Meritocracy is deeply ingrained into the foundation of America, a value we hold near and dear. The idea that anyone can be anything is a shining light that illuminates the path forward for many Americans and helps combat their anxieties about the future. From pilgrims journeying across the Atlantic Ocean in search of religious freedom to immigrants entering Ellis Island in search of a dream, we have been taught that our nation was built on equal opportunity. Yet this egalitarian view on moving up in the world will never work.
So why has there been a surge in propaganda surrounding meritocracy and an outcry against affirmative action? Why has Edward Blum, a conservative legal activist, dedicated his life to dismantling race-conscious admissions? The answer: social media and radical conservatism. Affirmative action, though not a permanent solution, offered a bridge to true equality. Now that bridge has been burned, and we are stranded.
Meritocracy and its History
The term meritocracy was first used in the 1950s by a British sociologist named Michael Young in his satirical novel “The Rise of Meritocracy.” However, the term soon shed its satirical origins and was adopted to quell injustice and sociopolitical inequality by linking hard work to better outcomes. In the 1960s a “skilled revolution” swept the nation, colleges and institutions cited meritocratic principles when opening their doors to lower income students.
The meritocratic argument relies on the existence of equality. In theory, our country was built on the promise that “All men are created equal.” Yet for 346 years this promise has held little truth. While rich White Americans were building wealth through the subjugation of Black and Brown people, those same Black and Brown people were falling further and further behind economically and educationally.
Though we have made tremendous strides away from slavery and the pre-civil rights era, the wounds of injustice are deep, and they have not fully healed. In fact, the median White household is about 13 times as wealthy as the median Black household. The simple, yet inexplicably painful truth is that nearly four centuries of horrible injustice cannot be healed by “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” and working hard. Arguing that it can ignores the historical and social context around which Black and Brown Americans were and continue to be deliberately prevented from owning land, creating wealth, and receiving higher education. Historical injustices make the implementation of pure meritocracy impossible.
In fact, when America was emerging as a new nation, the Founding Fathers benefited financially and participated in a society ruled by primogeniture: an inheritance system in which wealth is passed to the first born child, usually only male. This false narrative that the United States has always upheld a meritocratic system has led to a misguided attempt to defend its many faults.
The problem with meritocracy is that it shifts the blame from systemic neglect to a lack of hard work. It doesn’t take into account the financial freedom and resources needed to gain competitive skills. While the idea of meritocracy can be a great motivator and in its idyllic form is worthy of praise, it lacks the historical infrastructure of a discrimination-free society to truly thrive.
A New Elitism and A New Conservatism
Not only does meritocracy prevent government institutions from investing in solutions to inequality, but it also creates what Daniel Markovits describes as “snowball inequality” in his book, “The Meritocracy Trap.”
Markovitz explains that as the elite acquire super-skill jobs, they replace middle-class workers and monopolize education and job opportunities for their children. When the children of these elites are consistently told that they have succeeded due to their own hard work they will begin to believe it. They will deny that their access to well-funded schools and internships gave them a leg up.
However, Markovitz also remarks that “The elite out-train the middle class by so much that depressingly few children from non-elite households overcome caste to perform at elite levels.” Children from wealthy families begin to believe that they deserve their spot at a prestigious school or company — that they are even worthy of it — and others without their success are unworthy because of their lack of effort. Once this belief is nourished, through parents, teachers, and media, with sweet words and doting smiles, benefactors of privileges may begin to feel entitled in other areas of life like college admissions and the job hiring process.
This inflated sense of self-importance is dangerous and a factor for a new age of conservative radicalism. The homeless man on the street begins to seem like he deserves his fate. It begins to make sense that if the struggling, single teen mom had made better choices, she wouldn’t be suffering. On the flip side, people who did not have access to these resources may become disillusioned and not seek out opportunities in education and the job market.
The overuse of meritocratic fallacies in everyday life has led to an inaccurate belief among many White Americans that racial discrimination no longer exists. Thanks to early teachings about hard work delivering better outcomes as well as the American myth of equality, White Americans are more likely to view admissions policies which consider race as unfair and inherently un-American.
The myth that discrimination ended with the civil rights era, propagated by many conservatives, has also led to a resentment of people of color. They ask how Black and Latino people seem to receive special privileges if everyone is supposed to be equal. They ask how affirmative action is any different from reverse discrimination. All of these questions and concerns would be valid if the meritocratic myth were true — but it is not.
