The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and American Meritocracy
It’s spring break here in the Gulf and Hope and I are headed to the Philippines later today, thus the earlier-than-usual newsletter. I almost wrote this week about the offensive futility of my beloved Seattle Sounders, but I can’t bring myself to subject you to that misery. But in case you’re wondering: last place in the Western Conference, 0 wins, 2 draws, 4 losses. Today, Seattle lost 1-0 to the Los Angeles Galaxy and LA picked up their first clean sheet (shutout) of the season.
The Sounders’ woes continue, but at least Portland lost.
This week, I want to briefly engage some of the talking points that are finding purchase in the mainstream of American politics around race and merit, in particular as we see recently won gains around inclusion within various institutions being rolled back.
In conservative discourse about diversity, equity, and inclusion, so-called DEI programs, there’s a fallacy floated about the history of meritocracy in America. The premise is that “America used to be a meritocracy, before DEI programs. Now we’re not and it's ruining the country.” In this telling, unqualified Black people and women are taking all elite jobs and roles, thanks to DEI and affirmative action programs. Now, planes are crashing, schools are failing, and bridges are collapsing. Yes, a lawmaker in Utah blamed the bridge collapse this week on DEI.
When exactly was America a meritocracy? I encourage you to reject the premise that America is or ever was a meritocracy. How can you have a system of merit when a full eighteen percent of the country’s population was held in chattel slavery at its founding in 1787?
When was this now-lost period of meritocracy? Was it 1828 when Andrew Jackson packed the government with so many of his loyalists that the phrase “to the victors go the spoils” was coined?
Was it meritocratic in 1922, when Harvard University put a quota to cap the number of Jewish students it would enroll?
Was America a meritocracy in 1941, when Ted Williams had his famous .400 season, six years before Jackie Robinson integrated baseball in 1947?
Maybe America was a meritocracy in 1967? Nope. Not unless you believe no Black man merited a Supreme Court appointment for the prior 180 years, despite oceans of brilliant Black jurists toiling in the country’s courts. It certainly wasn’t a lack of merit that kept women off the same court until 1981.
Instead of a bygone meritocracy, we don’t have to look very hard to see cronyism and legally ensconced racial preferences against Black Americans throughout US history. For example, the Homestead Act, Social Security, and GI Bill—three of the most massive wealth transfers in US history, largely excluded Black Americans and other people of color when they were launched. Similarly, the two most common cutouts for state and federal minimum wage laws include fields that were historically dominated by Black Americans: restaurant servers and agricultural workers.
There’s no tradition of meritocracy in America.
Because I think it’s useful to understand the arguments of your foes in order to better combat them, here is an example of this “wither the meritocracy” thinking. It comes from Victor David Hanson in American Greatness. The magazine serves the role for the Trump Coalition that the National Review played in the Reagan and Bush years. This is the intellectual arm of the coalition favored to win the fall election:
The greatest problem historically with hiring and promoting based on DEI-like dogma is that anti-meritocratic criteria mark the beginning, not the end, of eroding vital standards.
The unstated and false premise here is that firms have switched en masse to DEI-based hiring. He imagines a world where diversity, rather than qualification, is now the basis of hiring and university admissions. The goal of these programs is to find qualified people who otherwise would have been not included (or historically excluded) for roles they are qualified for. It’s literally in the name: inclusion.
DEI programs are about building stronger and more representative institutions that are more reflective of our increasingly diverse society. Hanson’s proposition fails basic logic: it is against the self-interest of an institution to bring people aboard who cannot fulfill their roles.
We don’t have a history of hiring based on DEI. We have a history of excluding people of color and women.
He continues:
If one does not qualify for a position or slot by accepted standards, then a series of further remedial interventions are needed to sustain the woke project, from providing exceptions and exemptions, changing rules and requirements, and misleading the nation that a more “diverse” math, or more “inclusive” engineering, or more “equity” in chemistry can supplant mastery of critical knowledge that transcends gender, race, or ideology.
The faulty premise here is that DEI programs are tantamount to “eroding standards.” They often use an analogy around airline pilots. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, made the most naked articulation of Hanson’s worldview saying, "I'm sorry, if I see a Black pilot, I'm going to be like, 'Boy, I hope he's qualified.'" The implication here is clear: Black people lack the merit to fly airplanes. If he sees a Black pilot, Kirk has immediate doubts about their merits for the job. However, Kirk would presumably have no concerns about a white pilot because in this worldview whiteness is merit.
The core tenet here is that diversity is synonymous with inferiority. The unstated belief is that if there is diversity, airlines have lowered the hiring requirements to allow unqualified women and people of color to fly. Otherwise, how would they have made it? That’s racist, but calling things that are racist what they are is out of fashion in the US.
In reality, here’s how the DEI programs used by airlines work. United had a goal of making 50% of the students enrolled in their United Aviate Academy women and people of color. They did the following:
We introduced a tool that checks for language that may be perceived as biased and/or may create feelings of exclusion in order to replace them with statements that are more inclusive and are expected to appeal to a broader audience of diverse job seekers.
To attract diverse candidates, we partnered with diverse professional organizations to amplify the United Aviate Academy and, in partnership with JPMorgan Chase & Co., established a scholarship fund to provide more than $5 million in scholarships for prospective academy students.
None of the standards to be a pilot changed or were lowered.
To diversify their hiring pool, United updated the language in their job postings. They hired different, more inclusive, headhunters. They provided financial assistance to qualified candidates.
That’s it. That’s what DEI looks like.
I could go on with Hanson, but it doesn’t get much better. More claims that including “unqualified” non-white people and non-white males, in particular, in elite roles is going to ruin the country. It’s nonsense, but it’s nonsense that we should be prepared to push back on.
Sometimes you win with nuance and charm and sometimes you gotta call out nonsense when you see it.
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This week on the podcast, we have a wonderful conversation with Jasmine Elshear an Egyptian-American school counselor here in the Gulf about Ramadan and what it's like for for students and teachers who are fasting in American schools.
As always, if you have any thoughts or feedback about the newsletter, I welcome it, and I really appreciate it when folks share the newsletter with their friends.