Is meritocracy overrated?

[Kearsen1]

Your analogy is fine, it really is.

However, until you are willing to go to the beginning and either start policing parents to be more involved, or willing to take kids out of poor situations to put them in better ones then you are spinning your wheels by trying to treat symptoms instead of the disease.

If you need to give those parents opportunities to be better parents first by providing more assistance to them, I am on board. If they still fail after that, you need to be ready to take the kids

[damuriajashi]

@Kearsen1

Well, I can’t rightly speak on what they consider privilege, but I’d imagine that someone would argue that someone with good parents who consider education to be paramount, privileged.

Privilege is usually understood to be some sort of unfair AND unearned advantage. The child did nothing to earn their parents. But being born to education focused parents is not an unfair advantage, you still have to do the work and make the sacrifices to gain the academic competence. You are not getting some sort of artificial preference because your parents value education more than other parents do.

And it is something that HAS been argued in this thread when they change the narrative to say you must have good or better parents than other poor folks.
Showing that poor Asians are directly discriminated against by diversity quotas, or discriminated against for having better parents flies directly in the face of the systemic racist arguments, regarding keeping poor minorities down.

Well, my experience is that some people think that it’s racist to say that poor asian immigrant parents value education more than others and any difference in results is really just a manifestation of racism and must be corrected for and the other folks say that the high value that poor asian immigrant place on education is an unfair advantage that must be corrected for.

Much of it is white people assuaging their white guilt at the expense of asian kids. In their minds the hard work of asian kids isn’t as hard as the hard work of others and the sacrifices made by asian kids and their families aren’t as painful or costly as the sacrifices made by other families. It’s dehumanizing to watch mayors, school chancellors, principals and teachers treat asian efforts and achievements as if they are somehow easier to achieve for asian kids than it is for other kids.

[damuriajashi]

@k9bfriender

Do you want the pilot flying your airliner who passed a test with lower standards, because they had to lower the standards in order to get enough pilots? Or do you want to increase the pool of applicants to ensure that the spots are filled by the most qualified individuals?

But that’s not what is happening in education. There isn’t a shortage of good students that forces us to take on weaker students. AA doesn’t create more qualified pilots, it puts less qualified pilots in the cockpit when more qualified pilots are available.

@k9bfriender

Many industries are in this situation, where they have a lack of people who are qualified to do the work that needs to be done. This isn’t due to a lack of people willing to do the work, but a lack in the investment society makes in those it doesn’t see as worthwhile.

In what way is society unfairly investing more in poor asian kids than poor hispanic kids?

@k9bfriender

If you don’t care about the individual, care about yourself. It is selfish to want to live in a society that has more qualified people to choose from, rather than only choosing from those who started with relatively privileged backgrounds.

Once again, there are plenty of qualified candidates, the anti-merit argument is to give those piloting jobs to less qualified candidates based on race.

[damuriajashi]

@k9bfriender

That’s kinda the problem. Life doesn’t work that way, and some have a longer way to go to get to the finish line. Some also have hurdles to get over, while others get a flat track.

Giving them the same test would be equalizing the opportunities.

So what unfair advantages do poor asian immigrants have over poor hispanic immigrants?

[damuriajashi]

@Kearsen1

And unless you are going to strip all parental rights from everyone and make sure we give them equal upbringing, opportunities (as you are trying to define them) will always be different.

Well public school is supposed to be a bit of an equalizing force but the folks who make policy for public education are too frequently more interested in the politics of public education than the efficacy of public education.

But you’re right, in the end, most of the really important stuff happens at home with role models that the kids see from year to year.

[k9bfriender]

I have no idea why you would make choose to make this assertion.

Parents are not intentionally holding their children back (for the most part, there are cases here and there), but they don’t have the tools to help them to succeed.

Worst case scenario would be a greater involvement from the state, more time in school and away from the home, but that would still not involve stripping away all parental rights. Any more than requiring schooling in the first place would, anyway.

This is just fearmongering as an excuse to avoid addressing the problems. Trying to create a false dichotomy where the only way to improve things is to destroy families, and we wouldn’t want to do that, now would we?

@Kearsen1

This is not a given.

Then make your case. If two groups of people have very different opportunities, then you should expect that the two groups of people will have very different outcomes.

If those groups of people have more equal opportunities, what is the reason that you assert that they would not have more equal outcomes?

