The Meritocracy of Race

Or being lucky to be white

Allow me to point out or call out — because we must, one of those “false narratives” that culminates quite well into discrimination and thus racism.

Our society not only insists but indefatigably indoctinates us and the world into believing in the false and easily discredited notion of meritocracy. You will quickly see where I am going with this.

Not only must we conclude that those who have accumulated or inherited vast material wealth have either worked really hard or are simply deserving of what could only be summed up as — when taking on a broader and more holistic view — a string of fortuitous events beginning at birth and location in life.

Couple this with the pseudo identity of race and we have this meritocratic foundational layering that affords the white race in particular the privilege of obtaining a merited default status of their existential selves. One that a non-white person would have to psychologically hurdle over through life as a credit to his or her own race or a model (as in model minority) after the dominant one.

This notion ignores or diminishes the role that luck or randomness plays in all of this. I have often heard such dehumanizing statements that pivot minorities into believing “had they been born white” their condition and thus status in life would be quite different in terms of being relatively better off. This is just as absurd as a white man thinking had he been black he would have fared better…