# Are Merit Systems in Academia and Work a Method of Enforcing White Dominance? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 13, 2018, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468 "2018-03-13T03:22:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dorjan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dorjan/32/12440_2.png) [@Dorjan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dorjan)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/21 "2018-03-13T13:50:26Z")
Given a level playing field, pure merit-based systems are best. Academics and the wiok force in the US are not level playing fields. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/22 "2018-03-13T13:53:08Z")
You know what’s really a problem here? This racial complaining just divides us. Yes, many black people have a tough time because they are poor and because their families are fatherless. Many (probably more in absolute numbers) white people have a tough time because they are poor and also they don’t have dads either. Same with asians. When it comes time to selection for the elite positions - whether that be elite schools or elite jobs - it pays to have a shit-ton of family support. Talent helps but “merit” is at least 50% “I had great family support growing up”. Family support means you get to school on time rested and you have adequate resources and you have tutors for those standardized tests and so on and so forth. See, if we talked about this inequality in these terms, _most_ of the population could be on the same side here. And we could all vote policies to try to fix some of this. There are disadvantaged people of all races. Maybe as a percentage of each race, blacks have it the worst, but that doesn’t mean they all do. This endless “white males eat a dick” complaining means that white males (or mostly females) are not going to vote for progressive policies to improve things. If instead we talked about how : a. America is fantastically wealthy and we can get even wealthier if we have a greater percentage of our population working high skilled jobs to make the future reality. _Everyone_ benefits. Already rich people benefit if we have more highly skilled people - from all races, from anyone who can do it - developing technology that will make their lives better like everyone else’s. b. It’s not really a meritocracy if family support and pre-existing wealth makes such a huge difference. We should all have access to higher education of some sort for the talents we have that are also in demand, we should all have access to affordable medical care. When instead you complain about white males and talking about “fixing” things, what you’re really proposing to do, instead of trying to elevate all boats by merit, you’re proposing racist discrimination in favor of everyone else but white males. Who are like 30% of the population so that’s not going to go well. And they all vote for a con man who promises to favor them. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/23 "2018-03-13T13:58:49Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > You know what’s really a problem here? > > This racial complaining just divides us. > > Yes, many black people have a tough time because they are poor and because their families are fatherless. Many (probably more in absolute numbers) white people have a tough time because they are poor and also they don’t have dads either. They also have a tough time because there are still millions of actual racist assholes out there actively discriminating against them, and an even larger population dismissing or diminishing any claims of genuine racism. But sure, let’s make sure that in attempting to address real and serious racism we do so in a way that doesn’t hurt the feelings of any white people. Because priorities. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/24 "2018-03-13T14:10:20Z")
I’m Jewish, and if I count as white, then I have good reason to regard other whites with suspicion and mistrust. So there. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/25 "2018-03-13T15:16:12Z")
> [@JBGUSA](#): > > She argues that “every white person—no matter how rich or poor, old or young, educated or uneducated, can and should step up and work toward dismantling systemic racism and fight for equity and social justice.” What in the world is wrong with that statement? Of course **everybody** should work toward dismantling systemic racism and fight for equity and social justice. And white people, as the overall beneficiaries of the legacy of systemic racism in our society, have arguably the greatest responsibility to do so. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/26 "2018-03-13T15:34:01Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > You know what’s really a problem here? > > This racial complaining just divides us. Of course! the real problem are the complainers are not the myriad of valid complaints they have! If they’d just shut up we’d all be getting along just fine! ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/27 "2018-03-13T16:55:41Z")
Y’know, we might all have a less knee-jerk reaction to this if Putnam had simply used a term like “the entrenched Establishment,” “the academic fraternity,” or even “the Old Boys Network.” Many of us might agree with her belief that “our privilege allows us access to resources and connections that those with less privilege do not often have at their disposal.” It’s just that a lot of whites believe we’re also in the “less privilege” category. And it may be true that the most privileged are happy to drive wedges between various groups of less privileged to keep them fighting among themselves. