Will the Real Meritocracy Please Stand up?
How College Admissions Illustrate Deeper Political Issues
“No, I want my kind of merit to count!”
Last week, we had a very nice discussion about the different reasons people hate meritocracy. Today. we’ll focus on an issue raised in the comment section, where Don Frazier wrote the following:
Great start. There's also a redefinition of merit, the decision that admitting some people who would not otherwise qualify into the circle makes the whole system stronger and is thus a form of merit. Sometimes directly, by encouraging others of merit to apply, and sometimes by signaling to sources of funding etc.
Good point - people often argue about what counts as “real merit.” In college admissions, for example, people will say that your merit isn’t ONLY your grades and test scores, it’s who you are. E.g., one of the classic arguments for affirmative action is that having a diverse college class is a benefit to people in the majority.
Still, that’s doesn’t defuse underling political issues. By adding a new flavor of merit, you are introducing a very weird approach to merit that just muddies the waters. The idea of most pro-meritocracy arguments is that the merit dimension reflects what people have actually done, rather the give rewards to a selected class of people. If you have a second type of merit based on who you are, then you need to explain why some new group of people now get a special reward based on who they are. And if it’s based on race, you might lose a lot of arguments.
This is why the best arguments for affirmative action are about compensation for historical harms. Just admit that some injustice is being done in the name of compensating people for very concrete damages. In other words, a strong logic for affirmative action is to point out that institutions, public and private, can offer compensation, even if it means some other goals are not accomplished. E.g., if a police car runs over your lawn, the city needs to pay up even if it entails a budget cut in some way. By making “representation” a form of merit, you’ve set up yourself for a tough argument.
Bottom line: Substituting one form of merit for another is trickier than most people think.
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