Meritocracy

It’s a confusing time. Society appears to be fighting racism for all its worth. But how and where do you fight, if virtually everything’s been declared racist? And if institutions are the ones announcing the omnipresence of institutional racism, aren’t they fingering themselves? But if they believe racism is racist,…

What comes after meritocracy? February 23, 2021 Last spring, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina explained why, at a pivotal moment in the Democratic primaries, he endorsed Joe Biden for president: “Our problem, it seems to me, is too many candidates spend time trying to let people know how smart…

Have you ever heard of The Nightingales? No? Well, that situation needs swiftly rectifying, reckons Stewart Lee, the splendid stand-up, sometime Sunday-paper album reviewer and recent number- one-hitmaker (with Asian Dub Foundation). Now he’s also a rock-documentarian, alongside old colleague Michael Cumming, best known for directing bravura comedies like Brass…

The choice ahead for the 50 Senate Republicans is stark. In the words of that old labor song, “Which side are you on?” In their masterful and, at times, heartbreaking presentation, the House impeachment managers asked Senate Republicans a simple question: Will you side with Mike Pence, the Capitol Police,…

In the aftermath of the pro-Trump riots that left five dead at the United States Capitol, Republicans have focused on the real problem: cancel culture. Citing the president’s removal from just about every social media app in existence and the scores of companies announcing they would no longer do business…

Few art forms on earth are more indebted to class privilege than Western classical music. For most of its history, it has relied on monarchs, aristocrats, and wealthy patrons even to exist. We have Haydn because of a prince, Mozart and Beethoven because of a baron, Stravinsky and Copland because…

Chief Executive Carrie Lam has refused to be drawn into a row sparked by reports that a Communist Party member will be appointed a vice president of Hong Kong University, saying she won't interfere in the institution's affairs. Ahead of the Executive Council meeting on Tuesday, Lam – who is…

Fredrik deBoer's criticisms of America's counterproductive education system will be familiar to many on the right. The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Educational System Perpetuates Social Injustice, by Fredrik deBoer, (All Points Books: August 2020), 288 pages, $20.99.Self-described revolutionary socialist Fredrik deBoer will certainly anger many in the progressive educational establishment…

Harvard professor Michael Sandel argues the Western world has 'outsourced our moral judgment to markets' and wrongly assumed that 'the money people make is the measure of their contribution to the common good' If the Western world has a unifying social concept any longer, it’s the ideal of meritocracy, of…

Looming above America’s present struggles over injustice and inequality is the sense that certain self-mythologies are beginning to evaporate. When Barack Obama was in the White House, he often studded his speeches with a favorite pop lyric, “You can make it if you try.” He mentioned it more than a…