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/28 "2018-03-13T17:59:40Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > Not only that, but “merit”, as defined by societal metrics of success, is kind of inherently tied with privilege in any society with privilege. People may have poor grades, be from a substandard school, or otherwise disadvantaged for a multitude of reasons and “merit” is a rather value-fueled metric that asserts the people who do achieve those things are just better. People struggling with mental illness to the point they couldn’t do homework in high school or finish tests may finish high school with poor grades, people from poor areas may do poorly on standardized tests, people who were disowned due to being LGBT or raised in a toxic, abusive home may not even finish school, and so on. Yes, I wanted to add that, but didn’t have time: merit-based entrance only works if the playing field is Level, which it obviously isn’t. Moreover, merit-based \*\*entrance \*\*doesn’t make much sense (as opposed to merit-based Exit test): the purpose of School or college is to learn. So if a Student from a poor or otherwise disadvantaged Background doesn’t have the necessary knowledge compared to (White) middle-class Student from a better neighbourhood - then admit the poor Student, and give him 2-4 extra Semesters (that is, free of Charge) to catch up on math and history and so on. After all, when children enter Primary School or High School, they don’t have to pass entrance tests, either: we accept that they go to School in order to learn, therefore they don’t know enough already. (Placement tests might help to determine whether they Need remedial math or advanced, but it’s not about entering the School at all). > [@](#): > > This isn’t even getting into the idea that our particular cultural notion of success is very wrapped up in making markets more efficient, obtaining capital, and wielding power which are not, prima facie, good definitions of merit or success and are based very heavily in our neo-liberal, staunchly capitalist outlook on society. This is a specific Problem of US System of Colleges with impossibly high fees (for-profit); no Standard Curriculum, so the Prestige of expensive Colleges Counts for more than the actual knowledge learned; the lack of alternative education like vocational Schools; the drive towards “usable” = high-paying Jobs knowledge, as opposed to an universal education of critical thinking citizens… ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/29 "2018-03-13T18:44:01Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > What in the world is wrong with that statement? Of course **everybody** should work toward dismantling systemic racism and fight for equity and social justice. And white people, as the overall beneficiaries of the legacy of systemic racism in our society, have arguably the greatest responsibility to do so. Well, she is a professor, and it can reasonably be asserted that professors are pretty high up the social ladder. They’ve got good salaries, perks, job protections, plus intangible benefits such as added respect that most other professions don’t have. So while Dr. Putnam may not quite be on the level with Warren Buffett or Nancy Pelosi, she’s got a lot of privileges that the average American doesn’t have, to say nothing about folks living in third-world countries. Yet apparently she sees nothing wrong with wagging her finger at the poor and the uneducated, and informing them that they should believe her dogmas and act accordingly. By her own admission she’s devoted her career to studying “white privilege” yet scanning her blog posts and articles on her site I see no awareness of wealth privilege or social status privilege. She spends considerable effort bragging about how much she’s worked to be aware of her white privilege but none at all acknowledging ways that she’s actually privileged in a meaningful way. I’ve mentioned before, when discussing this topic, that I’ve served at homeless shelters and soup kitchens and that a sizable majority of the homeless people I encounter there are white. Many are unable to see, or hear, or talk, or walk. Some are missing teeth or eyes or otherwise bear the scars of poverty literally. No homeless person is privileged, regardless of what race they are. And for a wealthy white professor to lecture poor and uneducated whites–in her own words–about the topic of privilege is condescending, offensive, and ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/30 "2018-03-13T21:50:02Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Well, she is a professor, and it can reasonably be asserted that professors are pretty high up the social ladder. They’ve got good salaries, perks, job protections, plus intangible benefits such as added respect that most other professions don’t have. So while Dr. Putnam may not quite be on the level with Warren Buffett or Nancy Pelosi, she’s got a lot of privileges that the average American doesn’t have, to say nothing about folks living in third-world countries. > > Yet apparently she sees nothing wrong with wagging her finger at the poor and the uneducated, and informing them that they should believe her dogmas and act accordingly. By her own admission she’s devoted her career to studying “white privilege” yet scanning her blog posts and articles on her site I see no awareness of wealth privilege or social status privilege. I think you’re mixing apples and oranges here. Societal privilege doesn’t have any kind of unified metric where we can compare one person’s total “net privilege” to another one’s. It is possible, in fact pretty much universal, for the same person to be the beneficiary of some particular type(s) of privilege while simultaneously being disadvantaged by other types of privilege. So if you wanted to wag your finger at Dr. Putnam about “wealth privilege” or “social status privilege” with a declaration like _“every secure middle-class professional in a prestigious position—no matter what their race or gender or ethnic origin or gender identity or sexual orientation—can and should step up and work toward dismantling systemic class privilege and fight for equity and social justice”_, there’d be nothing wrong with that either. But it wouldn’t in any way contradict or undermine what she’s saying about the especial responsibility of **all** white people, who **all** benefit in some way from white privilege, to work to dismantle it. > [@ITR champion](#): > > No homeless person is privileged, regardless of what race they are. And for a wealthy white professor to lecture poor and uneducated whites–in her own words–about the topic of privilege is condescending, offensive, and ridiculous. Like I said, this is more about you misunderstanding the non-fungible nature of societal privilege than anything else. Yes, even homeless people can still have white privilege, especially compared to nonwhite homeless people. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/31 "2018-03-13T23:10:38Z")
