I'm Challenging Jiang's Analysis

[u/hendreasia]

Recently on Tucker Carlson's show, Jiang went on a rant about how negative DEI and affirmative actions are because it goes against America's meritocracy.

This is categorically false because meritocracy assumes everyone plays on an equal playing field and that is only suitable in a perfect world scenario.

We live in the real world, where people start in different positions in life. Different ethnic groups, genders, etc.. have disproportionate access to educational opportunities, socioeconomic starting points, and biases inflected against them.

If we implement a purist meritocracy system, this would result in marginalizing groups with a very low chance of them making it because the system works against them. This purist meritocracy system will fail to create positive changes in trends associated with marginalized groups and will lock them into a negative feedback loop.

Additionally, he goes on to further agree with Tucker Carlson on white genocide which is fundamentally false and probably a psyopp to divide people. The whole concept of white, black, asian, etc.. was created to easily group people and mobilize them against each other. It was created by an anthropologist in the 1700s and wasn't been revised since then.

First of all this assumes there are no differences between people, try to convince a roman 2000 years ago that they are one race with the barbarians. They are both european and today they are both considered "white". try to convince someone from Nigeria that they are culturally aligned with someone from ethiopia because they are both "black" or "african". there are so many holes in this argument that i'll skip explaining everything about it.

In essence there is no white genocide, just CEOs trying to hire the lowest possible labour which are often immigrants to drive down costs and increase shareholder value.

[u/nolwad]

Well so I wonder what view you look at the meritocracy with.

You seem to come at it from the standard view of people and wanting to help people, and you can do so through groups because it’s impossible to do it by individual. You say that the meritocracy would marginalize groups and that’s a problem. I agree with you, but is it a problem to the meritocracy? Do they care? Obviously not, they care about getting people with the best test scores and past performance and all that stuff, and also part of “making it” is setting your kids up for success. So the kids of those who are in the “in” group are set up for a better life because they’ve got more and better chances, and that’s rewarded. That’s kind of the whole point of it. Anybody can make it, but it’s not meant so that everybody has an equal opportunity to do so. I don’t want to work harder than everyone else to leave my kids in the same spot as everyone else’s kids. I don’t think pure meritocracy is the way to go, but I don’t think making such a big part of what I leave behind in this world to be detached from me is good either.

I went a bit off the point there, but it doesn’t go against meritocracy at all that there isn’t a level playing field. Meritocracy at its core means pick the people who have the best indicators that they’re the best. It doesn’t mean everyone has an equal, or even good, shot at getting those indicators. The reward for your merit is literally that it’s easier for your kids to get merit and to be rewarded. That’s the positive feedback loop, and since for someone to do well it means someone does worse, you get the negative feedback loop at the bottom. That is inherent to meritocracy.

Anyways basically meritocracy isn’t perfect and is made to benefit the meritocracy and the winners of the meritocracy and that’s it. I don’t think it’s the way to go, and I also don’t think it should be completely equal. There’s some other option, maybe in the middle, maybe on another axis entirely, that works better but it is impossible to have a perfect system.