"We're a meritocracy" is a red flag, not a virtue

🌶 Wednesday take: "we're a meritocracy" is akin to "I'm a communist" in that it comes from a well intentioned place but in practice reveals some deeply flawed underlying beliefs. Now that I've increased your blood pressure a tiny bit, let me explain what I mean... 🧵

The core underlying premise of "meritocracy" is flawed because it presumes that people are capable of coming up with an objective definition of what good looks like and then unbiasedly evaluating if others meet that definition. Neither is possible, even for the simplest jobs.

That's fine, a true meritocracy may be an unattainable ideal, but shouldn't we aspirationally work towards it? Yes, absolutely, but that's not how people who throw around the term meritocracy tend to talk about it.

If you truly aspire to a meritocracy, then your underlying assumption should be that people are biased, your systems are biased, and that you need to constantly work to counteract this. Often there's a race and gender dimension to that bias but it's far from the only driver.

I know I'm biased against athletic white men. I'm biased against a southern accent and biased towards received pronunciation. I'm biased against people who work in finance and towards ex-consultants. That doesn't make me a bad person, it just means I'm human.

Our brains are wired to take mental shortcuts and make generalized assumptions. The only way to get ahead of that is to watch out for it and correct for it when you see that bias creeping in. You'll never be perfect, but you can always do better.

The people who talk about meritocracy tend to talk as if they've made it, as if their systems are fair and their assessments unbiased (spoiler alert: they aren't). And so, they tend to not do the actual work needed to build fairer and more equitable systems.

If you assume you're unbiased, you're unlikely to put in the effort to make yourself less biased and therein lies the problem. It's a job that's never done and if you think it is you're missing the point.

That's why I say meritocracy is like communism. The people who claim it want to build a fairer and more equitable future. The intention is good but in practice their actions end up having the opposite effect. That doesn't make them bad people, just flawed like the rest of us.