Adios Meritocracy!
- George Bubrick
- Mar 11, 2024
- 11 min read
Updated: Mar 13, 2024
Meritocracy has been CANCELLED!
(NB: Much credit for facts and statistics shared herein goes to Heather MacDonald and her recent book, When Race Trumps Merit. As always, I have not altered the facts presented, but have liberally infused my own takeaways.)
Pretty much all pundits, sociologists and political watchers agree. If you are looking for the inflection point in the surge of “America is systemically racist”, Wokism and national divisiveness on a scale not seen since 1861, it was the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.
George Floyd
Floyd was a career criminal who passed a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store. Police were summoned. Floyd was high on Fentanyl, etc., refused to comply and was subdued. Detective Derek Chauvin was later convicted of excessive force judged to have contributed to Floyd’s death from a heart attack, although Floyd had numerous other health issues and a lengthy rap sheet.
From what I have read, the conviction of Officer Chauvin seems justified. Though differing perceptions persist.
Regardless, from that point on, Floyd was lionized. The legacy media went wild. Memorabilia was marketed frenetically. “I can’t breathe” T-shirts and “8 minutes, 46 seconds” ball caps appeared everywhere.
If you think, I’m exaggerating consider:
After 6 burglaries, 3 car thefts, multiple illegal trespasses, ongoing cocaine and alcohol addiction, 2 violent home invasions, 3 armed robberies, dealing Fentanyl and Meth, passing counterfeit money, beating 4 victims senseless, and being arrested 23 times since 1998, George Floyd, who admittedly hasn't committed a crime in over three years, saw his life’s work net his family $27 million from the state and $20 million from a GoFundMe account, not to mention statues and paintings honoring his many accomplishments. He's also been recognized by the former Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America, Nancy Pelosi, as one of the bravest people who gave his life for the cause of Racial Injustice in our country. All done with a straight face, no doubt.
And, it was the death of George Floyd that re-ignited the issue of racism with a fervor not seen since Dr. King in the 60’s. This one act of alleged (White) police brutality toward a (Black) victim.
From that day on, every white person making statements or taking actions which in any shape or form could be construed as unflattering or unfair to African Americans has been labeled RACIST. Individuals, corporations, institutions, hell, the country itself. Obama, no longer in the White House, took every opportunity to fan the flames which were, of course, laser-focused on White, Conservative, Republican Americans.
As surely as slavery gave rise to the Civil War, George Floyd was the accelerant to whatever the heck we have now. To Black Lives Matter, Fake News, Wokism, to DEI, to extreme leftist academia, to Progressivism and to the ever-widening schism among Americans. We have now reached the point where civil speech is anathema. And cooperation is a much-despised waste of time, if not an outright unworthy goal.
Occupants of C-suites across the country prostrated themselves at the altar of diversity. Outrageous plans to increase the % of underrepresented minorities became everyday headlines. In some cases, promises to increase the % of “underrepresented” minorities by TENFOLD in a few years were proclaimed. The LA Times, Wells Fargo, Google, Facebook (Meta), Public Radio ad nauseum issued lugubrious apologies, while setting ludicrous goals. Few would come close to being met. Most importantly, no one stopped to ask if the pool of qualified candidates could come remotely close to supporting these goals.
The scorecard was simple. If you didn’t have at least 13% Blacks in your organization, you were indisputably a systemic racist. The judicial theory of Disparate Impact became the flavor of the day.
The result of this movement, which continues today, has been multifaceted and widespread. Few have escaped its impact. One of the greatest tragedies is that the competency of workforces and student populations have been substantively degraded, perhaps, permanently. Disparate Impact has made Affirmative Action look like kindergarten.
Bye, bye meritocracy. Hello - mediocracy.
Until minorities (meaning blacks especially) are represented in every walk of life equal to their 13% proportion in American population, DEI will not rest. Colleges have tripled DEI staffing over the past three years to ensure nobody gets away with nuttin’. Corporations and governments have followed suit. God help you if your Neurosurgery department or Air Traffic Controller team or the engineers who design your bridges number fewer than 13%. As we speak, you are now or soon will be on the carpet. Who cares if patients die on the table or planes collide or bridges collapse. Say it three times… DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION. It’s only fair, right? Gotta hit those percentages.
