Why meritocracy is America’s most destructive myth | DeRay Mckesson | Big Think

Why meritocracy is America’s most destructive myth
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When fighting for social justice, there is a difference between equality and equity.

It's not radical to fight for a world where everyone has the same access to education, has food, and is equal in the eyes of the criminal justice system.

There is no real meritocracy if some people disproportionately benefit from the system just because of their skin color.
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DERAY MCKESSON:

DeRay Mckesson is a civil rights activist, community organizer, and the host of Crooked Media's award-winning podcast, Pod Save the People. He started his career as an educator and came to prominence for his participation in, and documentation of, the Ferguson protests and the movement they birthed, and for publicly advocating for victims of police violence and to end mass incarceration. He's spoken at venues from the White House to the Oxford Union, at universities, and on TV. Named one of Time's 30 Most Influential People on the Internet and #11 on Fortune's World's Greatest Leaders list, he has received honorary doctorates from The New School and the Maryland Institute College of Art. A leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement and the co-founder of Campaign Zero, a policy platform to end police violence, Mckesson lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
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TRANSCRIPT:

DeRay Mckesson: I wanted to write about what it means that some people seemingly have to “earn” or do something to deserve access to things that we think about as basic necessities. So how hard can you work to earn access to a meal every night, or like what do you have to do to “deserve” a good education? What do you have to do to deserve to have housing? And that’s one of the ways that race sort of works in this country, is that there’s some people that are deemed “inherently worthy.” So we think about the way whiteness works and white supremacy, white people are just deemed worthy of things, but there’s this notion that you need to work extra hard to deserve a great public education. I am from Baltimore and when you think about the school system Baltimore City is not funded equitably at all and it’s like, what do those kids have to do to like earn equitable funding? They actually don’t need to do anything besides just be alive! And one of the things that we need to do is make sure that we set up a system where people just have the basic necessities like food, water, education. We can guarantee that. There’s no reason why we don’t have it. I actually think about the difference between equality and equity. Equality is “everybody gets the same thing,” equity is that “people get what they need and deserve.” And the work of justice, we’re almost always fighting for equity. So we think about things like school funding, we are not asking for equal funding, we know that it just costs more to educate kids who grow up in poverty, it costs more to educate kids with special needs, and we know that we need to pay that cost, that those kids deserve that. We’re not saying that every kid it costs the same to educate every kid, that’s just not true. We want a world of equity where people get what they need and deserve. We know the disparities around criminal justice, that there are disparities around race and we want an equitable system that doesn’t penalize people for where they live, how they show up, what ZIP Code they come from. So the difference between equity and equality is an important distinction, and the only way to get to equality—equality of access, whatever metric of equality you want—is by having equity of resources, equity of experiences, that the equity piece says that “you need something different and you deserve something different, and from a system level I’m going to make sure that you have access to that.” So I was talking to somebody about food stamps once and she was like, “People should have to work for food stamps because if they work for it they’ll have dignity.” Like, not eating, I think, is pretty like—not having food is a lack of dignity right there. Food is one of those basic things— we have enough food that we could feed everybody, we have enough water that everybody can have three meals every single day, like we can guarantee those things, we don’t need to artificially create this “requirement” that people work so they can earn food. Like we can actually guarantee these basic things for people. And one of the things that we have to do as we fight for social justice is talk about these things, as basic as they are...

[ErikratKhandnalie]

I feel like this like/dislike ratio is undeserved. His basic message really is pretty common sense - we can make a world where survival is not contingent upon working for someone else. There really is no logical justification, for instance, for the ridiculous homelessness and poverty in a country like the US. We have people in need, we have an overwhelming abundance of resources to help these people, how are we not able to make these two things come together?

[umiluv]

Food stamps should only be a temporary solution, not what a person falls back on permanently. There is truth in both what this man says and what his counter said about food stamps. You do get dignity from having access to food when you have none but you also gain further dignity by working for it. It is NOT an OR argument. They both are correct.

