Equal But Not the Same

A few days ago, got on the A train, the very crowded A train. Among the throngs of people who entered at the same time that I did there was a pregnant woman, an average-looking white girl, short with brown hair, a brown shirt, and black pants. No seats on the train, so she grabs the railing a few steps away from where I'm standing. Wish I had a seat, just so I could stand back up and give it to her. A Hispanic man in a nice suit gets up, she smiles back at him, a couple parts awkward but more parts thankful. It got me thinking about what my limit was for getting up out of my seat for a stranger. Pregnant woman, definitely, old woman, absolutely, woman with a young child, no question, woman with plenty of bags of groceries, not even a second thought. Random woman, young woman, starts to get hazy. Man with a billion bags of groceries, juggling a ticking time bomb which if he drops it will destroy all of New York... nah nigga you gonna have to stand and man the fuck up. Naturally, then I started thinking about our differences and our equality.. men vs. women, Black, Asian, old, young. I've heard it before, read it before- equal does not mean same. Most of the men that I know would not protest if I were to give up a seat for an aforementioned woman while not giving one up for him, even if he was having a hard time. Does that mean that men and women are not equal?
Usually, this kind of thing comes to mind when I think about different social policies and their implications for society at large. Things like welfare, affirmative action, socialized medicine, the Equal Rights Amendement.
"We're all equal, why should THEY, (the people who are not the default) get special treatment?" Who said that it's special treatment- well special in the sense that it's extra, or somehow out of line? I don't like to think of social programs which level the playing field, so to speak, as special, but appopriate. Not to say that that above policies are the right ones, but that the general idea behind them are indeed appropriate.
There's an analogy, which is not perfectly apt, but something that I like to use when I think about equality. Two plus two equals four.... 24 divided by 6 also equals 4.... the derivative of 2x^2 is 4, and I could go on using any other math terminology. All of them equal 4, until those wonderful mathematical laws of ours are disproven. However, just because they all equal 4 does not mean that each equation should be approached similarly. They each require different avenues to ultimately arrive at the same solution. It's not special, merely the approriate way of dealing with the problem. Of course these leaves out the fact that humans have to compete with one another, in what is often times (but inaccurately) seen as a zero sum game. Anyway, the equality that I'm talking about, that baseline if you will, is just the baseline for being treated with basic human decency and trying to equalize opportunity. I don't know what the applicable integer is for this opportunity calculus, but I bet there is an infinite number of ways to get there, an infinite number of ways to treat people the way they were meant to be treated. Personally, I hope that when the time comes for us to know that answer, it ends up being 7 or 31.