There has been a lot of talk from the new administration about returning America to a meritocracy. This is all couched in terms of rolling back DEI initiatives to 'create a level playing field.' Not only is this--getting rid of programs that provide equity, in order to guarantee equity--absurd on its face, it ignores an important fact. Merit is not a fact-based, measurable outcome. Merit is simply a lense to view a decision through a set of agreed upon biases. We pretend that these criteria which determine the outcome do not correlate in any way with unearned privileges.
The idea of merit allows people to believe that they have 'earned' something, whether it be admission to college, or a job offer, or a promotion, or a role in a production, or a gallery showing, or having their book published--more news on that in a later post--, or .... I could go on forever. Merit delivers on the myth of American exceptionalism, on a personal level. As my children used to say when they were toddlers, "I did it myself!"
'Merit' insidiously ties individual outcomes to hierarchies of worthiness. Achieving an outcome becomes synonymous with being worthy of that outcome. Thus, wealthy people are wealthy because they deserve to be wealthy, and, of course, poor people deserve to be poor. The kids who get admitted to Harvard or other hyper-competitive schools that admit less than 10 percent of their applicants deserve to be admitted and the kids who are denied... well they deserve that as well. Do we really believe that those schools are really able to distinguish between all their applicants in a meaningful way?
It's very interesting to look at the history of college admission tests. First developed in the early 20th century, the tests were a way to prove that Jewish students were as smart as gentiles and deserved admission to our nation's best colleges. Now they are gatekeepers that allow people to claim they have been discriminated against, but we still keep telling the story that they are impartial arbiters of merit. Can anyone really determine the relative improvement of a 1600 over a 1590 SAT score, or a 36 over a 35 on the ACT? I've spent the last 29 years working in college admission and I don't know anyone who can.
Opportunity is not distributing equally in this country. I do not understand why that statement scares the hell out of so many people. Maybe we are wired to see lack and limitation in every situation and anything that is perceived as giving everyone an equitable shot at earning the outcome is a threat to our success. I would think that all of these pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps people would love more competition to prove they are the best. I guess they have imposters syndrome too, and do not really believe they will be successful unless they have an unfair advantage.
Coming soon! An announcement.
Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck.
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