the problem with chasing "equality of opportunity" is that it's basically impossible to quantify. And when you do quantify it, you end up usually looking at so

the problem with chasing "equality of opportunity" is that it's basically impossible to quantify. And when you do quantify it, you end up usually looking at something that is an outcome. Example: assume that a) whether or not your parents are married when you are born and b) how rich your parents are affect your opportunities for success. These assumptions seem reasonable to me, but please tell me if you disagree with them. In order to equalize opportunity for a new generation across different groups of people, you need to equalize outcomes amongst the current generation. More generally, drastically unequal outcomes can often point to unequal opportunities earlier in the pipeline. Assuming intelligence and conscientiousness, the two traits most correlated with success, are more or less equally distributed across all gene pools, then it does seem likely that if some groups tend to be less successful than others, it may be a cultural thing, because as a far amount of data has shown, having rich parents greatly increases the chances that you end up rich. See for example all the legacy admissions at Harvard. Of course, if you can reasonably show that, much like say the genes that make for good sprinters (lots of fast twitch muscle fibers), the genes for intelligence are not evenly distributed, then you could argue that a an imbalance of outcomes does not necessarily imply an imbalance of opportunities. In practice, however, I do no think that American society is equal opportunity. I'm a heterosexual white male, and honestly I think I've had an easier life as a result of it than I would have with pretty much any other set of gender/skin color/orientation.