Amerika

Currently conservatives speak volubly about replacing racial quota programs like affirmative action with “colorblind meritocracy,” but most humans avoid conflict because it entails risk and therefore frequently settle for compromises that do not address the underlying issue.

We got to the current place through colorblind meritocracy, just like we got to the point before that through meritocracy.

Meritocracy refers to any system that picks the most competent for any task. All of these systems do the same thing: test memorization. At the core of meritocracy is the idea that humans, not natural selection, chooses who is best for a task by using multiple-choice tests based on “absorbing” material, most of which is never used.

Meritocracy is a terrible idea.

Darwinism is a better idea, and it says that we can only test people in their ability to adapt to reality, but that this is an ongoing process so those who are naturally smarter, stronger, healthier, nobler, and better-looking are the most likely to succeed in any job.

Under a Darwinist reward structure, people from good families get promoted into a series of positions until they reach their peak ability, and then they stay in those positions. Anyone from a lower status who demonstrates great competence, not merely being good at tests but in real world applications, also gets bumped upstairs.

However, the basis of selection differs: Darwinism selects for the whole person, where meritocracy selects for test-taking, so you get the usual collection of neurotics, schizoids, and narcissists who do well at tests but fail at real life. Real life is the only viable test, and that requires someone be in the position to be tested.

Meritocracy however remains more popular because it is egalitarian, which means that everyone starts at the same level of nothing, and then rises according to how well the rest of us approve of them via the education proxy. This makes humans feel “in control” and therefore is popular despite its failings.

Because it is egalitarian, meritocracy is only proven by equality, and that is why racial quotas came about in the first place. If you notice there are very few Black neurosurgeons, you put a finger on the scale through quotas until the number of Black neurosurgeons reflects the percentage of Blacks in your population.

Of course, enforcing a negative quota would be seen as “racist,” so if all of the NFL or construction workers in your area are Black or Hispanic, this is not seen as a reason to correct the situation. Meritocracy only exists in the eyes of observers when it is lifting up those who are genetically not fit for the job.

This started before diversity with attempts to bring former peasants and freeholders into the power structure following the revolutions in Europe. Peasants were essentially sharecroppers and freeholders were like kulaks who owned their own smaller properties and generated income through agriculture or industry on those properties.

Below peasants were actual serfs, who were assigned to properties in a type of benevolent slavery, and both did not own land like peasants not like sharecroppers, but also had no ties beyond being paid labor which benefited from a socialist-style pension and care program.

Meritocracy naturally leads for calls to make it “colorblind” once people notice the damage quotas are doing by promoting people above their ability level, whether these are class (peasants/thralls, carls/kulaks) or racial/gender quotas, because standards are adjusted to include the people who naturally would not be in those roles.

Not surprisingly, meritocracy is an Asiatic idea like democracy and equality:

The core ideas of this tradition are found in Confucius, Mencius (372–289 BC), and Xunzi (c. 310–c. 235 BC). In short: The purpose of government is to promote the well-being and virtue of the people. That requires that political power be wielded not on the basis of noble blood — the prevailing system — but virtue and talent. Political leaders serve as role models and sage decision-makers, and to do that they must be meritorious.

In the West, the Platonic ideal suggested the opposite: that we class people by mental ability and character into roughly three castes, corresponding to the original European model of thralls (90%/under 115 IQ), carls (9%/115-125 IQ), and jarls (1%/125+ IQ).

Doing this allows us to find who can mentally do the job without subjecting them to seventeen years (kindergarten, 1-12, plus four years of college at a minimum) of job-like education. Meritocracy replaces a caste system with a class system based on wealth and education which rewards some types of intelligence at the expense of whole intelligence.

Once meritocracy becomes colorblind, however, people start to notice that its egalitarianism has been lost. Like with the legal doctrine of disparate impact, meritocracy is only proven by equal representation of quota groups, and equality is only proven by equity or equal representation of social classes:

Laws that prohibit employment discrimination apply not only to intentional discrimination, but also to apparently neutral policies and practices that have a disproportionate adverse affect on members of a protected class.

For example, a strength requirement might screen out disproportionate numbers of female applicants for a job, and requiring all applicants for promotion to receive a certain score on a standardized test could adversely affect candidates of color.

We see the egalitarian loop here: equality is only proven by equal representation which can only happen when standards are lowered for those of lower ability. Meritocracy can only be proven by racial and gender quotas. Fairness can only be proven by reducing prosecution of those groups which are most likely to offend.

This loop makes us feel good because it seems to place us in control over re-shaping nature into being pro-human. In reality, however, egalitarianism makes populations weaker and eventually they end up impoverished and alienated. What seems good on the surface is not often good when applied.

Early critics of meritocracy saw that it would end up being a bureaucratic caste system where those who were most loyal to the bureaucracy and pursued boring education would become the new elite:

Meritocracy as a social-scientific concept was formally introduced in the mid-1950s by the British industrial sociologist Alan Fox, who argued that meritocracy was a pernicious form of social organization that would exacerbate inequality and social stratification based on “occupational status.” Fox’s analysis anticipated the treatment of meritocracy in The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870–2033: An Essay on Education and Equality (1958), by the British sociologist Michael Young, a satirical dystopian novel based on his 1955 doctoral dissertation. Young derided the “tripartite system” of education that was common in his native England at the time, where “merit,” as reflected in students’ performances on school exams at a young age, determined the type of secondary education they would receive (academic, technical, or practical) and thus effectively dictated the social class to which they would belong. Until the 1970s, when the Education Act of 1976 introduced a system of generally comprehensive and uniform secondary education, the tripartite system contributed to a decrease in social mobility, as the new merit-based elite became hereditary.

While it has chosen some of the intelligent, it has excluded the most intelligent and many other who are intelligent but uninterested in jumping through nearly two decades of hoops to get to a promised reward in career form. The type of person who leads well is not interested in this system, which is why it is set up as it is.

“Colorblind meritocracy” therefore will not be good, but even more it will not be colorblind, because the instant it has colorblind results it will be be perceived not to be a meritocracy. Conservatives argue for racial, class, and gender reconciliation like affirmative action, disparate impact, legal immigration, and assimilation to avoid conflict.

This conflict avoidance however betrays everyone involved. The diversity are treated as a labor source and then discarded; the founding population is marginalized, then adulterated, and finally eliminated. Civilization loses culture and its core, and soon loses its way as well.

At the essence of this issue lies the understanding that diversity is not good. It is in fact the opposite of good: it destroys civilizations and the people caught up in them. It seems good, but it destroys. Similarly, “assimilation” destroys foreign groups by removing their culture. Colorblind meritocracy is just a justification for those.

Tags: affirmative action, colorblind meritocracy, disparate impact, equality, equity, meritocracy