Equality or Equity?
Someone asked me a question this morning; a question that over a period of time has proven tougher than i had anticipated, and one that i should have applied more diligence in answering. To my defense however, i was born Ugandan, which means it is right there embedded within my genes that i look at things my life depends on with the shallowest approach humanly possible. The question i am referring to was whether or not we are equal before the law. if you know me perhaps you already know my reaction; Having not deliberated on the question whatsoever, I quickly and rather unpleasantly furnished him with a very unthought out response which i realize now that it was uncalled for and unwarranted. It is for times like this that God should have created an undo button for our lives, Anyway, Back to the question at hand, truth is there are more than meets the eye in these circumstances or as the case is in mine, more than meets the mind. On one hand people will agree that perhaps we are indeed equal before the law, then there are the other passionate lads like myself who will always disagree. Disagreeing is our thing, that we do not know what we disagree with notwithstanding. This position we hold is mostly based on the attitude we have acquired of the law; an attitude that the law will never serve its purpose which is to serve its purpose. i know what i said, just tag along, you will get my point in due course.
The latter school of thought is a conceited one; in fact there is a ninety percent chance that all narcissists belong here. To this group (whose membership to i hold sadly) the law has failed and they recall not a single moment when it flourished. Law they will tell you, has put the poor on the receiving end. they will remind you that poor people having commissioned actions that attract the same punishment as a rich fellow, will most likely suffer more owing to their economic inabilities to meet the financial wants of the judicial system. Before you respond to that they will most likely whip you with that argument of affording legal representatives or securing property in the interests of bails, bonds and sureties. Invoking civil proceedings will be your worst mistake because they will push it down your throat till you choke on their rather preemptive opinion that those are in fact the worst kind because in such instances, not even actions speak louder than money. they will paint out rich folk as very slithery characters and the poor as holier than thou and inevitably victims of circumstances; circumstances forged by monetary equilibrium and which the poor have no control of whatsoever. Moments ago, these were my exacts sentiments.
That was until the question was altered to evade the ‘narrow and myopic’ assessment such as the one i had merited it. supposing we get money off the equation, and everyone is placed on an equal footing such that we are all on an economically level playing field and we are equally as poor as we are rich. supposing there are not any rich or poor people, only people, how about then? Shall the people be equal before the law? and at this point i stared blankly in the air hoping for the hand of God to appear and inoculate my head with a thought. the more time went by, the more desperate i got for a thought; any thought. it got to a point i could have settled for figuring out a polite way to decline answering the question, that’s if i could think of one, but even then, i kept thinking and as expected, nothing came by. i have noted, not without a little protest though, that thinking right when am needed to is not one of my greatest strengths which begs the question whether or not am in the right career but who are you to judge? The alteration of the question threw me off balance mentally and on a more embarrassing level, self-esteem-wise, to my defense the ability to think has become such a rare one, the holy spirit should consider making it one of the fruits.
so then it was my turn to listen, and believe me i was made to listen. i was made to understand that the answer to the initial question is in the affirmative, and that the law treats everyone alike, rich or poor. That we often, confuse the purpose of law with its constrains but that is neither here nor there (i didn’t understand that part either but i wasn’t about to put my ego on trial yet again) because it is not the subject of the matter(s) in question). As if putting my intellectual abilities in dispute was not enough victory for this guy, he continued to assault me with critical thinking to a point i was largely convinced he was high on thought, not pot people, not pot! focus!! he made sure i understood that what we in fact see as injustices occasioned by the application of the law, are ideally unfortunate circumstances we ‘the poor’ (be sure to note the quotation marks because am sure as hell not poor) are subjected to inequities and injustices merely because of the lack of sufficient funds. also he said, we need to differentiate the law in its core, from the people who apply and interpret it. There is what the law provides, and then there is what we make of its application, here again, he lost me. but he appeared smart, lets just go with his version of it.
He accused man (bear with his patriarchy) of stripping the law of its intended purpose. he avers that the law is so equal that we have in fact started to make it less equal by introducing some precepts of affirmative action that propose to favour one party and put the other at a considerable disadvantage. for instance, there are so few women in leadership positions that we have decided as a society that you know what? we should reserve some seats for women just in case they are not filled by women in an election. This he argues, was not the purpose of the mother law, which puts man and woman on equal fronts, as a matter of fact he blames the society (did you hear that feminists? The society is to blame, not men) placing the woman behind the man even after the law put them on the equal mark. I tried to think of all those instances in which i had imagined the law was unfair for reason that it did not treat people it served equally, and in each it seemed the law was not at fault. The law was perfect as it is and problems only surfaced when man attempted to apply it; in all these, he urged me to differentiate between equality, fairness and justice. because the law is only equal. it is not always fair nor just, but it is what it is; equal.