[damuriajashi]

@Cheesesteak

In one sense the test is completely fair. In another sense, it isn’t. The child who hasn’t had the privilege of coaching and good equipment will have a slower time than the other, even if they are otherwise equal. Since we’re not talking about some D3 track team, but a person’s opportunities to succeed in our society, we should take more notice of that person’s circumstance, particularly since our society’s prior choices impacted those circumstances.

So what unfair advantage does the poor asian immigrant have over the poor hispanic immigrant that you would artificially adjust the results in favor of the poor hispanic immgirant? What societal choices hinder the poor hispanic immigrant that doesn’t hinder the poor asian immigrant?

@k9bfriender

If those groups of people have more equal opportunities, what is the reason that you assert that they would not have more equal outcomes?

I thought it was pretty clear he was referring to differences in culture. One group might value different things than the other group. One group might value becoming airline pilots while the other values becoming registered nurses. So despite equality of opportunity, one group ends up with more airline pilots and the other ends up with more registered nurses.

[k9bfriender]

@damuriajashi

But that’s not what is happening in education. There isn’t a shortage of good students that forces us to take on weaker students. AA doesn’t create more qualified pilots, it puts less qualified pilots in the cockpit when more qualified pilots are available.

this is not relevant.

@damuriajashi

In what way is society unfairly investing more in poor asian kids than poor hispanic kids?

this is even more irrelevant.

@damuriajashi

Once again, there are plenty of qualified candidates, the anti-merit argument is to give those piloting jobs to less qualified candidates based on race.

this actually is relevant, but it is actually not the case that there are plenty of qualified candidates, nor that there is any sort of anti-merit argument, and you also have wrong that the ones who argue for equality of opportunity would be giving piloting jobs to less qualified, as you would know if you had actually read what I wrote.

So, you are not able to respond to what is written 2/3rds the time, and when you do , it is with counterfactual information and asserting arguments that are not made and nefarious motives to others that they do not possess.

I’m not sure what your motive is, and I would not ascribe one to you, but I do know that responding to you does not seem to be worthwhile, so I will no longer do so unless you start addressing arguments on their actual merits, rather than on your imagination.

[k9bfriender]

@damuriajashi

I thought it was pretty clear he was referring to differences in culture. One group might value different things than the other group. One group might value becoming airline pilots while the other values becoming registered nurses. So despite equality of opportunity, one group ends up with more airline pilots and the other ends up with more registered nurses.

No, that’s not clear that that is what he is saying, and if that is what he is saying, it is irrelevant. I did not get the impression that he was saying something irrelevant.

We are not just talking about airline pilots here, we are talking about having a successful career in whatever field it is that one may wish to pursue. That you chose to narrow it to the specific case demonstrates only that you do not understand the argument whatsoever.

[Kearsen1]

I make that assertion because without it what is the end result if your half-measure plan fails? We should plan for the worst and hope for the best. I have no qualms with implementing half measures designed to help first, but we better have a plan for if that fails.

No fear mongering here. Just keeping it real.

I didn’t make the claim about equality of opportunity equating with equality of outcomes, you did. I make no case in either direction, I just said that it wasn’t a given.

[damuriajashi]

@k9bfriender

this is not relevant.

How so? Your premise is that there is a shortage of pilots. No such shortage exists. Why do we need to invest in getting more pilots? That is the rationale you are using in your analogy, isn’t it?

@k9bfriender

this is even more irrelevant.

Your premise for why some groups are not doing as well as other groups is a disparity in societal investment. Why isn’t the differential in societal investment relevant?

@k9bfriender

I’m not sure what your motive is, and I would not ascribe one to you

It certainly seems like you are.

@k9bfriender

but I do know that responding to you does not seem to be worthwhile, so I will no longer do so unless you start addressing arguments on their actual merits, rather than on your imagination.

I’m having trouble seeing any merit in your arguments.

You distinctly say in your first post on this thread that life is unfair and gives some people an unfair advantage over others. In an thread that specifically refers to the anti-asian effects of affirmative action as it is practiced today, I am asking what unfair advantage poor asians have over poor hispanic immigrants that you can defend affirmative action as it is practiced today.

I don’t think this is an unfair question to ask.

@k9bfriender

No, that’s not clear that that is what he is saying, and if that is what he is saying, it is irrelevant. I did not get the impression that he was saying something irrelevant.

So in a question asking why equal opportunities might result in less equal outcomes, asking about the role of culture is irrelevant?

We are not just talking about airline pilots here, we are talking about having a successful career in whatever field it is that one may wish to pursue. That you chose to narrow it to the specific case demonstrates only that you do not understand the argument whatsoever.

