Thanks to identity politics, meritocracy is under attack. The basis of American exceptionalism—competence—is being outlawed.
Meritocracy and diversity are opposites. As I explain in my book, The War on Whites: How Hating White People Became the New National Sport, diversity means that we should give special privileges to certain protected classes of people, including “people of color” and definitely not whites. Advocates for diversity want hiring and promotion to be based on race and gender. “Skin color trumps merit,” said author Scott Greer, “as long as that skin isn’t white.”
The replacement of merit will necessarily involve the lowering of standards. “The rejection of objective standards of accomplishment is nihilistic,” said Heather Mac Donald, author of When Race Trumps Merit. “The diversity movement deems color-blind measures of competence to be unjust instruments of racial exclusion.” In the name of social justice, the Left would like to see our standards lowered across the board in order to “level the playing field.”
Should we seek social justice by lowering standards to the lowest denominator via affirmative action, or should we require the lowest denominator to meet the higher standard? Lowering standards has given us an educational system that is producing substandard results. Statistics that show the US lagging behind in educational accomplishments are proof that lowering standards is killing us.
In The Diversity Delusion, Heather Mac Donald warned about the consequences of this trend. Countries like China and Russia, she said, are meritocracies. When you are a scientist in China, they don’t give a damn about your race or gender. If the US falls prey to identity politics, we will never be able to compete on the world stage. Within 20 years, we could easily turn into a third world country.
Evidence of the trend is everywhere. Colleges and universities are using a quota system for admission based on race. United Airlines has announced that 50 percent of its new pilots will be chosen from among minorities and women. The expectation of safe air travel will become a thing of the past as the requirement for competent pilots is discarded as another symptom of white supremacy. At 30,000 feet, who wants an affirmative action pilot sitting in the cockpit?
“Medical schools are discarding traditional standards of merit,” says Heather Mac Donald, “in order to alter the demographic characteristics of their profession.” This means that the surgeon performing your brain surgery could be the product of affirmative action. Going in for surgery will become an act of suicide, as surgeons will no longer be held to “white” standards of excellence. When I am lying on the operating table, I don’t want to look up and see the winner of this year’s social justice award.
Eligibility for an Academy Award will no longer be based on merit. Beginning in 2024, nominees for the Best Picture Oscar must contain minority themes and have a quota of minorities and women in both cast and crew. Past Oscar winners such as On the Waterfront, Patton, and Lawrence of Arabia would no longer qualify under the new rules.
Joe Biden has surrendered to the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party, which advocates the replacement of meritocracy with race-based criteria for advancement. Biden’s dislike of meritocracy is evidenced by his support for equity and critical race theory. The objective of equity is equality of outcome. Everyone should have the same income, job success, house, neighborhood, etc. To accomplish this, equity says we must institute affirmative action for marginalized groups.
Affirmative action has a divisive effect on society. “Initially conceived as a means of enforcing principles of nondiscrimination in regard to black citizens,” said Richard Pipes in Property and Freedom, “affirmative action was soon extended to other groups and ultimately turned into a vehicle for reverse discrimination against whites and males.” Nor does it do justice to the intended beneficiaries. Affirmative action recipients at colleges and universities experience a high dropout rate. Mismatch theory describes minority students who are accepted at schools beyond their aptitude, creating a sense of failure, depression, and alienation.
Because minorities and women have allegedly been oppressed, critical race theory argues that giving them preference is justified. Hiring quotas based on race and gender violate basic notions of fairness. You cannot say in the same breath that giving preference to white males is racist and sexist, but giving preference to minorities and women is not. It has to work both ways.
Under critical race theory, excellence developed by white people in any and all forms of human endeavor is regarded as a manifestation of systemic racism and white supremacy. The entire structure of American government, including separation of powers and checks and balances, will have to be jettisoned because it was developed by racist white people.
We can’t afford to do away with competence. The only way to assure the pursuit of excellence is to affirm our belief in meritocracy. “What America has always stood for,” said Rep. Brian Mast, “is very simply the best man, the best woman for the job.”
Ed Brodow (www.edbrodowpolitics.com) is a conservative political commentator and author of THE WAR ON WHITES: How Hating White People Became the New National Sport.
