Meritocracy — A Prescient Warning

Meritocracy is used prolifically in modern times. Rewarding those based on their merit seems right — it fits with the Just World hypothesis [1]. It is the basis of the American Dream — work hard, keep believing, and you will succeed. The Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s brilliant play questioning the American Dream, was written in 1949. Michael Young, a sociologist, coined the term meritocracy in 1958 in a dystopic futuristic novel, whereby a naïve sociologist, a fervent supporter of meritocracy, is exposed to its severe limitations in 2033 and is killed in a riot. “All cultures have a belief system that legitimize status arrangements” [2] — and by and large Western democracies have chosen meritocracy, a “raft on a sea of despair” [2].

Meritocracy is rooted in the Protestant work ethic — work hard, and you can get ahead.

It is part of the fabric of what is means to be American, perhaps even what is means to belong to a Western country. The idea was not was not invented at the creation of the United States — it has a history in ancient China. In Confucius times, the emphasis was on the government being wise and virtuous, and needing to find the talent to perform this role. Boys were encouraged to work hard, and perform their best, which could enable them to achieve upward social mobility. Meritocratic principles described finding the most suitable boys for government based on merit and talent, using a civil servant exam to select them. The goal was to have the best government possible for the collective good of the people. Today, meritocracy has a different implication.

Meritocracy has become an ideology, a way of thinking to legitimize injustice.

For example, we have been taught to see self-made millionaires through the lens of meritocracy — we resent them less, we scrutinize them less. Had the top 10 wealthiest been the son of somebody, we would be far more skeptical — it is this gloss of meritocracy that has exempted them from any real scrutiny, whereas massive income inequality deserves just as much scrutiny as nepotism. We know their stories — they worked hard, went to university, made their own way — and because we have seen the world through meritocracy, we legitimize their success. We even use them as models, trying to emulate their paths. We would not tolerate a dictator who stole $1B but are not resentful of a self-made billionaire. “For many people, it is as hard to be the self-made billionaire as it is to become a dictator, but ideology of meritocracy presents the illusion that this is not the case.” [2]

Meritocracy denies the existence of an uneven playing field.

Michael Young saw this once education became universal. “Ability of a conventional kind, which used to be distributed between the classes more or less at random, has become much more highly concentrated by the engine of education. A social revolution has been accomplished by harnessing schools and universities to the task of sieving people according to education’s narrow band of values. With an amazing battery of certificates and degrees at its disposal, education has put its seal of approval on a minority, and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from the time they are relegated to the bottom streams at the age of seven or before”[3].

This becomes very clear when looking at applying to an Ivy School without the pedigree. Kayla Sasser is what any Ivy league school would love to have [4]. She is seventeen, a long-distance track star, has a 4.0 grade point average, and with no preparation wrote the SAT and scored 83% higher than others. She is also African American, homeless (kicked out of her home), working two jobs, and trying to finish high school. Recruiters for Ivy league schools would never find her — only recruiters for the military and maybe a local college would even come to her school. A volunteer coach tried to help her apply to some other schools. “Columbia asks ‘What exhibits, lectures, theatre productions and concerts have you liked best in the past year?’ I’m tempted to write ‘Carmen at the MET — PSYCH — my town doesn’t even have a movie theatre’… ‘What are your favourite periodicals, newspapers and websites?’, but she has no access to a computer except at school, does not get the New Yorker, and has never travelled outside her town.” [4] Most kids did drugs for entertainment, and have no resources, direction, or help. These types of entrance questions are designed for privileged Americans, who have had opportunity, and have parents who not only have gone to college but have the resources to help their children, and are wholly ignorant of the reality of many others. Kids who grow up in rural towns without resources do not even know of the possibility to go to a school outside their district or aim for an Ivy league school.

Meritocracy keeps the top at the top, having a tendency to degenerate into biological caste systems.

“Extremely able successful professionals marry each other, called assortative mating — their children are brought up in incredibly privileged circumstances, having every advantage that money can buy, but they also have a genetic advantage over some of their competitors — extremely bright, hardworking, conscientious parents — you begin to see this ossification, in which the children end up at the top themselves and those at the bottom end up at the bottom (in most cases)” [2]. The advantaged, however, see this as their own merit, “They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody’s son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers can actually believe they have morality on their side. So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards they arrogate to themselves” [3]. Silicon Valley is a poster child for meritocracy — the best schools, measurable work outcomes — it is hard to think of another place that has been as shaped by meritocracy. [2] They also are very subject to ingroup biases, having implicit bias for people who went to their schools, have similar interests, come from same area, etc. and very few new ideas are therefore introduced beyond the familiar [2]. It is a virtually insulated existence in an echo chamber of privilege.

What is worse is that meritocracy makes social mobility all but impossible, keeping the bottom at the bottom.

“I expected that the poor and the disadvantaged would be done down, and in fact they have been. If branded at school they are more vulnerable for later unemployment. They can easily become demoralised by being looked down on so woundingly by people who have done well for themselves” [3]. Those who have faced generational bias and discrimination are poorly served by the concept of meritocracy. “And this is where modern American liberalism evaporates in the daylight of reality. Of course a small number of people can find their way out of poverty through their own business ventures. But with limited access to capital, they will usually end up being crushed by a bigger beast… The data shows that people in the US consistently overestimate the possibility of social mobility, and repeating that bedtime story helps no one” [5]. With Silicon valley embracing meritocracy, it is “hard to think of a place that has developed a more unjust power concentration — women essentially shut out of power, very white power spaces, etc.” [2]. Furthermore, “it’s crystal clear to them in a meritocratic society that they are at the bottom because they deserve to be at the bottom. They lack merit” [2]. The more of this type of messaging, the more those who cannot “make it” begin to engage in learned helplessness, whereby they internalize the messages they have heard and begin to believe that they are unworthy. They tend to have low self-expectations, as there are no pressures to get them to think any better of themselves. And the perpetuation continues.

