Say there are two kids: little Billy and little Cody.
Billy has been pampered all his life. He was from a rich family who gave him everything, including the best education. He had ample free time to be a kid. He was personally escorted to school on a horse and had private tutors on call. His final grade was 80/100.
Cody lived in the slums. His family barely got money to eat most days. Cody had to work to help support his family but through struggle was still able to attend school. He had to do his homework on the bus. His life was full of hardship and out of necessity he did little else than work and study. His final grade was 79/100.
One day they both apply for the same job. The employer says “Well, grades don’t lie. I’m sorry Cody, but I’ll hire Billy”.
How is that a meritocracy?
The goal of these initiatives is not to give an unfair advantage to other groups, it’s to even the playing field and combat the systemic bias. If you are truly for meritocracies and are able to see past what’s right in front of your nose, you’ll realise the status quo is inherently racist. To live in a true meritocracy you have to mitigate multiple generations of harm.
> He was from a rich family who gave him everything, including the best education. He had ample free time to be a kid. He was personally escorted to school on a horse and had private tutors on call.
> His family barely got money to eat most days. Cody had to work to help support his family but through struggle was still able to attend school. He had to do his homework on the bus. His life was full of hardship and out of necessity he did little else than work and study.
Cool narrative building, but this information should not matter for the employer, because that particular employer selects candidates based on grades - I see no issues with it
Your comment is also implies that a kid from a rich family should have higher grades, but it's flawed - who has more motivation to achieve something?
Also between "rich" and "poor" families there are a lot of kids from "medium" families, what about them?
> but this information should not matter for the employer
Of course it should. And for society too. Because it shows that under very different adversities, the person with significant hurdles was able to reach the same effective level as someone with none. It shows that one of them can overcome problems, while the other you don’t know.
If one sprinter is able to sprint over a clear open field in 20 seconds, and another is able to sprint the same distance in the same time in a muddy swamp, are you really going to argue those are equivalent?
> Your comment is also implies that a kid from a rich family should have higher grades
No, what it says is that it’s easier to achieve a goal when obstacles are removed for you. The grades are a metaphor, it’s an analogy.
> who has more motivation to achieve something?
Motivation isn’t an infinite resource. Every hurdle is a new opportunity for someone to give up because they can’t take it anymore. In case it wasn’t clear, Cody ended up failing anyway.
> Also between "rich" and "poor" families there are a lot of kids from "medium" families, what about them?
Yes, what about them? I made an analogy in a short internet comment to illustrate an idea, no one would have read a dissertation filled with subjective and hard to parse minutiae.
At the risk of repeating another comment, the problem is that DEI proponents don't care about socio-economic status or family struggles, they care about race and whether or not you're from a "historically marginalized community" for certain specific definitions of "marginalized" and "historically."
If the rich kid was black and the poor kid was white, proponents of DEI would point to the poor kid getting hired as clear-cut evidence of systemic racism against the black kid.
This presumes the existence of systemic bias in the first place, not to mention the fact that overt racism and sexism is the way to overcome that.
In any DEI conversation you end up with people making convoluted examples like the one you gave. Nobody is getting a job based on a 80 vs. 79 on a single exam. It's farcical. What you end up with at the end of the DEI road is making promotion, hiring, and firing decisions based on immutable characteristics of people. Okay if you really, really think that being a descendant of a slave from 300 years ago puts you at a material disadvantage today, argue to have public services available to verified descendants of slaves regardless of racial identity, and regardless of current socio-economic status.
But DEI doesn't want to help descendants of slaves. It wants to help black and brown people whether they're actually impacted or not, and it wants to avoid helping white and asian people even if they are at a socio-economic or educational disadvantage. You can't tell me with a straight face that a white person who could verify they have family lineage of slaves from the 1700s would be included as a minority in any DEI program. Look at any conversation where newspeak like "white-passing" is used unironically and this blatant racism is on clear display.
My comment was not an example, it was an analogy. It was purposefully exaggerated to drive a point, and I feel that was quite clear. It’s absurd to call an obviously made up story “farcical”.
What you are doing is conflating my point—which was to illustrate that true merit is more than what you see on the surface—with other conversations you’ve seen somewhere and attacking those. You’re arguing against something, but not any point I made.
You're completely right that I kind of got off track there and thank you for calling me out on it. But in this comment I think you're conflating merit with potential.
