Dismantling Toxic Meritocracy

It is time to dismantle the meritocracy.

At least when it is served up as an exemplar of a clear, transparent, and flawless system for weighing and defining value and worth. Because true meritocracy is a myth.

Sure, it feels good to say. We should reward merit — good and worthy efforts deserve praise or reward. As a system, it provides an incentive and motivation for people to do good work. It also gives us a system of evaluation that we can point to that feels clear and transparent, where we can establish some baseline for comparing what feels like “good work” across the board versus what feels like “bad work”.

But once we begin to define what is meritable, the system begins to break down.

Because, even if we agree on the characteristics deserving of merit — intelligence, wit, strength, adaptability — the criteria that we use to define them is a spectrum of gray both nuanced and complex. And then, even if we could somehow zero in on a narrow definition of criteria, the question that should arise next is, why does that automatically invalidate other criteria on the scale? Why is that definition of intelligence better than this definition?

Here’s the truth: merit is not without bias and meritocracies are not inherently fair, contrary to popular (or wishful) belief. A meritocratic approach…