At the risk of imprisonment by the Woke Police, let’s revisit some statistics to see what good “sense” this makes.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP pronounced Nape) is regarded as the Nation’s report card. Consider this:
2019 Survey of American 12th Graders
Math Proficiency* | Black | White | Asian |
Below Basic | 66% | 29% | 20% |
Proficient | 7% | 28% | 37% |
Above | 1% | 4% | 15% |
*Basic arithmetic and linear graphing
Reading Proficiency | Black | White | Asian |
Below Basic | 50% | 21% | 21% |
Proficient | 16% | 38% | 37% |
Above | 1% | 9% | 14% |
ACT - one of the two standardized tests used to gauge college preparedness reported:
College Ready | Black | White |
Math | 10% | 44% |
Reading | 6% | 30% |
SAT used to report College Board results in 50-point increments. They stopped in 2010 amidst criticisms for (you guessed it) bias. Brookings Institute in 2015 published the following:
SAT Range | Black | White | Asian |
300-350 | 35% | 21% | 6% |
750-800 | 2% | 33% | 60% |
In 2021 the average SAT scores (1600 is max) were:
Black | 934 | -25% |
White | 1112 | -10% |
Asian | 1239 | 100% |
As they say – do the math (if you can). With these facts, it is easy to understand why DEI-driven colleges and universities are making College Boards voluntary, if not outlawing them altogether.
BEWARE: Just as results are no longer reported by college board purveyors and other sources regarding performance of Blacks, so too are criminal statistics being repressed. One may ask, why are there no current statistics? You guess. That’s right – because performance is disproportionately inferior using objective metrics.
Another fact of life - it is hard to imagine a candidate for almost ANY job being viable without basic proficiencies in math and reading. Let alone stand of a good chance of advancing on merit.
The gaps widen even further at the graduate level and in STEM disciplines.
Wait until you hear what’s going on in Medicine and Healthcare!
The AMA has published findings and prescriptive actions that are amazing. In simplistic terms, it ascribes many of the health problems in the black community to discrimination. Not enough black physicians, nurses, caregivers. Who cares if they aren’t proficient in basic reading and arithmetic?
Recently, the American Association of Medical Colleges sponsored a campaign to eliminate MCATs as a requirement for admission to med schools. Surely this is another good idea! Undoubtedly it will reduce the hurdles to Black admissions and, no doubt, result in more highly unqualified physician aspirants.
Keep uppermost in mind that whenever unqualified individuals are given priority and awarded opportunities for which they lack knowledge or skills, they do not magically, overnight become qualified. The impact will be massively disproportionate attrition or…
the inexorable reduction of merit in rewarding qualifications and performance. As standards for qualifications and excellence are reduced so will all outcomes on which those standards are based. Less qualified doctors means…you get it.
Kinda like giving out Olympic Gold Medals for 8th place. Be good enough to finish 8th in a field of 7 and you win gold. Or get a medical license or ATC certification or engineering degree.
This is precisely what is happening everywhere we look. Our schools, our industries, our government. Now who is racist? If non-Blacks are held to different standards, against whom is discrimination being practiced?
Typical of this manifestation were the Just Believe mandates issued to many corporations, government agencies and institutions after the Floyd incident. If a person of color expresses feelings of
Being undermined
Being unappreciated.
Being passed over,
“Just Believe” that systemic racism is at work.
The damning part of the pervasive, carefully orchestrated effort to misdiagnose and mislabel the struggles of Blacks to compete with Whites and Asians in proportion to their numbers is a comprehensive failure to treat the root causes.
Think about it logically (God forbid). How is a Black child or adult who lacks the basic academic skills of math and reading ever going to catch up once they climb on the highly competitive treadmill of post-secondary education and top-level careers? Ain’t no way. It’s not like – okay, if they just get a break and get into Harvard or land a job on Wall Street or Google, they will rapidly morph into someone who can do the work. No, what will happen is underperformers from legally protected groups will be given cover for as long as possible until they inevitably start sinking and dragging outcomes down with them.