That’s what’s wrong with America today. It’s the assumption that only your own opinion is correct instead of noting that perhaps both your opinion and someone else’s opinion are simultaneously correct and thus you have to work together to come to a better solution.

[kelsy]

He has some good points. Everyone should have a house to go home to, three meals a day, clean water, clothes, medical care, etc. It isn’t an extremist belief that you need to work for food, water, a home, etc. those are basic needs.

[connorlowe]

"IN 2053 the median wealth of black wealth will be 0$." Citation fucking needed buddy

[LAXLEBEAR]

I for one am glad they put this guy on. Does he blame all problems on oppression? Yes. Is there SOMETHING to that? Yes. He’s advocating for care of a group of downtrodden people, that’s admirable. Now I think where he goes wrong is by placing placing a simple blame, in stead of admitting it’s a complicated problem, that we should all work hard to make better. What can we do about these clear and glaring problems? I think more money for struggling schools is a good, obvious start.

[FenderMan]

The ad for this video contradicted the video itself. Wonderful.

[mattd]

The policy of "Meritocracy" was identified long ago as a flawed plan. Many of the predictions made about the long term destructive effects of "Meritocratic" policies are becoming real. Educate yourselves before knee jerking about muh meritocracy and blindly defending it. The most significant and self perpetuating flaw is a common cognitive bias. People who are "winners" in a game or system are always disposed to think that they are on top because of their hard work or some other merit. They become smug and entitled. This is true even if the odds are stacked in their favor by rigged rules.

[violet-trash]

What exactly does he think welfare and public education is? It's access to basic needs for everyone.

[umiluv]

I don’t agree that throwing more money into schools in poor neighborhoods actually helps. The problem with kids growing up in these neighborhoods is that they’re dealing with A LOT more in their personal lives and putting money into the schools really isn’t going to solve that problem.

I went to elementary school in south central Los Angeles right where the LA Riots happened. Most of my classmates were more worried about access to food and taking care of their siblings while their parents worked.

What needs to happen is we need to bring back well paying blue collar jobs and work training programs for parents to help them get out of poverty. It goes to the basics of creating a better life for families.

Welfare doesn’t do enough and is barely enough to eat. Families need more than that. We need jobs and subsidized infant daycare for poor families. These kids in poor neighborhoods need their families to be intact and secure. Giving them iPads in school is not going to solve this.

[qhack]

What absolute crap. The fact that people think this way, really shows just how bad our education system has fallen.

[isabellalugo]

i wanna know why someone would even dislike this video?

[ProtectMyLiberty]

You shouldn't have to "work" for food?? If nobody "works" to produce food, where do you think it will come from? If nobody "works" to create education, where do you think it will come from? These things don't simply fall out of the sky. There is no magical "system" that produces the necessities of life, or anything else for that matter. It's "people", individuals that go to work every day and grow our food and teach our kids and care for the sick. Perhaps someday we will create this magical utopia where self-building, self-repairing machines create all these necessities but that day is not today. I am just stunned that a grown man, seemingly well-spoken, is promoting this fantasy.

[Lizzieverse]

I'm white... obviously! Nobody gave me anything. I've been poor all my life, still am, and I have a Master's degree. The ROOT of the problems you speak of is not racism... its elitism (greed and power)! I totally agree that everyone should have food... and shelter, despite ability to pay. But it's absurd to blame the white race as a whole for these problems, the majority of people of all races in this country are in the same boat... in my humble opinion. Peace...

[elainemunro]

So true! Another piece of this issue is the astronomical amounts of income and wealth held by the top quintile in our country. Tax breaks for the wealthy were supposed to help everyone because it would trickle down to everyon! Yes, wealthy congresspeople believe this and Trump’s signature tax laws gave significant breaks to them. Obviously the solution is to tax the wealthy as a way to pay for better schools in poor neighborhoods, better job opportunities to the bottom quintile, and more. What a land of opportunity we could be!

[wjmackenzie]

*"We don't need to artificially create this requirement that people like, " work" to earn food... "*

Actually... You do because that food doesn't magically appear on the grocery store shelves.