At one time, the lower classes had leadership, and would assemble and engage in political discourse. Now, “They have been deprived by educational selection of many of those who would have been their natural leaders, the able spokesmen and spokeswomen from the working class who continued to identify with the class from which they came. Their leaders were a standing opposition to the rich and the powerful in the never-ending competition in parliament and industry between the haves and the have-nots. With the coming of the meritocracy, the now leaderless masses were partially disfranchised; as time has gone by, more and more of them have been disengaged, and disaffected to the extent of not even bothering to vote. They no longer have their own people to represent them.” [3] The effort is placed on individual shoulders, to just work hard and believe and your dreams will come true. A belief in meritocracy is associated with lower group identity. And yet the problems that they suffer cannot be addressed but in a collective. The cognitive dissonance of the individual merit as espoused through a meritocracy clashes with the reality of the systemic injustices that need to be dealt with in groups, with good leadership.

Overall, meritocracy justifies inequality. So, what can we do?

1. Be aware of the origin of the word meritocracy.

“The book was a satire meant to be a warning (which needless to say has not been heeded) … Much that was predicted has already come about… It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.” [3] Realize what you are endorsing when using the word.

2. Put less emphasis on individual merit and recognize the myriad of other factors that gave rise to the accomplishment (or defeat).

In China, meritocracy is not seen as black and white as before, “the family background, cultural capital, networks and cultural resources play a tremendous role in children’s education” [2]. Susan Gilbert in her TED talk [6] spoke of an ancient Greek belief that a spirit inhabited your body during periods of genius (or failure), so that people are not identified as the genious, but having the genious, just borrowing it. Thus, the success (or failure) is not attributable to the artist, but to the transient spirit. This could be a helpful frame to lessen individual attribution. And, never discount the role of pure luck (such as the birth lottery). Luck plays a role far more than we choose to recognize, and meritorious might just mean lucky.

3. Give support to those at the bottom.

ScholarMatch [4] was initially designed to get students matched with scholarships and monies to go to school, but grew into a support system for 1st generation college students. Everything from flying with a student who has never flown before to realizing that one failed course is not a reason to quit, from the shock of understanding how poor they are (poverty is relative — until you see a contrast, you have no bearings) to helping with transitioning from one social class to another, ScholarMatch sets these students up for success in school, and in life. The “Summer Melt” refers to 1st generation college students who do not show up for school, having missed critical deadlines. A government programme sent 8 text messages (what many people do in an hour) over the course of a summer, and increased attendance by 9% [7]. It might not take much, but it takes something. Their circumstances are likely not what you envision them to be.

4. Recognize the importance of the collective.

While 2020 faced a global pandemic, the marches demonstrating solidarity with the systemic social injustices (while physical distancing was advised) have shown the importance of the collective. “Rising through the US class system is impossible for most. Even more than most Western countries, ‘success’ is hereditary. Yet generation after generation of US TV shows repackage the lie of the American dream, leading millions to miserable attempts that are doomed to fail, and luring them away from the statistically proven route to improving their prospects: workplace organising… Inequality rips society apart. It tears us away from those around us, severing the connections of community.” [5] Major social movements highlighting injustices — anything from anti-Vietnam and civil rights marches in the 60’s to Me Too and Black Lives Matter, to the scholars strike teach ins Sept 8 & 9 2020 https://www.scholarstrike.com/ https://scholarstrikecanada.ca/ — these all need a collective, not individual merit.

Meritocracy is a seductive illusion that everybody would love to believe in.

“At the turn of the millennium… liberals in the US still largely believed in the American dream. Help people access the spaces of the class above them, and you give them a ladder to socially climb… As we arrive in the 2020s, the next generation of liberals in the world’s declining superpower are beginning to see through that mythology. Fulfilment doesn’t come from reaching up, but from reaching out to those around you.” [5]

Meritocracy. An unheeded warning. We now need to deal with the consequences.

References

[1]

Psychology Research and Reference, “Just World Hypothesis,” n.d.. [Online]. Available: http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/social-cognition/just-world-hypothesis/. [Accessed 12 Sept 2020].

[2]

BBC World Service, “Podcast: The Why Factor — Meritocracy,” 18 Feb 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswrlb. [Accessed 12 Sept 2020].

[3]

M. Young, “Down with Meritocracy,” 29 June 2001. [Online]. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment. [Accessed 12 Sept 2020].

[4]

Pushkin Industries, “Podcast: Against the Rules with Michael Lewis — The Coach Effect,” 27 May 2020. [Online]. Available: https://atrpodcast.com/episodes/the-coach-effect-s1!5c657. [Accessed 12 Sept 2020].

[5]

A. Ramsay, “‘Queer Eye’, Jordan Peterson and the battle for depressed men,” 29 Aug 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/queer-eye-jordan-peterson-and-the-battle-for-depressed-men/. [Accessed 12 Sept 2020].

[6]

E. Gilbert, “TED Talk: Your elusive Creative Genius,” 01 Feb 2009. [Online]. Available: https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius. [Accessed 12 Sept 2020].

[7]

NPR, “Podcast: The Hidden Brain — You 2.0 Loss and Renewal,” 17 Aug 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswrlb. [Accessed 12 Sept 2020].