DEI is Merit

Yeah, more politics. I could point out that a lot of tech firms are backing away from DEI, but that’s not why I wrote this. Besides, at this point, I have no brand. Buy a can of soda from me and it could be New Coke, or grape flavored, or RC cola (well, not RC. I’m not a monster.). Screw the obsession with brand. Now enjoy today’s Dr. Pepper. Maybe. Could be a Fanta. Never know.

I want to start this post by pointing out that the concept of meritocracy is nonsense. There are simply too many people in this world and too few positions for the idea that the “best” person for a position is clearly the “best” at that position. With automation and globalization, all the people who would have been the best darn sock darner in their village are now pretty much indistinguishable and competing for many fewer sock darner jobs. Luck is an inevitably large part of anyone’s life in modern capitalism.

Having said that, however, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion or DEI because I am too damn lazy and too terrible a speller to type that all out every time, push merit. In the before times, positions depended entirely upon connection and birth. You got to be the local sock darner because you were born into a family of sock darners, or your dad knew the local sock darner and arranged an apprenticeship. Even deep into the modern era of capitalism, having the right connections meant being known and helped by the right people. Merit mattered little, mostly on the edges, as more of a floor than an expectation. If you knew the right people, as long as you did not embarrass your patrons, you were fine.

To this day, a lot of position sorting works this way. The reason to go to a top college is not the education — you don’t get a materially different education at Harvard than you do at any flagship state school, for example. It is the network. Having gone to Ivy League U introduces you into a network that you can then leverage into top positions and a life of comfort. Heck, when I was interviewing to go to the University of Chicago, the interviewer spent probably as much time talking about the alumni network and what a help it was than asking me questions. Even in the more middle class and blue-collar jobs this can be present. To this day, it is easier to get into some unions or public service jobs if you have a patron.

To a certain extent, this makes some sense. A patron knows that little Jimmy is a hard worker or not so dumb that he’s going to screw things up. There is a reason businesses ask their employees for recommendations. It is easier to trust people you already trust to find other people you can trust than to find people you can trust from the general population. The problem, however, should be obvious.

Patrons often have a very low bar for good enough. Pete Hegseth is no more qualified for the position of Secretary of Defense than I am qualified to start in goal for the Blackhawks. But his patron loves him, because they share the same basic contempt for non-whites and the rule of law. Positions may also be used by patrons to pay off supporters, regardless of merit. RFK Jr. is the Secretary of Health and Human Services because his patron needed to pay off his help in winning the election. The only way he could be less qualified was if he was the actual measles virus, but that didn’t matter. His political support did.

The other issue is access to patrons. Because of our history, people do not have access to patrons equally. Race, gender, disability, and class (though we don’t talk about class very much in this country) contribute to your access to patronage networks, and thus good positions. I grew up poor and had no patrons. I didn’t really even realize these kinds of networks existed and how powerful they could be until I was older. Woman and minorities have been traditionally kept out of the incubators of these networks — sometimes by law, sometimes by custom — and so have had many fewer opportunities to leverage those networks than other people. Programs that work to get people into positions without having to rely on those networks enhance merit.

If you are arguing against DEI, you are arguing against hiring on merit, period. Because the alternative is the same kinds of patronage networks that put a fool like Hegseth in charge of the Defense Department. DEI is not perfect. As I mentioned, the idea of a full meritocracy is silly in this day and age. But by short circuiting patronage networks, we increase the chances that people more qualified for the position receive them because we do not artificially ignore some people or artificially reward others.

DEI is a tool of merit hiring. Opposing it is a statement that you do not care about merit.