The Meritocracy Mythology

Martin Luther King stated, "It's okay to say lift yourself up by your bookstraps. But it is cruel to say to a bootless man to lift yourself up by your bootstraps." (08/13/1967)

What is success? In common American discourse, success is the acquisition of wealth, recognition and power. The assumption underlying this defition is that the accumulation of wealth and societal recognition bring with them happiness. Some might argue that success is a flexible concept, which would allow the definition to encompass things such as spiritual fulfillment, or being a good family man, ect. ect. That's not what I'm talking about here. Some vocations bring with them the assuption of success. A doctor for instance is assumed to accumulate wealth better and be more successful than a plumber. The doctor is recognized by society with more respect and esteem than the plumber.

The assumption is that those who are successful, i.e accumulate wealth better and gain societal recognition and approval, have character traits and stengths that from which said success result. This assumption is based on the rebranded Horario Alger philosphy, i.e. "Meritocracy." That is, chracter traits and strengths help one to become successful, and lack of the same, keeps one from achieving success. Under the paradigm of "meritocracy," we can assume positive charachter traits about the successful, and blame societies losers for losing. David Brooks, in his book Bobos in Paradise argues, in part, that society has shifted from a WASPy connections based upper class aristocracy, to a meritocracy. He does this by analyzing the New York Times Wedding Page. "[W]hen you look at the Times wedding page, you can almost feel the force of the mingling SAT scores. It's Dartmouth marries Berkeley, MBA weds Ph.D., Fulbright hitches with Rhodes, Lazard Freres joins with CBS, and summa cum laude embraces summa cum laude..." Just so happens that my marriage was featured on the NYT wedding page (Berkeley marries Columbia, after meeting at Fordham Law).

Or course, other factors influence ones ability to achieve success.

"[Nepotism is] far from disappearing, the practice has become so resurgent in recent years that we can now speak of a 'new nepotism.' In settings ranging from politics, business, and professional life to sports, the arts, and Hollywood, the children of famous and highly successful people have chosen to follow in their parents’ career footsteps in a fashion and in numbers impossible to ignore. George W. Bush, Al Gore, Jr., and Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are only the tip of the iceberg that is an accelerating trend toward dynasticism and family 'branding' in the heart of the American elite…[Adam] Bellow [In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History]argues that nepotism comes down to the bonds between children and parents, the transmission of family legacies, the cycle of generosity and gratitude that knits our whole society together. And since it is not going away anytime soon, he makes the case for dealing with nepotism openly and treating it as an art that can be practiced well or badly." (quoted from http://www.randomhouse.ca/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400079025)

As argued by Paul Krugman (The Nation, The Death of Haratio Alger, Jan. 5, 2004) current government policy under President Bush (a man who has no business being President because he is an intellectual lightweight and baffoon and is incapable of doing his job -- and would not be president but for nepotism), is further entrenching the advantages of the haves against the have-nots through fiscal and social policy. According to economist Thomas Piketty current government policies will eventually create "a class of rentiers in the U.S., whereby a small group of wealthy but untalented children controls vast segments of the US economy and penniless, talented children simply can't compete." (Id.)