To cast blame at color blind testing or performance-based advancement is to reject the notion of accomplishment. It is to deny that skills and knowledge have value and can be measured. One need only compare the contributions of the West to the betterment of civilization with most other societies to see that is not a reasonable conclusion.
Root Causes
The root causes of Black disparate proportionality when it comes to higher education, high paying jobs and, yes, imprisonment are vested much earlier in the “circle of life.” In the summer of 2020, the African American Museum for History and Culture in Washington, DC declared that:
Politeness
Punctuality
Rationality
Self Control, and
the Two Parent Family
are inherently “white traits”. They were coerced into subsequently taking down these conclusions from their website by funding parties.
It is important to acknowledge that when liberals champion the Black community they aren’t doing so to help fix the problem or out of a sense of fairness and compassion. Liberals are not innately loving and kind while Conservatives are selfish and uncaring.
No, Liberals align their promises and programs to entice minorities, especially Blacks, to buy the votes necessary to stay in power and continue feathering their own nest. As we have seen, more so than Whites or Asians, Blacks lack the educational awareness to see the Wolf in Sheep’s clothing and, therefore are more easily led. Fortunately (fingers crossed) more and more Black Americans are waking up. But, it is very tough when Blacks are encouraged to trade “free” advantages, privileges and bounties for the tough task of reengineering culture and family values.
The fix must start with the disproportionate number of single parent families, in my view.
Depending on source, 50-75% of black kids grow up in a single-parent family. Even Barack Obama admitted this is the biggest cause of the outsized rate of Black criminality. And, as always, then there’s the money. Individuals who bring children into the world without intention or means to raise them properly must NOT be rewarded with handouts. Remove the financial incentives and the practice will, at the very least, plateau. Reward those who do the right thing and it will recede, especially if the rewards are tied to meaningful accomplishments. These rewards need not all come from public coffers. Employers can be encouraged to join. Just as they were castigated for being systemic racists, so too they could be championed for being saviors.
If and when the family structure of the Black community becomes solidified, one must turn to learning.
Thomas Jefferson wrote "if a nation expects to be both ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Jefferson wanted the school out of the business of indoctrination, and for it to teach students how to think, not what to think. He refused to allow his university to be affiliated with any church. Can you imagine what he would have thought if he learned the elite universities were beholding to leftist progressivism? (NB: I am forever looking for another moniker, because I see nothing “progressive” about their doctrine.)
When Jefferson gathered with others at Rockfish Gap, VA in 1818 to write the manifesto that led to the formation of the University of Virginia, I was struck by the fact that our greatest statesman used the term “happiness” eight times. One would hardly label our current universities “places of happiness”. Again, he urged learning how to think, not what. Yeah, right.
Our education system is broken. Our education system is broken. Our education system is broken. Say that three times now. And the fix is not more money. In NYC, $36,000 a year is spent per public school student. In Illinois, $18,000. And yet in IL, 29 schools had zero students test proficient in math and reading. Zero as in zip, nada. I don’t know how much they spend in Baltimore public schools, but a study a few years ago showed the same outcome. In 23 public schools, zero students tested proficient. Honest to goodness. Look it up!
We can’t educate our children to a level of proficiency regarding the three “R’s”, but we can teach them about transgenderism and how the founding fathers were Racists. We can facilitate them as they sympathize with the animals of Hamas, denigrate Israel and terrorize fellow Jewish students.
It will, of course, take a Herculean effort to overhaul this contaminated mess we call our educational system. But three things are for sure:
The teacher’s unions are, by and large, self indulging, counterproductive organizations that cannot remain in control of public education. They must be purged.
School choice must be the national norm. If we can’t throw the unions out, at least give parents the means to send their kids elsewhere without going broke.
Stop funding colleges and universities with taxpayer subsidies and research grants who fail to teach truthful, fair and balanced curricula, practice true free speech and admit/advance based on merit.
