That Professor Baltzell choose to use a tautology says a couple of things to me.
1. the term shows an underlying racism in it's constructor. Denying an economic factor in social structure then only leaves gender or racial differences to explain inequality.
2. He had a poor appreciation of language.
Having said that I probably agree that many politicians and almost all bureaucrats encourage people to be mediocre, though for reasons of ease of control rather than any political attempt to produce an equitable society.
Equal is one of those words which I really wish was used with the precision of mathematics. In maths two horizontal lines means equal to, three horizontal lines means identical to. The two symbols may be equal but are not identical.