you may ask why i have gone through the trouble of first putting my wisdom or lack there of in question and typing these 1500 words not many of you will even bother to read. well, i am aware that this particular step i have taken will most likely change nothing, but it is a step in the right direction nonetheless. Come to think of it, we have spent decades and quite a substantial amount of the taxpayers money amending the law and trying to fix it yet all that needs the fix and at no expense whatsoever is us people. What if a thousand people decided to be fair to another in their dealings regardless of the fact that such noble actions as acts of fairness spell doom for the actor. what if another thousand decided to be just and another thousand chose to do the right thing, the immediate result notwithstanding? wouldn’t it be great? why are we wasting time fixing things that are inherently perfect? Do not fix the law, fix oneself…
The latter school of thought is a conceited one; in fact there is a ninety percent chance that all narcissists belong here. To this group (whose membership to i hold sadly) the law has failed and they recall not a single moment when it flourished. Law they will tell you, has put the poor on the receiving end. they will remind you that poor people having commissioned actions that attract the same punishment as a rich fellow, will most likely suffer more owing to their economic inabilities to meet the financial wants of the judicial system. Before you respond to that they will most likely whip you with that argument of affording legal representatives or securing property in the interests of bails, bonds and sureties. Invoking civil proceedings will be your worst mistake because they will push it down your throat till you choke on their rather preemptive opinion that those are in fact the worst kind because in such instances, not even actions speak louder than money. they will paint out rich folk as very slithery characters and the poor as holier than thou and inevitably victims of circumstances; circumstances forged by monetary equilibrium and which the poor have no control of whatsoever. Moments ago, these were my exacts sentiments.
That was until the question was altered to evade the ‘narrow and myopic’ assessment such as the one i had merited it. supposing we get money off the equation, and everyone is placed on an equal footing such that we are all on an economically level playing field and we are equally as poor as we are rich. supposing there are not any rich or poor people, only people, how about then? Shall the people be equal before the law? and at this point i stared blankly in the air hoping for the hand of God to appear and inoculate my head with a thought. the more time went by, the more desperate i got for a thought; any thought. it got to a point i could have settled for figuring out a polite way to decline answering the question, that’s if i could think of one, but even then, i kept thinking and as expected, nothing came by. i have noted, not without a little protest though, that thinking right when am needed to is not one of my greatest strengths which begs the question whether or not am in the right career but who are you to judge? The alteration of the question threw me off balance mentally and on a more embarrassing level, self-esteem-wise, to my defense the ability to think has become such a rare one, the holy spirit should consider making it one of the fruits.
so then it was my turn to listen, and believe me i was made to listen. i was made to understand that the answer to the initial question is in the affirmative, and that the law treats everyone alike, rich or poor. That we often, confuse the purpose of law with its constrains but that is neither here nor there (i didn’t understand that part either but i wasn’t about to put my ego on trial yet again) because it is not the subject of the matter(s) in question). As if putting my intellectual abilities in dispute was not enough victory for this guy, he continued to assault me with critical thinking to a point i was largely convinced he was high on thought, not pot people, not pot! focus!! he made sure i understood that what we in fact see as injustices occasioned by the application of the law, are ideally unfortunate circumstances we ‘the poor’ (be sure to note the quotation marks because am sure as hell not poor) are subjected to inequities and injustices merely because of the lack of sufficient funds. also he said, we need to differentiate the law in its core, from the people who apply and interpret it. There is what the law provides, and then there is what we make of its application, here again, he lost me. but he appeared smart, lets just go with his version of it.
He accused man (bear with his patriarchy) of stripping the law of its intended purpose. he avers that the law is so equal that we have in fact started to make it less equal by introducing some precepts of affirmative action that propose to favour one party and put the other at a considerable disadvantage. for instance, there are so few women in leadership positions that we have decided as a society that you know what? we should reserve some seats for women just in case they are not filled by women in an election. This he argues, was not the purpose of the mother law, which puts man and woman on equal fronts, as a matter of fact he blames the society (did you hear that feminists? The society is to blame, not men) placing the woman behind the man even after the law put them on the equal mark. I tried to think of all those instances in which i had imagined the law was unfair for reason that it did not treat people it served equally, and in each it seemed the law was not at fault. The law was perfect as it is and problems only surfaced when man attempted to apply it; in all these, he urged me to differentiate between equality, fairness and justice. because the law is only equal. it is not always fair nor just, but it is what it is; equal.
you may ask why i have gone through the trouble of first putting my wisdom or lack there of in question and typing these 1500 words not many of you will even bother to read. well, i am aware that this particular step i have taken will most likely change nothing, but it is a step in the right direction nonetheless. Come to think of it, we have spent decades and quite a substantial amount of the taxpayers money amending the law and trying to fix it yet all that needs the fix and at no expense whatsoever is us people. What if a thousand people decided to be fair to another in their dealings regardless of the fact that such noble actions as acts of fairness spell doom for the actor. what if another thousand decided to be just and another thousand chose to do the right thing, the immediate result notwithstanding? wouldn’t it be great? why are we wasting time fixing things that are inherently perfect? Do not fix the law, fix oneself…
No comments:
Post a Comment