There are people who work, and work very hard to plant and grow that food, raise the livestock and ensure its safe for consumption, package, ship, and display on the shelves for others to buy.

You, however, do not deserve to benefit from their labor for free just because you employ sophistry in place of well researched and sound arguments.

Every person involved from the farmer to the cashier works to bring that food to you...

Please provide a valid argument as to why you deserve to benefit from their labor for nothing in return other than gracing them with your mere existence.

[SPDYellow]

The more I think about it, the more it strikes me how odd the way we fund schools is. Think of the US military. We can talk about how there's no real threat of invasion by anyone and how bloated the military budget is (and I agree on both of those points), but the military exists to protect ALL parts of the US, regardless of wealth. If some foreign power was to invade any part of the US, be it Los Angeles or say, some Podunk town in the middle of nowhere, the military shows up with however much force is needed to take out the invaders. We don't have a situation where if Los Angeles is invaded, they can count on having an air force squadron, navy squad, and an entire military platoon to protect them, whereas Podunk can only get a couple of guys in an APC. Like I said, the US military will roll out with whatever amount of force (men, arms, etc.) is needed for the situation in question.

Why not something similar for education, where every district, regardless of the wealth of those living in it, is given roughly the same amount of money, though said amount will be adjusted for number of incoming students. Like if District A, a rich district, is given X amount, than District B, a poor district with the same size student population, will also receive the same amount from the State or Federal government.

We encourage education as the route out of poverty, but it doesn't do anyone much good if a Rich district has top of the line-everything, whereas the poor district is stuck with ten-year-old textbooks, a building badly in need of maintenance, and outdated athletic equipment. A student in a poor district could get into the same college as a rich one, but the point is, poor kid shouldn't have to deal with these conditions and work twice as hard as rich kid, to get the basic stuff rich kid takes for granted.

Also, statistics have shown that a robust welfare system actually winds up making more money for society than it costs. When people have extra money to spend, they, well, use it to buy things, which puts more money into the economy and helps create jobs. Think of the innovations in tech or whatever that we might be missing out on, because people are too busy struggling to eke out an existence, to sit down and really explore their new idea involving X. Stress has very real, deteriorating effects on someone's ability to think Constantly worrying about food, shelter, and medicine kills creative thinking flat.

[Robin-rpxe]

If you are reacting violently and denying the entire topic it should warn you that you are acting by ideology and not by your reason.
Meritocracy is a problem for black and white people because it implies that your conditions of existence are only (or mostly) defined by your hard work. And that belief is false.
Your color of skin or your socio-economic position has way more to do with succes than hard work.
What the guy is saying is that equality of opportunity doesn't mean much if all people arent starting the race with the same assets. He then explains that in order to do that, there should be more money to inject to redress the balance so every people have acces to equity and not only equality.
Of course this is hard to do because this inequality is rooted deep in the system.
And please this is not marxism or communism...

[fittzie]

Equity is disgusting. It's only a system that provides inherent unearned privilege

[cheetor]

Dude you are way out of touch with reality. It has little to do with black and white and, more to do to with rich vs poor. Band-Aids; the color nude, or at least I thought that is what you meant; and funding in schools aren't really relevant to your topic. Hell, two of the three have little bearing on anything and, the other is again more about rich vs poor. The fact that African American folks are predominantly coalesced in those areas is a by product of the past racism yes but there are other contributing parts of that little dilemma that aren't often addressed. Unfortunately I poverty breeds poverty and, poverty is a strong indicator for crime and, blaming that on race is irresponsible at best, at worst is belittling of a people.

Anyway I'ma put my soap box away so, have a good day and be safe out there.

[bmxbandit]

This is a sad state where an articulate person can say "We have the resources and the ability to make sure that people are able to have food in their stomach, a reasonable education, and a fair justice system" and people largely dismiss it.

He's right that it isn't an extreme view to take. Most people in this world believe they should help out their neighbor when they have hit hard times. Most people in this world believe that things _should_ be fair. It's a reasonable view point to say "Let's try to make things more fair, and start with giving people a base they can start with."

This comment section is disgusting.