Government loves a plan. The harder question is whether a plan is designed to survive contact with data. New York City’s attempt to spread measurable racial-equity goals across agencies is potentially useful precisely because it creates something the public can inspect later. A promise is easy to repeat. A target can be missed.

For Black New Yorkers, the most meaningful goals are the ones that show up in ordinary systems: housing inspections, contracting, hiring, maternal health, school discipline, small-business access, transit and neighborhood investment. Equity cannot live only inside a central office if the agencies making daily decisions continue operating the same way.

Measurement also has to resist the temptation to grade government on activity instead of results. Holding workshops, creating committees and publishing reports can be signs of work, but they are not the same as closing a gap. The public should be able to see what changed, for whom, by how much and by when.

A serious equity plan should make government more accountable, not more congratulatory. If the numbers never create discomfort, the targets probably were not ambitious enough.