I’m only continuing your analogy. Are you sure you understand your own arguments? I am saying culture can affect outcomes despite a perfectly level playing field.

If your argument is that we should strive to level the playing field, then i don’t know who you are arguing against. There is noone in this thread that is on the other side of that argument except perhaps you and other who think we need to adjust fair and objective standards to account for race.

[damuriajashi]

@Cheesesteak

In one sense the test is completely fair. In another sense, it isn’t. The child who hasn’t had the privilege of coaching and good equipment will have a slower time than the other, even if they are otherwise equal. Since we’re not talking about some D3 track team, but a person’s opportunities to succeed in our society, we should take more notice of that person’s circumstance, particularly since our society’s prior choices impacted those circumstances.

So what unfair advantage does the poor asian immigrant have over the poor hispanic immigrant that you would artificially adjust the results in favor of the poor hispanic immgirant? What societal choices hinder the poor hispanic immigrant that doesn’t hinder the poor asian immigrant?

[Hari_Seldon]

@monstro

The problem with “merit” is that it is often defined by those who have acquired power through a non-merit-based system.

This.

I recently read an op-ed piece in the Times advocating that orchestras stop using blind auditions (the candidate plays behind a curtain) for hiring. The reason was that it didn’t lead to hiring enough black musicians. The author of the piece advocated racial quotas in hiring. Now it obviously is not true that blacks lack musical talent. There are many possible explanations. Maybe blacks don’t get the opportunities for classical musical training. Cf. what “La sistema” has done to produce musicians of the caliber of Gustavo Dudamel. Another possibility is that for cultural reasons blacks tend towards jazz, rock, and other modern forms of music. A third possibility is that they cannot afford to travel the audition trail, which is quite expensive in travel and hotel expenses.

Or I look at my own life. Suppose I had been born black instead of third generation Jewish immigrant. My mother was a HS school dropout and my father was said to have finished HS, but I don’t quite believe that. At any rate no ancestor had ever been any near a college. Would I have even attempted to go college? I won no scholarships and even the $500 tuition that Temple charged in 1954 was beyond our means. Would I have looked for a job to somehow work my way through college? Would I have been hired for a job in a lab at Penn that halved the tuition and allowed me to go part-time? Would I have discovered a talent for mathematics and a taste for a certain kind of abstraction? Would all of these things have happened? Seems unlikely.

So it is not that meritocracy is inherently wrong; it is that it has never been seriously tried.

I would make the same comment about free-market capitalism. Markets never stay free. But that is for a different thread.

[Acsenray]

@Damuri_Ajashi

Fareed Zakaria: An assault on meritocracy – Boulder Daily Camera

There once was a time when meritocracy was seen as a vehicle for overturning racism and the advantages of a privileged background. Now it is seen as a mechanism to maintain the racial disparity in the status quo and preserve privilege.

Not too many posters here think that we ought to live in a Harrison Bergeron dystopia but we are well down the road towards saying that disparity in outcomes is proof of racism s we ought to keep moving the goal posts until the disparities disappear. And THIS notion seems to have more than a little support on this board.

Is this the part of the of thinking that is alienating poor white voters and now threatening to alienate Asian votes?

Zakaria starts by talking about admissions to high school and college. That’s basic training that shouldn’t be subject to meritocratic standards. They should be egalitarian. Everyone should have equal access to quality education.

[k9bfriender]

Is public school a half measure now?

The only solution is to rip children from their parents and raise them as wards of the state?

There are actually a number of measures that I would implement, should I be appointed chief advisor to the Queen of May, that would help for parents to stay together, to help keep fathers in the homes, to help women have more choice of the timing and number of their children. More choices of environment and nutrition. Not leaving it to be the sole responsibility of the parents to get their kids to school.

I mean, just nutrition alone can account for a pretty significant difference in education.

I personally think that schools should be open 24/7, as a safe place for children to go at any time. They don’t have to play in the streets, they don’t have to share the corners with drug dealers or the cops who are busting them, they have a warm safe place with nutritious food that they can go to at any time.

If parents are truly unfit, then maybe we reduce their involvement more, but that still doesn’t mean removing them from their lives entirely.

We already infringe on parental rights when we require schooling and vaccinations to attend that schooling. There are some hyperbolics who like to call that stripping of parental rights, and if that is the direction that you are coming from, then I could see given the child more self actualization away from the family could seem to be as you say.

