5.2 Equity
Ninderjit Kaur Gill
When biases and systemic oppression go unexamined or unchecked it leads to harmful and discriminatory experiences for children from marginalized groups (Gilliam, 2005; Perszyk et al., 2019). Oppression and privilege are an example of how bias can become systemic and harm groups of people. Equity goes beyond “fairness” and provides us with a framework to understand the impact of our biases and oppression on children and families and how we can address them. If diversity is actively reflecting on our own experiences and identities and how they influence and impact how we are teaching, equity involves transforming the education system itself.
The Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education statement defines equity as “the state that would be achieved if individuals fared the same way in society regardless of race, gender, class, language, disability, or any other social or cultural characteristic” (NAEYC, 2019, p. 17). If we have been socialized into unequal roles based on our social identity groups, then we are not truly equal. Attempting to treat everyone the same is essentially not fair. We cannot have equality and fairness until we have equity where children have similar access to resources to support their learning, growth, and development. Giving everyone the same thing when they are starting from different places would not be equitable.
Structural Inequities
The United States has always had diverse social and cultural groups. This rich growth in diversity continues today. According to the Children’s Defense Fund’s “The State of America’s Children” 2020 report, 73.4 million children lived in the United States in 2018. The report’s statistics show that 50 percent were children of color: 14 percent were Black; 26 percent were Hispanic; 5 percent were Asian/Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander; and less than 1 percent were American Indian/Alaska Native.
However, we have a lot of structural inequity in our country. Structural inequity is systematic and institutionalized disparities in opportunities, resources, and outcomes that are embedded in our institutions and systems. Structural inequity has become part of our education system and is rooted in the policies, practices, and norms of institutions, creating patterns of advantage or disadvantage for certain groups.
Poverty is one of the biggest threats to children’s healthy development. According to the U.S. Census, the child poverty rate more than doubled, from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022 (Shrider & Creamer, 2023). More children of color have been disproportionately poor, and if we look at income based on a family’s race we can see this disparity even further: $88,200 was the median income for white families with children compared with $40,100 for Black and $46,400 for Hispanic families in 2017 (Children’s Defense Fund, 2020). Equity would be ensuring that people doing similar jobs regardless of race or ethnicity would get paid the same amount.
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