Handicapped people might disagree
What do you mean?
They mean they benefit from the way things currently work, so the mere suggestion that the system needs to change in order for others to benefit too makes them so anxious they need to do a bunch of mental gymnastics to justify to themsleves why the idea is “no good”
Trees aren’t handicapped people. They’re trees.
Holy in shit, I better… I just need to go. Now. Unrelated…
you know this infographic isn’t literally talking about trees, right?
It’s talking about children robbing a disabled person for their apples?
I do but the last one says it’s fixing the system when it’s propping up the tree and making it weak. Bad metaphor.
That must be it
I rest my case
Big, if true
I get you’re coming from a good place, but we’re disabled, not handicapped
Just a language thing, sorry. In my country this word does not have any negative connotation.
I think it’s much more likely that it does have negative connotations (especially since the etymology of the word itself is negative, there is no way around that. Never mind the stigma it carries), but no one has pointed it out to you until this point.
But now you know, and since language matters, please just say the word and in future call us what we are - disabled people.
I genuinely have multiple friends who use that word about themselves. It isn’t negative unless people perceive so.
First of all, thanks for proving you’ve not bothered reading any of the information I linked, because it clearly states otherwise:
So King Henry VII passed some landmark legislation. He proclaimed that begging in the streets be legal for people with disabilities. So into the streets, with their “cap in hand”, went King Henry’s disabled veterans, to beg for money”. So with cap in hand referred to beggars, or people of no value in society.
The term is also used in horseracing and wagering. It measures the superiority of one contestant over another. This is the belief that one participant is stronger or better than another. The word “handicap” is rating one thing better or worse than another.
It appears that “handicapped” seems to have begun to describe a wide range of disadvantages, including social, economic and even moral standards. The website by Arika Okrent (2015) reports: “Handicap began to be applied to physical and mental differences in the early 1900s, when the new fields of sociology and social work started looking at people in terms of their place in society as a whole”. The term was used to describe people viewed as physically or mentally flawed.Second of all, disabled people reclaiming a word for themselves, no matter how friendly you are with them, still doesn’t give you the right to use it to describe the rest of us (or at all except for if your friends specifically asked you to, and I’d honestly consider whether they actually want to be called that, or that they know that you would react as badly as you are here, so don’t bother to correct you because they have better things to spend their energy on than educating a “friend” who would use them as debate tools to prove how not ableist you are. Hint: doing that is ableist), just like you don’t go around using the N word or the F and T slurs, all of which have been reclaimed by their own community but are still derogatory when used by outsiders.
So like I told that other person:
you can choose to be respectful and make the tiniest adjustment to your vocabulary, or you can choose to continue to use a harmful term despite now knowing full well that it is harmful, proving to me and others just how little of a shit you give about disabled people.I’ve done my part, the choice is yours, and you’re clearly choosing to prioritise your own ego over respecting disabled people on the most basic level.
Which I guess only leaves me feeling sorry for your “friends” (or should I say tokens?)
My point is that words are part of languages which change very fluidly, and you could make the same argument for hundreds of other words.
If the word isn’t considered bad by anyone hearing it or anyone it describes, nothing is wrong with it. Many meanings are different between your language and mine, even though they sound alike or share some etymology.
You can’t criticize people for using the word handicapped after it has been pushed as the politically correct word for decades.
It’s still the mainstream politically correct word in the English speaking West. Using disabled can land you in hot water in a professional or political environment.
That’s a pile of bullshit so big it could only come from an abled person who hasn’t spent a second of their life listening to actual disabled people.
So I can, and I will.
And people can then choose to be respectful and make the tiniest adjustment to their vocabulary, or they can choose to continue to use a harmful term despite now knowing full well that it is harmful, proving to others just how little of a shit they give about disabled people.
The choice is yours.
Ha, I didn’t even notice those. So many memes straight up are shitty for one reason or other.
Putting supports on trees weakens them.
Just like giving free hand-outs to people.
GIviNG FoOD to HUnGry pEople Makes thEm weakeR
Give a man to fish feed him for a day… teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.
People like you want to keep a group of people endlessly indebted, while the rest of us want that group to stand on their own.
Give me a break. There are no solutions put forward by people that argue against welfare other than “bootstraps.” Or even worse “let the weak die.” It has nothing to do with helping people grow. Hell even when solutions focused on growth are put forward to help growth in new environments (training coal miners to do different work for example) the arguments become something about heritage or family history in mining. It always seems like it’s opposition for the sake of opposition.
The main argument against welfare always seems to stem from a desire to have less taxation as they believe welfare support is stealing from them. A.k.a being selfish. There is never any thought about what to do to help those in need.
Okay cool, so let’s raise wages so everyone can afford to buy their own food.
Let’s just give everyone a million dollars because money is clearly an infinite resource!1!!! Brilliant! /s
Stand on your own, they say to the starving person, put some effort into your appearance they say to the homeless person, just stop being so miserable they say to the depressed person
And those people who get themselves out of poverty almost universally state that building a work ethic and an ability to stand on their own is how they got to where they were, not through endless hand-outs and being coddled. Dependency is just like any other addiction and some people rather see these people endlessly fail than actually try to help them move up in the world and make it on their own.
You are an enabler, plain and simple.
The people in the infographic are literally working for their own food.
Infographic is a strong word for this meme
Semantics.
The apples in the picture are jobs that pay enough for food and a house within a daily commute of that job.
Not everyone has access to that. That access is necessary before the Teaching aspect can be effective. Teaching only works if the lesson is usable with the resources available.
The ladders are teaching programs tailored to the resources available in that community.
The adjusted tree is updated communities with better resources - better transit, better grocery availability, better childcare options, better school options, better medical options.
This has been “Children’s books explained in painful detail.” Tune in next time for Goodnight Moon. I’m joking. I don’t know that the heck goodnight moon is about.
Why do we need a different word for equal access to resources? There are different types of equalities, equity in my mind is the difference between what’s owned minus what’s owed.
Justice is Occupational health and safety inspection telling them they are not allowed to use such leaders and especially not unsupervised.
This is one of my least favorite Rush songs…
