The End of Excellence

Editor’s note: I’ve been skull-deep in a home improvement project this week (and the week before, and the next week), so today I’m cranking the WABAC machine to July 2020, for a reminder that the preferred “solution” to our supposed cultural woes (not the real ones, just the ones that they’ve chosen to make so) is dumbing down rather than lifting up.

One fine fellow over at the New York Times has posited that symphony orchestras need to be more diverse, apparently because the adoption of “blind” auditions, intended to eliminate racial and gender bias, haven’t produced an outcome he deems acceptable. Wait… It’s not only unacceptable, the racial imbalance is “appalling.”

Over at Vox, we learn that the concept of meritocracy is “a pretense, constructed to rationalize an unjust distribution of advantage.” Which I read: a parent put a violin in a kid’s hands, another didn’t, therefore the first kid has an unjust advantage over the second. Flip the script for a moment. What of the parent who put a basketball in a kid’s hands, to pick an obvious one? The NBA’s player roster is nearly 75% black – is that based on an unjust distribution of advantage? The Times laments that composition of the top tier of symphony orchestras is only 1.8% black, but makes no mention that it’s 20% asian.

All around us, we see an abandonment of merit-based recognition in favor of forced diversity. Take note, I’m not talking about skipping over the best candidate for a position based on race or other identity markers. The blind audition process addresses that sort of discrimination (in all directions). This is about rejecting the best person for a position where being the best is what it’s all about, to satisfy some privileged (white man writing for the NY Times is pretty damn privileged) scold’s synthetic outrage that he doesn’t see enough POC in the orchestra pit.

Not only does this corrupt a product whose very existence relies on excellence, it is appallingly condescending to the people he champions. And, if he gets his way, it’ll taint the accomplishments of those black and latino performers who achieved their positions through excellence. They’ll forever live under the shadow of “quota.” Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell have had a whole lot to say about this.

A by-product of this forced mediocrity (and yes, if you step away from blind meritocracy to a quota system, you are prioritizing mediocrity over excellence) is a take-down of America’s culture of individualism. Those who fetishize European-style social democracy would love an American version of the Scandinavian Law of Jante, a cultural peculiarity that tears down individualistic thoughts in favor of “don’t think you are anything special” homogenizing. Take away individualism, and people are more apt to obey and comply with the diktats of the Best-and-Brightest who have decided it is their noblesse oblige to rewrite the rules of our society. The Left’s demand that corporations serve “stakeholders” (i.e. operate by their rules rather than to the benefit of the people whose money is at risk) rather than shareholders is more of the same.

The woke-sters tell us that “meritocracy” is not just bad, it’s a white-supremacy dog whistle.

I can’t think of a better way to perpetuate racial animus than to subordinate merit to quotas.

Which, for some in the woke-world, is the point. As I recently quoted, “A solution means the gravy train is over.”