Meritocracy

Dumb obvious thoughts for a post-Thanksgiving day, but I am always struck by people in cushy jobs who truly believe they achieved it through some sort of meritocratic process. I remember one columnist, and not even a particularly bad one, arguing that, well, sure representation in the field of columnizing wasn't what it should be, but it still wouldn't be right for a person of color to have his job instead if they were less good at it.

Like there is some sort of "columnist test" which objectively ranks the columnist skills, and in the field of Column Writing the best people get the jobs. Can't replace a SCORE 97 columnist with SCORE 94 columnist just because the latter is black.

This is not how anything works, except maybe "how many boxes can you pack and ship in an hour," or, "how many radish plants can you harvest," and certainly not the hiring process for columnists for  prestige publications, but people really think it is, somehow. The people who who have those jobs.