Here again and always, it starts with the money. Power rests not with those who teach but with those who decide what will be taught. It is not fair to expect parents to steer their children from universities where graduation ensures the best jobs. This stranglehold must be broken and it starts with the purse strings. Topo corporations, law firms, investment companies must participate in demanding change. Just as some top donors are demanding of the Ivies now.
Criminal Justice System
It was not only colleges, corporations, Big City governments, politicians and mainstream media who rolled over in the onslaught of DEI. It was the criminal justice system. Battered by charges of Disparate Impact, prosecutions and penalties for minority (primarily Black) offenders were tossed out the window.
Take NYC. Under Rudy Giuliani from 1994-2001 felonies in NYC decreased by 64%. Under Mike Bloomberg the trend continued. Enter Bill DeBlasio. His blasé approach to cracking down on criminals, especially Black and Hispanic ones showed quickly. Murders were up 41% in 2020. Shootings up 103%, carjackings 51%, etc. This has continued under the feckless leadership of ex-Cop Eric Adams. The same patterns can be found in DC, Chicago, Philadelphia, LA, SF, Minneapolis, and other cities run by liberal mayors. Once thriving downtown areas are ghost towns. Flash mobs are more common than shoppers. More merchandise is being stolen than purchased. Chains are pulling out.
Disparate Impact
In her book, MacDonald decries the judicial theory of Disparate Impact. DI allows that challenges and recourses are not only permitted they are encouraged whenever nondiscriminatory practices in employment and education have a negative impact on a legally protected group. In other words, it doesn’t matter if a practice or policy is actually racist, if it’s bad for certain groups, it is discriminatory, ergo illegal.
This concept has given scope to countless heinous acts. Including and especially the rioting and looting that resulted in billions of lost property and thousands of deaths since George Floyd.
Courageous Black Leaders – Urgently Needed
As I have done in the past, this author cries out for more enlightened Black leaders to step into the spotlight and tell the truth. Namely that too many Black Americans are unprepared to compete for too many jobs. Especially good ones. The black community must transform itself and stop:
Condoning and facilitating single parent families
Belittling those who strive for academic excellence as “being a white” thing.
Demanding free passes and focus on meeting color blind standards for academic and workplace performance.
Attacking the justice system for the disproportionate % of blacks in prison when an even more disproportionate % of serious crimes are committed by Blacks. Mostly against other Blacks.
Complaining that unclean, downtrodden, dangerous black neighborhoods are a byproduct of racism and segregation, when increasingly, these communities are “all black” because Whites, Asians and even Hispanics have flown.
MacDonald cites Kendall & Sheila Qualls, Brandon Tatum, Candace Owens and Carl Jackson as examples of the outspoken leadership Black communities need so desperately. Not the Al Sharptons, Cory Bookers, Colin Kaepernicks, Jesse Jacksons or self-enriching founders of BLM.
The Black community must take stock of itself. Every year, increasingly so since Floyd, Americans throws boatloads of money and concessions to Black Americans. Talk about disproportionate! Much is wasted and accrues to little progress. Yet other discriminated against groups like Asians and Jews have trounced the rest of us by exceeding objective standards for knowledge, skills and performance – without such “free passes”. And don’t tell me it’s a matter of skin color.
Closing
There is a great deal more of interest in Heather MacDonald’s writing and others on the subject of Meritocracy and the degradation of American standards. In all likelihood, I will share more as time goes on.
Bottom line is the organized, methodical dilution of standards of excellence by leftist politicians, mainstream media, DEI-ruled corporations and universities out of fealty to Disparate Impact cannot end well. Mediocrity has started to take over in each of these realms. The best and the brightest in technology, medicine and science will not continue to apply their skills in environments where support, recognition and rewards are polluted. They will seek other domains where skills, knowledge, performance and contribution are fairly judged.
Already at epic proportions, the systematic elimination of meritocracy will ensure an accelerating decline in outcomes, the quality of life and the American way unless it is arrested and soon.
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