Merit?

I recently watched a conversation between NY Times political commentator and author David Brooks and philosopher and Harvard Professor Michael J. Sandel. It was fascinating to watch these two men, educated at elite universities and occupying privileged status in contemporary intellectual affairs, talk about Sandel’s new book, The Tyranny of Merit. They spent their time voicing criticism of a system they represent.

According to Sandel, the fundamental flaw in our meritocracy is that it allows people who are successful to believe that they earned their success by their own efforts and talent. It allows them to ignore the unearned privileges of hereditary wealth, status, and race. The message of a meritocracy is that if you try hard enough you can get the college education and white collar or professional position that we use to define success. The pernicious corollary to this assumption is that those who don’t succeed have somehow not tried hard enough. Jared Kushner recently said that if Black Americans don’t succeed it is because they lack the desire to be successful.

When asked for a definition of success that is not market driven, Sandel said “contributing something of value to the common good and being recognized for that contribution.” Recognition is not limited to monetary rewards. It is equally about “appreciation, esteem, or honor.” The lack of this kind of recognition is a major factor in the anger among blue collar workers without a college degree (now a specific political demographic) that drove them away from a Democratic party perceived to be run by “elites,” and toward Donald Trump.  (Ironically, despite his claims of talent and business acumen, Trump himself is an elite whose success is the result of inherited wealth and status.) 

In my last several years as a community college president, I was being urged by local businesspeople to do more to prepare students for the trades. Shortages were creating excellent earnings potential.  Yet none of these people urged their own children onto that path. They assumed that the “less qualified,” usually those who were poor, minority, and least prepared for college, would be steered in that direction. Would the people they were urging into plumbing and electrical work ever be accorded the kind of recognition Sandel described?   

Sandel said that perhaps the pandemic has begun to alleviate the harm of how we define success by highlighting the value of “essential workers” and of raising families. I think we’ve seen demonstrations of gratitude, but I am less sanguine about enduring respect.