The push for group-based preferences that began with affirmative action in the 1960s and evolved into today’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) movement is now in decline. Merit, not skin color, sex or sexual peccadilloes, may soon decide everything from hiring to college admissions. Hopefully, America’s half century of failed social engineering will be replaced with what Thomas Jefferson called a “Natural Aristocracy.”
Nevertheless, the battle over merit is far from over. The sad reality is that the anti-merit impulse runs deep in human history. Yes, merit has promoted civilization, but anti-merit identity politics is hardly a historical abnormality. Nepotism and ethnocentrism, both of which are antithetical to merit, are probably hardwired into our DNA; the desire for meritocracy is not.
To appreciate this aversion to ability, consider what occurred in Nazi Germany. On April 7, 1933, just two months after assuming political power, Adolf Hitler issued his infamous Law for the Restoration of Professional Civil Service ordering the immediate dismissal of any government official who had at least one Jewish grandparent or opposed the Nazi regime. Since all German academics were state employees, this edict applied to every professor along with judges, police officers, and countless bureaucrats.
A mass exodus of researchers and professors ensued, some of whom while not themselves Jewish had Jewish spouses. Others who were Jewish or had Jewish ancestry were not Germans, but as residents of nearby countries, they saw the handwriting on the wall and fled.
German physics was devastated. Among those escaping were Hans Bethe, Felix Bloch, Max Born, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Otto Frisch, Fritz London, Lise Meitner, Erwin Schrödinger, Otto Stern, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Victor Weisskopf, and Eugene Wigner. Three—Einstein, Franck, and Schrödinger—were Nobel Prizes winners and five others would eventually receive that prize. Several, notably Bethe and Teller, played major roles in the Manhattan Project or contributed to the physics underlying the atomic bomb. The exodus was a windfall for countries accepting the refugees—some 2500 of these scientists and academics fled to the United Kingdom. U.S. patents increased by 31 percent after 1933 in fields common among German refugees. When the eminent German scientist Max Planck personally pleaded with Hitler not to fire Jewish physicists, Hitler said that the Reich did not need them.
The expulsion of highly talented people is hardly unusual. Amy Chua’s World on Fire describes how ethnically distinct “market-dominant minorities” such as overseas Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, the Chinese in Indonesia, among countless others have suffered this fate. In Indonesia, for example, the Chinese were once a mere three percent of the population but controlled 75 percent of the economy, and this dominance often instigated anti-Chinese violence. The United States likewise illustrates how group over-representation in inner-city business can be the object of ethnic strife.
The elimination of colonialism in sub-Sahara Africa similarly exhibits the dire consequences of disregarding competence. When South Africa ended apartheid in 1994, blacks replaced whites in both government and the private sector and the result is soaring crime, widespread unemployment, rampant corruption, collapsing infrastructure and a declining economy. White-run Rhodesia went from a thriving agricultural economy to a black-run nation (now re-named Zimbabwe) plagued by famine.
According to Chua, the animus towards the economic dominant minority is fueled by widespread beliefs about their dishonesty (“sharp practices”) and clannishness versus attributing success to their work ethic and business acumen. Chua argues that the push to expel successful minorities is facilitated by democracy insofar as democracy encourages demigods to appeal to popular resentments against “foreigners.”
Why the urge to eliminate merit? Can people be that stupid to believe that lowering the standard for airplane pilots in the name of “racial justice” will be cost-free? Surely the historical record on what occurs when merit is abandoned is unambiguous.
The reality is that people often reject merit as the primary value. It is not that competence is unimportant; rather, it is less vital than other values. In some cases, the animus is driven by envy or anti-intellectualism. The appeal of ideology and religion can be blinding. Hitler probably knew that expelling Jewish physicists would weaken German science, but given his overpowering antisemitism, the cost was bearable. Those who expelled the Jews from Spain in 1492 likely anticipated the loss of economic and intellectual talent, but making Spain totally Catholic was paramount.
Consider cities such as East St. Louis, Missouri and Jackson, Mississippi where life resembles living in a third world country—municipal services are spotty, crime commonplace, city streets often unnavigable, schools barely function, all while the city is ruled by corrupt incompetents. Nevertheless, these dreadful conditions are self-imposed since residents knowingly vote for and then repeatedly re-elect incompetents. Indeed, when the state or federal government intervene to remedy the mess, such intrusions are resisted. Yes, the schools are ineffective but given a choice between local though inept control versus better schools run but run by competent outsiders, the former option is preferred. A clueless, dishonest mayor can be an economic bonanza for the politically connected, at least until the city goes bankrupt.
Personal self-interest and the more general benefits of upholding merit often collide. The hiring of unqualified faculty based on race or sex bestow immediate rewards to those hired, and may burnish a school’s reputation for promoting diversity, but the costs—poorly educated graduates, inferior research and diminished academic prestige—will only be incurred decades later. A medical school admissions officer may be financially rewarded if he achieves greater racial diversity, but he will unlikely seek medical treatment from an unqualified applicant he personally admitted.
Incompetence is also easily defended by claiming that the very idea of “merit’ is a socially constructed concept whose true but hidden purpose (“white supremacy”) is to exclude people of color. From this perspective, measures of merit such as a bar exam are arbitrary “barriers” whose real purpose is to reject the less powerful, and with a more equitable access to the proper training, anybody could be a lawyer, doctor or rocket scientist. So why not just hire based on race and gender? After all, no group monopolizes talent. Unfortunately, it is difficult to reject this reasoning except by eliminating existing merit-based job criteria, a policy that invites disaster. Who would fly with an airline that hired its pilots according to race and gender?
Fans of racial preferences are seldom, if ever, swayed by mountains of evidence. Africans living under British or French colonial rule probably knew from first-hand experience or what occurred elsewhere that the colonial administrators were more capable, but their desire for independence outshined the material benefits of colonialism. Recall how voters in many American cities regularly re-elect incompetent officials. These voters know what they are getting and truly want these results. In both instances incompetence is not a problem; it may even be an advantage for those seeking office.
Today’s battle over merit is part of the larger culture war insofar competence is a value akin to promoting strong families, public safety and quality education, but not everybody prioritizes merit. Many would be hurt economically if merit were the primary value. The desire for merit may now be in ascendancy, but no victory can be final.
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