With politicians like Donald Trump touting how their efforts have brought about equality in the hopes of gaining votes, it’s easy to ignore the real issues of discrimination and believe that the U.S. has achieved the ultimate goal of “justice for all.” However, systemic racism is alive and well, as reflected in issues that range from disproportionate rates of incarceration to inequities in school funding.
Gen Z and The Path to Right-Wing Radicalism
With the widespread use of social media, resentment toward people of color has spread to people who may not have otherwise interacted with conservative beliefs. Through TikTok comments, tweets, and Instagram posts, these beliefs are taking hold in the minds of the next generation of Americans. That social media has become an outlet for disgruntled conservatives, most of whom are White, is evidenced by the 2018 Parkland shooter as well as the more recent Uvalde shooter.
While these shooters are the extreme end of the right-wing, similar ideologies can be seen in more moderate conservative members on social media as well. Many young conservatives, especially those applying to college, post about reverse discrimination. In fact, a survey conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard University’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health found that 55% of White Americans feel that they have been discriminated against, with 11% feeling that way in the college admissions process.
These staggering trends have increased in the past 10 years as the country has become more racially diverse and as social media has gained a foothold in American popular culture. Online, there has been a new surge in believers of the “Great Replacement” theory. This conspiracy theory about non-White citizens rising up and committing mass-genocide of White citizens seems far fetched to most people. However, in its modern configuration, the belief that there is a widespread plot to diminish the power of the White citizenry seems much more plausible and much more scary to disgruntled teenagers who feel wrongly discriminated against.
The Fight Against Affirmative Action
Comments like “Good ruling by SCOTUS! Affirmative action is itself racist,” left on a conservative TikTok influencer’s videos, highlight how affirmative action has been framed as “discrimination” by Republicans.
In reality, discrimination in education disproportionately affects non-White students. According to a study conducted by the educational nonprofit EdBuild, “On average, poor nonwhite school districts receive 19 percent, or about $2,600, less per student than affluent white school districts.” This translates to a lack of clubs, AP courses, and extracurricular opportunities needed to be competitive in elite university admissions.
In recent years affirmative action has been hotly debated, with Republicans claiming that affirmative action promotes inequality while Democrats claim that it addresses it. Like other contested partisan debates, this fight has been exacerbated by social media and the fight for younger voters, who have overwhelmingly voted left and demonstrated progressive political views.
In order to combat their slipping stronghold, a select group of right-wing radicals have turned to wild sensationalism, peddled through social media, in an attempt to turn “Gen Zers” into die-hard Republicans. Not only is there this loud minority, but there are two other trends helping maintain Republican power: First, the Gen-X and Boomer generations vote more often and more conservatively than younger people. Secondly, the phenomenon of partisan gerrymandering which overwhelmingly benefits the conservative party and which is protected by a 2019 Supreme Court ruling. The sum of these factors has allowed for conservatism to continue to exist in the face of a growingly liberal American population.
Many may argue that conservatism is a tried and true ideology which continues to find merit because of its stance on limited government and “traditional values.” However, in the past eight years Republican politicians have introduced several laws that contradict these values. For instance, Texas Gov. Greg Abott signed into law a bill which banned “explicit” books, while in Florida teachers are prohibited from talking about gender or sexual orientation due to the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” — both examples of government overreach that conservatives supposedly detest.
With conservative media personalities like Tucker Carlson spewing blatantly inaccurate information about the 2020 election and political figures, conservatives are contradicting their purported principles. Increasingly, conservatism rests on the shoulders of White grievance politics that fuel racial hostility toward minorities perceived as a threat to the White majority. Thanks to the power of social media, conservative-charged messaging surrounding meritocracy is helping to create a new generation of aggrieved constituents.
Affirmative action was one of the only broadly adopted policies designed to combat institutionalized racism. Without it standing guard against racial inequity, we are left to wonder when anti-diversity conservatives will make their final blow against diversity efforts in the workplace and higher education institutions.
The very substance of meritocracy is idealistic, as it calls out to the sense of justice each one of us carry deep within. Yet this country was not built on that very sense of justice. This leaves us at an impasse. By choosing to ignore systemic racism and inequality, we give it more power.
