Why Meritocracies Matter

The ability to live one’s best life is a hard won opportunity that for many is being challenged. Yet again!

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The U.S. has always defined itself as the land of opportunity, a meritocracy. Meaning, to those who demonstrate the skills and abilities and show merit, opportunities will be given. Yes, taking advantage of the opportunities means managing high expectations and mastering difficult tasks. The benefit, however, usually exceed the demands. Individuals are able to achieve higher socio-economic status, if not wealth. Society gets innovation, a stable middle class, and demonstrated ideals that attract talent from all over the world.

Where meritocracies do not exist, neither do opportunities to elevate one’s socio-economic status. Instead, lives are concretized in socio-economic castes. Generational poverty destine people to high mortality rates, poor health care, substandard housing, environmental injustice, high addiction rates, food insecurity, and more.

Such was the state of the U.S. prior to the 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” when Dr. King Jr.’s iconic challenge to the nation, “…that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” galvanized the nation’s resolution of an existential crisis that threatened the meritocracy. The result, bending the country’s consciousness towards a value for diversity and equality, a significant change in the country’s direction, most notably President Johnson’s war on poverty.

I was a “war on poverty” baby. The product of a time when merit was based not just by my test scores but also by my socio-economic status. Poverty merited me financial aid, the money needed to go to college, and a system of supports that taught me how to succeed. These were my tickets to opportunities that inheritance and legacy were never going to give me.

And that’s why the Supreme Court’s striking down Affirmative Action in college admissions; New York City’s fight over selective admissions; the growing number of colleges/universities reducing their reliance upon admissions tests; the high cost of post secondary education; and alarming student indebtedness, taken together have put the meritocracy into crisis.

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The crisis: adjusting to a new normal

The pace of change since the industrial revolution, globally, is staggering. Yet the country has been embroiled in culture wars since at least the Civil War. Continuing fights over meritocracy’s beneficiaries are impeding the U.S.’s ability to adapt. Specifically,

• The U.S. is no longer a land of plenty. Unbridled capitalism cannot coexist in a world of limited resources and increased parity. In 1920 the country’s population was 106,021, 568. By 2020, it tripled to 331,449,281. No longer does foreign wars or colonization boost economic growth.
• Reagan redefined the meritocracy’s commitment to diversity by closing opportunities opened by LBJ’s war on poverty. As an example, prior to his election college attendance costs were in decline. “Between 1980 and 2020, the average tuition, fees, and room/board costs for an undergrad degree increased 169%.” (Forbes Magazine). Federal financial aid restrictions; deregulation, most notably privatizing student loans; and his assault on the Department of Ed. has resulted in nearly 1.75 trillion dollars in student indebtedness.
• The country’s model of racial preference is proving unsustainable. In 1950, the white population accounted for 89.5% of the U.S. population. Whites, as of the 2020 census, were at about 61%. Immigration policy changes have left many employers, and industries, without workers. Increased diversity challenges the nation to redefine pathways to skills development. Again, student indebtedness a result.
• According to the U.S. Department of Ed. test scores have steadily declined since 1965. The most recent cause for concern found in scores from a national math and reading test, given to thirteen-year-olds showed a drop of nine points in math and four points in reading as compared to 2020. The loss of learning resulting from COVID 19's impact on school attendance is already raising alarm.

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A cautionary tale

A west African proverb tells us, “When elephants go to war only the grass suffers.”

It’s the specter of tribalism and bias that has New York City Schools at the apex of the admissions by merit debate. About 26,000 eighth grade students compete annually for about 4,000 openings at New York City’s most selective high schools. Given only once, a standardized test determines admission. The controversy: though two-thirds of the city’s students are Black or Latino, only about 10% of offers went to these groups. Specifically, Latino students were 26% of the test-takers, yet received 6.7% of the offers; White students, 17% of test takers, received 27% of the offers; Asian-American students, 32% of test-takers, received 53% of the offers. Black students, 19% of test-takers, received just 3% of the offers.

Though two mayoral administrations have promised to fix the system, the New York State legislature, who must approved any overhaul have stymied substantive change. Perhaps characteristic of the meritocracy’s crisis we see politicians making test performance a proxy for tribalism.

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Epilogue: Yes, tests matter

Our son, Ade, four at the time, had difficulty pronouncing some words. We decided to have him tested by a speech therapist. From the beginning there were problems. The more she called Ade “buddy” the more he disengaged. The information I’d given her and the agency indicated our children were born and lived in the Philippines in a house where five languages are spoken. Which meant, to me, asking him to identify winter clothes and describe winter scenes made no sense. Sadly, though, that was not the worst of it. The test concluded with a story of a dog. Ade was to verbalize what the dog was doing. The dog’s name was Buddy! My heart ached as he slumped in his seat withdrawing even further. Was she conscious of her affect on my son, I wondered. How insidious it would be, if she was. As soon as we were out of the room, Ade, asked, “Do we have to come back?”

Though tests may determine pathways, they are not predictors of success. So, though it may be true, one might not become the engineer or pediatrician they dreamed they’d become, a willingness to fight or meet challenges different from the ones envisioned will lead to a life fulfilled. My quantitative skills made getting an MBA improbable. I became a psychologist, teacher and college president instead with knowledge and experience to know that telling Ade, “No, we don’t have to come back here!” did not mean that he would never overcome his challenges. That is what a meritocracy does; it helps people find ways to live their best lives.

Al fin!

Dr. King Jr., Bayard Rustin, and President Johnson, principally, saved the meritocracy. Their leadership interpreted the country’s democratic values as meritocracy’s commitment to diversity. An interpretation that has been systematically deconstructed over the past forty-three or so years. Efforts that reveal the meritocracy’s vulnerability:

1. The ebb and flow of society’s values, makes the meritocracy’s institutions and processes susceptible to manipulation.
2. There’s an inherent vulnerability to the meritocracy being controlled by what President Madison called self-interest. What I call tribalism!
3. Left to their own devices, politics and politicians too often construct opportunity pathways that become muddied by competing interests.
4. Meritocracies rely upon assessments, tests, that are unavoidably biased to determine who gets access to opportunities.

Let’s be clear, the meritocracy’s vulnerabilities are being exploited by those identifying themselves as conservatives, the religious right, or “anti-woke.” Much is being done to deconstruct the democracy’s recently (sixty or so years ago, not long against the lineage of time) realized commitment to diversity and equality. Whether diversity’s value to society fails in outweighing tribalism’s self-interest depends upon us. That was the existential crisis the country faced in the early 1960’s. And that is the existential crisis the country faces now.

Sources

• U.S. Reading and Math Scores Drop to Lowest Level in Decades, NPR, Carillo, June 23, 2023 https://www.npr.org/2023/06/21/1183445544/u-s-reading-and-math-scores-drop-to-lowest-level-in-decades
• NYC: Asian-Americans Dominate Admissions to Specialized High Schools, Diane Ravitch, June 3, 2023 NYC: Asian-Americans Dominate Admissions to Specialized High Schools.
• Historical Population Change Data (1910–2020), U.S. Census, April 26, 2021 https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/dec/popchange-data-text.html
• Historical Racial and Ethnic Demographics of the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States
• College Tuition Inflation: Compare the Cost of College over Time, McGurran and Hahn, May 9, 2023 Forbes Advisor https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/college-tuition-inflation/
• Americans owe $1.75 trillion in student debt, World Economic Forum, August 30,2022 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/americans-owe-1-75-trillion-in-student-debt/