Equality and Opportunity

Marty Hierholzer is a service-disabled veteran with a simple request: that the government look to his individual qualifications, rather than his skin color. The Small Business Administration (SBA) runs a program called 8(a), which helps small business owners who face social disadvantage. The federal government sets aside a percentage of government ...

When Frederick Douglass escaped slavery and got his first job as a free man in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he wrote about what the job meant to him: I was now my own master — a tremendous fact — and the rapturous excitement with which I seized the job, may not easily be understood, except by some one with an experience something like mine. T ...

Barbara Grutter was no stranger to a challenge. She worked in a doctor's office while getting her Bachelor of Science degree in 1978, when few women did. She raised two small children while learning information systems, when the concept barely existed. Later she founded and ran an IT consulting business, training healthcare companies to manage thei ...

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is in hot water with parents again. Administrators used "equity" as a justification for withholding information from students that may impact the trajectory of their academic futures. In the final weeks of 2022, Thomas Jefferson parent Shawna Yashar made an odd discovery. Her son had earned ...

Colorado high school sophomore Taryn Petruncola has played the harp since she was six years old. Aside from the joy that playing the harp brings Taryn, she also enjoys helping others. Through the years, she's played for nursing homes and even during a family member's funeral. As part of a business class that Taryn recently took at a local commun ...

"Why don't you take a look around? You know what's about to happen, what they're up against. They could use a good pilot like you. You're turning your back on them." As the Galactic Empire closed in, Luke Skywalker was desperate for Han Solo to take up the Rebel cause. From the start of the movie Star Wars: A New Hope, Solo made it abundantly ...

At Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax, Virginia, it no longer matters that one of the eighth graders applying for admission this fall has been building robots in his garage since he was 10, or that another won her middle school's Math Olympiad last year and dreams of working for NASA someday. All that matters is they're Asian American, and TJ, ...

In 2018, accordionist Tony Barilla wrote in the Houston Press about his quest to play music on the city's street corners—a quest that led him into a frustrating maze of bureaucracy. Busking was outright banned in most of Houston. Musicians could play in public spaces only if they didn't accept tips.   Tony was happy to learn there was an exce ...

The federal government is giving away billions of dollars in taxpayer money to help Americans nationwide who are struggling to pay mortgages. But in Georgia and Oklahoma, whether homeowners are eligible for assistance depends on their skin color. In both Atlanta and Oklahoma City, for example, a couple making $95,000 a year can receive tens of thou ...