If we're comparing those two hypothetical people, the one with the lower score clearly has more potential as they overcame all those obstacles and did almost as well as the one who had a ton of advantages. But if (and I'm not saying this is an objectively good goal) you want to hire strictly off of merit, you hire the 80 because 80 > 79. If you want to hire on potential, it's a pretty clear choice to hire the 79.
Not every job needs to be 100% merit-focused, but some should. A pretty good, and IMO relevant, example would be basically any job in the national defense / intelligence circles. We should not care what obstacles you had to overcome to get that 79, if someone else got an 80 they're the ones that should be working at the CIA/NSA/whatever.
But there are plenty of jobs where potential is as important or more so than merit. That's part of why there's no such thing as the "two equally qualified candidates" thing that both sides like to use as examples so much.
Plot twist: Billy is black and Cody is white, so you want Cody to get double discriminated against here. Which is what we see in reality, poor white men are the least represented in higher studies, even less than poor black men.
No, not “plot twist”. A meme does not validate an argument. I don’t want anyone to be discriminated against, though it’s telling that’s what you took from it.
The point of the comment is not to argue for discrimination, but to point out there is more to merit than what’s immediately in front of your face.
Consider that you are a shareholder of the employer, or a customer of the employer, or a fellow employee. Wouldn’t you prefer that the employer hire the best candidate for the job regardless of their background?
It’s unfortunate that Cody had a rough life, but it’s not the job of his employer to help his. They aren’t a charity after all.
I also don’t know where racism played into your example at all so it’s weird you bring it up. It seems to be entirely about SES.
first, what is "personally escorted to school on a horse" supposed to be? and if he had private tutors, why did he only get 80%? and, regardless of the background, is not 80% still objectively better than 79%?
second, your example is about financial inequality. rich vs. poor. you're trying to paint a picture of a spoiled rich kid vs. a grubby gritty motivated poor kid.
but DEI is about "your color defines your opportunity" not your wealth. well, yes some races/color are over/under represented in rich/poor. but that converse is not necessarily true for individuals - an individual being a particular shade does not imply his privilege.
what happens when Billy is a wealthy minority and Cody is neither? and rich minority Billy got a 65% and Cody got a 95%? do you still give the job to Billy? because in the past people that looked like Cody were evil to people who looked like Billy? we cannot solve inequity by creating more of it.
If you are truly for equality and are able to see past what’s right in front of your nose, you’ll realize life is inherently unfair. But promoting literal racism is not going to make up for multiple generations of harm. by punishing those who had nothing to do with that harm. based on the same racism that led to the harm.
Because the person with the better score was chosen.
> The goal of these initiatives is not to give an unfair advantage to other groups, it’s to even the playing field and combat the systemic bias.
If that is the goal then improve the schooling, make it easier to do homework in a better environment etc. Forcing employers through the law to hire people they wouldn’t if given a free choice is not meritocratic nor helpful more generally.
> Because the person with the better score was chosen.
Merit: the quality of being particularly good or worthy, especially so as to deserve praise or reward.
Having a high score isn’t on its own meritorious. If two people achieve the same thing but one of them was being propped up while the other was being pushed down, the latter showed more skill.
> If that is the goal then improve the schooling, make it easier to do homework in a better environment etc.
Yes, all of those things should be done too. But when not being handwavey and dismiss, one realises change takes time, must be done in steps, and approached from several angles.
The only objective metric given was a score, that is literally merit.
In the simplistic example (necessarily so, that’s not a criticism of it) there is not much more to go on. You can assign merit to doing homework on the bus etc, but the fact is that both those boys went into an exam at the end and one scored more than the other.
I love an underdog but that doesn’t wipe away objectivity either.
Billy has been pampered all his life. He was from a rich family who gave him everything, including the best education. He had ample free time to be a kid. He was personally escorted to school on a horse and had private tutors on call. His final grade was 80/100.
Cody lived in the slums. His family barely got money to eat most days. Cody had to work to help support his family but through struggle was still able to attend school. He had to do his homework on the bus. His life was full of hardship and out of necessity he did little else than work and study. His final grade was 79/100.
One day they both apply for the same job. The employer says “Well, grades don’t lie. I’m sorry Cody, but I’ll hire Billy”.
How is that a meritocracy?
The goal of these initiatives is not to give an unfair advantage to other groups, it’s to even the playing field and combat the systemic bias. If you are truly for meritocracies and are able to see past what’s right in front of your nose, you’ll realise the status quo is inherently racist. To live in a true meritocracy you have to mitigate multiple generations of harm.