Huh. So everybody should work to stop racism? You know, that sounds pretty reasonable to me. I guess if you’re a right-winger it sounds like an attack, or some cloud cuckoo land bullshit. End racism? But we already ended racism when we elected Obama back in 2008! What’s left to talk about? And I honestly don’t get the idea that right-wingers have that if you’re white you’re supposed to feel guilty about white privilege. I’m white. I don’t feel the least bit guilty about white privilege. Nobody I ever met asked or expected me to feel guilty about being white. Learning about the history of slavery, or about Jim Crow, or about the Holocaust, or Stalinism doesn’t make me feel the least bit guilty, because I never enslaved anybody, I never too anyone’s right to vote away, I never sent the kulaks to the gulag, and I never shoved the Jews into the ovens. It was other people that did that. There’s a big difference between feeling guilty about slavery and Jim Crow and white supremacy, and pretending that slavery and Jim Crow and white supremacy never happened. And maybe if you enslaved someone, setting them free would be a good thing to do. Not as good as never enslaving them in the first place, but setting them free is better than keeping them enslaved. Setting your slave free after years of bondage doesn’t bring you back up to zero though. It just takes you from negative ten to negative five. You don’t have to feel guilty about being slavery, because barring [a few examples](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/) nobody here enslaved anyone. Still, it’s pretty disingenuous to assert that you don’t have any advantages because you’re white. Oh, you had to work hard for everything, nobody handed you anything on a silver platter because you were white, so where’s your white privilege? Except you do admit that racism is still a thing, right? You do admit that just 50 years ago black people couldn’t vote in many parts of the country, and were met with violence when they tried to vote? That black people didn’t have property rights that white people were bound to respect, right? So if you can admit that–you do admit that, right?–then the absence of that is what we call “white privilege”. If you want to call it “lack of black disadvantage” go right on ahead if it helps you understand it better, but it’s the exact same thing. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/32 "2018-03-13T23:14:05Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > … But it wouldn’t in any way contradict or undermine what she’s saying about the especial responsibility of **all** white people, who **all** benefit in some way from white privilege, to work to dismantle it. … We can get started right after she finishes dismantling Professor Privilege. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/33 "2018-03-13T23:33:18Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Huh. So everybody should work to stop racism? You know, that sounds pretty reasonable to me. > > I guess if you’re a right-winger it sounds like an attack, or some cloud cuckoo land bullshit. End racism? But we already ended racism when we elected Obama back in 2008! What’s left to talk about? > > And I honestly don’t get the idea that right-wingers have that if you’re white you’re supposed to feel guilty about white privilege. I’m white. I don’t feel the least bit guilty about white privilege. Nobody I ever met asked or expected me to feel guilty about being white. Learning about the history of slavery, or about Jim Crow, or about the Holocaust, or Stalinism doesn’t make me feel the least bit guilty, because I never enslaved anybody, I never too anyone’s right to vote away, I never sent the kulaks to the gulag, and I never shoved the Jews into the ovens. It was other people that did that. > > There’s a big difference between feeling guilty about slavery and Jim Crow and white supremacy, and pretending that slavery and Jim Crow and white supremacy never happened. And maybe if you enslaved someone, setting them free would be a good thing to do. Not as good as never enslaving them in the first place, but setting them free is better than keeping them enslaved. Setting your slave free after years of bondage doesn’t bring you back up to zero though. It just takes you from negative ten to negative five. > > You don’t have to feel guilty about being slavery, because barring [a few examples](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/) nobody here enslaved anyone. Still, it’s pretty disingenuous to assert that you don’t have any advantages because you’re white. Oh, you had to work hard for everything, nobody handed you anything on a silver platter because you were white, so where’s your white privilege? Except you do admit that racism is still a thing, right? You do admit that just 50 years ago black people couldn’t vote in many parts of the country, and were met with violence when they tried to vote? That black people didn’t have property rights that white people were bound to respect, right? > > So if you can admit that–you do admit that, right?–then the absence of that is what we call “white privilege”. If you want to call it “lack of black disadvantage” go right on ahead if it helps you understand it better, but it’s the exact same thing. Who is “white” and who is “black”? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/34 "2018-03-14T00:21:14Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > We can get started right after she finishes dismantling Professor Privilege. :dubious: It’s not as though it would be impossible to work on both at the same time, of course. Like I said, if you want to scold Dr. Putnam for not doing enough to fight against other types of privilege along with white privilege, that’s not an unreasonable complaint. But trying to use such scolding as an excuse for ignoring or ducking her valid points about white privilege **is** unreasonable. It’s this kind of whiny, foot-dragging reaction from so many white people when the problems of systemic racism are pointed out—_“But this is antagonizing people whom you ought to be trying to get on your side!”_ _“But **I** never lynched anybody!”_ _“But WHAT ABOUT THE SUFFERINGS OF WHITE PEOPLE HUH WHAT ABOUT THAT?!?”_—that earns so much well-deserved mockery at the fragility of oversensitive snowflakes. When you are just using concerns about class or wealth privilege as a screen to hide from valid points about racial privilege, it shows. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/35 "2018-03-14T00:50:13Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Who is “white” and who is “black”? It depends, as you well know. White and black are categories with no distinct boundaries. According to some, one drop of African blood made you black. You could look white, blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin, thin lips…and if it was known that your mother was black, you were black. Take Thomas Jefferson’s children with Sally Hemings. Sally Hemings mother was half black and half white. Her mother was therefore black. That made Sally Hemings black, even though her father was white and she was therefore 3/4th European. Note that her father was also her owner, and she was the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife. So she became the property of her sister, and when that sister died she became the property of her sister’s husband. And she had many children by her owner, all of them 7/8ths European ancestry, and all of them black and all of them slaves, despite being the children of the President of the United States. So you know, it’s complicated. You’re socially white if the people who count perceive you as white. You’re socially black if the people who count perceive you as black. That’s how race works in this country, and why people say things like “race is a social construct”. Because if the 7/8ths white children of the President are black slaves, what else could it be? ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/36 "2018-03-14T01:30:46Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > ItSo you know, it’s complicated. You’re socially white if the people who count perceive you as white. You’re socially black if the people who count perceive you as black. That’s how race works in this country, and why people say things like “race is a social construct”. Can people choose which race they’d like to be? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/37 "2018-03-14T01:36:03Z")
> [@Dorjan](#): > > Given a level playing field, pure merit-based systems are best. Academics and the wiok force in the US are not level playing fields. True about there not being truly level playing fields. But pure merit-based systems are a fantasy, encouraged by those who implement and benefit from them. I say this as having been inside meritocracies. I’ve done well in them, so this isn’t sour grapes. But anyone who has been involved in merit only performance review knows how iffy the procedure is, even when done by people of good will. When assholes do it and call it meritocracy it is even worse. I think people who believe meritocracy is wonderful must think each person has a number floating over their heads that gives their merit level. Not quite so simple. Perhaps people should remember that it is not an even playing field for white people either, though we do start with certain advantages, on average. Those who want a meritocracy should maybe start by supporting pre-K education to give all kids access to books and an enriching environment. I know, that costs money and the rich are starving. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/38 "2018-03-14T01:47:59Z")
> [@D\_Anconia](#): > > Can people choose which race they’d like to be? In terms of practical possibility, some people look racially ambiguous enough to present credibly in more than one racial category. But as I’m sure you know, racial identity was very stringently policed in our society for many generations, and the concept of a person classified as black trying to present as white was hugely threatening to many white people. The legacy of that rigid system of racial categories still massively affects racial identity today. So no, I’d say that in general most people don’t have the luxury of “choosing” their race in any meaningful sense, any more than they can choose whether their current body type is generally perceived as fat or thin. Of course you can always have your own personal preference for which race (or body type, for that matter) you’d **like** to be, but that by itself doesn’t change how you’re perceived. ---
**Author:** ![JBGUSA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/258eb7/32.png) [@JBGUSA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JBGUSA)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/39 "2018-03-14T01:52:31Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > Even non-Americans? Yes. As long as they have legal status. ---
**Author:** ![JBGUSA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/258eb7/32.png) [@JBGUSA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JBGUSA)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2018, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468/40 "2018-03-14T01:53:32Z")
> [@HelenGawn](#): > > Obviously I can’t speak for Putnam, but that would be the case given her premise. All “white” people are of European ancestry, which is the source of the values and definition of civility that she targets as racist. > > Her concept mirrors the phenomenon of African-American students who work hard and excel at education being derided by some of their Black peers for “acting white.” Perfect. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-merit-systems-in-academia-and-work-a-method-of-enforcing-white-dominance/810468.md?page=3)