If you want to destroy civilization, an essential component is to undermine the ability to advance those people who demonstrate merit as opposed to those who do not. Rabid egalitarians want to replace judgments based on individual merit with group “equity,” and that is certain to have terrible long-run consequences.
One writer who has been sounding the alarm on this is Heather Mac Donald. Her latest book is When Race Trumps Merit, and I review it today for the Martin Center.
She explains that the foolish idea that has swept through America and its educational institutions is that whenever group results are unequal, it’s proof of racial discrimination, which must be fought relentlessly. Any policy which has a “disparate impact” on certain groups (groups that are thought essential to the political success of the Democrats) has to be ditched. The Supreme Court, Mac Donald observes, blundered into this idea back in 1971, giving it a boost, much to the delight of the egalitarians.
Demands for “equity” are now surfacing everywhere. In medical education and licensing, objective measures of ability are being watered down to offset the unegalitarian results that come from letting merit work.
Mac Donald is known for her writing about the parlous state of the fine arts in America, and her book explores the damage that the diversity ideology is doing to musical education. Down with anything infected with “whiteness” and up with diversity. The famed Juilliard School has been roiled by the woke zealots.
She is not optimistic, writing, “The costs of opposing the evisceration of standards outweigh the benefits for anyone not driven by a transcendent (if self-destructive) commitment to principle. This cost-benefit calculus means that disparate impact orthodoxy will continue to tear down excellence absent a means for protecting dissenters from retaliation.”
I call her book a must read for anyone who cares about our future.