Equity and Equal Outcomes: Some Idle Speculation

What does progressivism mean by 'equity'? Not clear, but everyone seems to be kind of zeroing in on something roughly like: equity is treating different people/groups differently because they have different needs and/or different histories of unfair treatment. 

   Anti-progressives are yelling a lot about progressivism's pro-equity views. But in many cases it seems like a bit of equity would be a good thing. (Ungrammatical; not gonna fix it.) If Smith needs help and Jones doesn't, we don't generally think it's unfair to give Smith and not Jones help. Affirmative action--which I'm inclined to think is ok in some cases--doesn't e.g. implement preferential hiring for everyone...that makes no sense and probably isn't possible. 

   I've been yelling about "equity" being associated with the goal of equal outcome. But isn't that true only if "equity" is pushed all the way? One can think that some situations call for an equity-ish response without thinking that we have to keep that up until equal outcomes are achieved. Generally we seek to partially level extremely unlevel playing-fields--but I don't think we usually actually seek to perfectly level them--which is usually impossible without wrecking everything. And we take wildly unequal outcomes to be at least some indication that there's something going on that calls for an equity-ish response. 

   Of course I don't think that progressivism not to aim at equal outcomes. In fact I think that a lot of progressives do aim at equal outcomes. Other things they say clearly indicate this--e.g. that every unequal outcome is a result of prejudice. But one can agree with them about the basic "equity" point without accepting the goal of equal outcome. E.g. by rejecting the (obviously false) doctrine that all disparities result from prejudice/discrimination.