Meritocracy, Still Without Merit: Reply to Responses

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Notes

A rather clear illustration of this dynamic can be seen in New York Times columnist David Brooks’s () commentary on the recent and celebrated book by African American author Ta-Nehsi Coates (). In regards to the latter’s perspective on meritocracy (aka the American Dream), Brooks’ understands, correctly, that Coates rejects the American Dream itself “as flimflam.” In contrast, Brooks, like Silverman, instead focuses on removing the barriers to the achievement of that Dream by African Americans, rather than an outright rejection of it (as Brooks wants to “abandon … old wrongs and transcend … old sins for the sake of a better tomorrow”).

For additional recent evidence (made available after the completion of my article) on the weakness of the Meritocratic Paradigm in regards to race, see the new study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (Emmons & Noeth, ). It demonstrates that even a college degree—that is, “punching the commonly understood meritocratic ticket to social mobility” as I put it in my article (Imbroscio, )—did not protect the wealth of African Americans over the last two decades (which dropped about 56% compared to an increase for whites and Asians with college degrees of 86% and 90%, respectively).

On the rich history—and great future potential—of cooperatives for promoting the community well-being of African Americans, which is Silverman’s primary concern, see Nembhard ().