Just because you figured out how to have sex doesn’t actually mean that you are ready and responsible for having a kid. Just because it came from you doesn’t make it yours. The child is an independent being who will (hopefully) outlive you, and will need to be given the freedom to make its own choices at some point either way.

So, it is less a stripping of parental rights, and more a balancing the rights of parents to control their child, and the right of the child to have a chance for a successful future.

In some cases, if a parent refuses to allow their child to go to school (and doesn’t have some sort of adequate homeschooling system), then they should no longer be responsible for the decisions regarding that child. But that would be very rare.

The vast majority of parents who don’t know what to do with their child, that they want to grow up and have a better life than themselves, would gladly accept the tools and resources to give that future to their child.

@Kearsen1

I didn’t make the claim about equality of opportunity equating with equality of outcomes, you did. I make no case in either direction, I just said that it wasn’t a given.

I didn’t say that it would create equality of outcome, I said it would bring it closer.

I have made the argument that improving the opportunity would improve the outcome, and all I have seen in response is an assertion that it is not a given.

[Kearsen1]

We already have public schools. So some of the other things you mention in addition to are half measures (or full measures if you prefer) but they don’t have an or else which would be the end all be all of what happens if parent’s cannot do as you propose.

Reducing their involvement might greatly benefit them in other ways as well. You list nutrition, who is in charge of their nutrition? Schools offer breakfast and lunch. You would have them offer dinner? Schools open 24/7 might be a good thing in this regard, but how to pay for it? I offer child support requested from the parents of the children.

Regarding your paragraph about sex. Yes, the fact that you chose to bring a child into this world does mean that you are responsible (ready or not) for that child. The unwed mother crisis is real and something needs to be done about it. A few things: Drug offenses (possession mostly) need to be lessened. Fathers need to be more responsible for their offspring than they are now. We do little to track fathers and $$, we could do better. If you are not going to be responsible, then give it up for adoption, or have an abortion.

At some point children can be responsible for themselves agreed, but that isn’t at 5, or 12 even and likely not even early high school and by then life long damage (or a sever hindrance) is mostly already done.

Paying for all of this is of course, the stickler.

[bump]

Something I’ve long wondered is where you would draw the line in terms of leveling the playing field/making sure everyone starts from the same starting line, if we’re starting from the bottom, rather than looking backward from the final result?

I mean, there are dramatic differences in how different families value education. Some is cultural, some is family tradition, some is experience, etc… There are also dramatic differences in tolerance of failure and/or life expectations. Some families are perfectly fine with their children getting undistinguished jobs, while others aren’t. Some are fine with their children not going to college, others are ok with dropping out, others require graduation, and some push for graduate degrees.

You see that even among white middle class families, not to mention across ethnic and racial groups.

So where do you draw that line and say this is an equal comparison (i.e. meritocratic) “Well, this guy here has parents who pushed him and paid for him to graduate from college, etc… and he’s super-successful, and this other guy’s parents booted him out at 18 without paying for college.” ?

That seems to be the root of the question as I see it- with the exception of historical systemic racism hindering black Americans, this sort of thing seems to be the main determinant of success and opportunity.

[Cheesesteak]

@damuriajashi

So what unfair advantage does the poor asian immigrant have over the poor hispanic immigrant that you would artificially adjust the results in favor of the poor hispanic immgirant?

Artificially adjust. That’s an interesting choice of words. The tests themselves are inherently artificial. A group of pretend tasks given to children (or adults) as a way to estimate their worth. If you modify an artificial test to value things in different proportions, is it suddenly MORE artificial? Or is it just that today’s test is perfectly balanced to value exactly the right things, and we know that because, I dunno, the right people do well on them?

[damuriajashi]

@Hari_Seldon

This.

In this case we have a system created by white people that seems to be getting dominated by poor asian immigrants. Why are these sneaky white people devising method of promoting asians over their own children? Why did these gentiles devise a system that for decades disproportionately promoted jews over their own gentile children?

[damuriajashi]

@Acsenray

Zakaria starts by talking about admissions to high school and college. That’s basic training that shouldn’t be subject to meritocratic standards. They should be egalitarian. Everyone should have equal access to quality education.

So you do not believe in gifted programs? No magnet schools? Should admission to Harvard be based on lottery?

@k9bfriender

I didn’t say that it would create equality of outcome, I said it would bring it closer.

I have made the argument that improving the opportunity would improve the outcome, and all I have seen in response is an assertion that it is not a given.

Equality of opportunity does not mean equality of effort or equality of focus. Equalizing opportunity might lead to even greater disparities in outcome in education.