Identity

Dear Princess ‘Ishka,

The concept of ‘pride’ in politics can spark discomfort, confusion and even outrage. In previous letters of mine I have talked about gay pride, but similar cases for pride can be made for women’s pride, black pride, disable pride, etc. Every time a social group has been systematically oppressed, stigmatized or denied full participation to public spaces in a society, there is a case for these social groups to develop each a collective conscience to change their social world for the better through pride. Where there was shame, self-hatred and hopelessness, pride ignites self-worth, love and hope.

At the same time, we all know too well the downsides of pride, eminently through Christian religious teachings: pride is the worst of capital sins, for it is connected with hybris, that is, the denial of original sin and hence the thought that we are more god-like than religion would like us to be. We needn’t go all the way to religion to see the deleterious effects of pride when it comes to nationalism, white suprematism, elitism, etc.

What does make ‘pride’ in politics a good rather than a bad attitude? This question is particularly pressing for I read here and there of straight white men worried that the tendency among stigmatized groups to base one’s sense of (political) self on pride might not be too different from nationalism. Otherwise, if they had to accept the positivity of pride in those contexts, why shall they be denied the right to be proud of being straight white boys?

I want to take this challenge seriously. There are certainly cases in which pride is considered good, even from a religious perspective: the pride of the parent for his daughter, of the artist for her artwork, of the rugby team for the win, etc. these do not seem at all to be problematic cases of pride. Instead there are clear cases of pride being bad, as mentioned above. Lgbt pride, women’s pride, black pride, disable pride etc. occupy a space that is less easily classified as either good or bad. The reason of this controversy is twofold. On the one hand, these identities are a response to a negative state of affairs and do not start out from a positive value like the joy and pride at seeing one’s adopted child socialize and being happy. On the other hand, for every individual belonging to an oppressed social group, some identities will make her/him always privileged under other respects. A gay white man is always a white man in many social contexts, hence privileged. A straight white woman is always straight and white and privileged for that. A straight black man is still a straight man, and so on and so forth…

What is left for white straight men to be proud of?  An easy answer would be a further question: why do straight white men even need pride when they are privileged everywhere they go? But I am suspicious about this easy answer. First of all, problems of social class are a huge issue, which greatly influences the level of privilege one is ascribed socially. Many straight white men don’t feel privileged precisely because of their social class and it would be a gross mistake to stubbornly say that they are privileged none the less. Instead of concluding that stigmatized social groups shouldn’t be allowed to appeal to pride, or straightaway allowing for white nationalism, let’s start simply by acknowledging that being proud of belonging to the working-class, i.e., one stigmatized class, is not necessarily bad.

Working-class white straight men can be proud of belonging to the working class. Of course, working class gay black men will be structurally more oppressed, but their greater oppression doesn’t cancel the claim of working-class people in general to be proud of belonging to their class. If we say “upper class white straight men have no claim to pride”, that sounds already a lot better, doesn’t it?

I don’t want to stop here, however. I think that there is always a sense of the word ‘pride’ that even the upper class white straight dude can appeal to. This sense of pride is related to a specific profession or social role one plays. There is pride in being a good hairdresser, football player, entrepreneur, journalist, teacher, parent, friend, etc. As soon as we see this apparently innocuous meaning of pride, we start perceiving the depth of the concept of pride for oppressed groups. What does it even mean to be oppressed? Well, one of the clearest uses of the word refers to the systematic exclusion from social roles for which one can be proud of: gay people being excluded from professional sports and parenthood, women from positions of power and responsibility, black people being not only excluded but even segregated, disabled people being treated with paternalism and not given the chance to express their full personal potential.

One of the main reasons why many straight white men feel so much discomfort at hearing of gay pride, women in science day, black lives matter movement or disabled people visibility events is that they are so soaked up in their own privilege that they don’t even see how many things they can be proud of that society systematically keeps away from oppressed social groups. Only when they will start to deeply question their position in this world, will the straight white men I have been talking about also be able to see what truly oppresses them, that is, their social class and/or their own gender role, and stop come up with idiotic reactionary ideas.

Forever yours,

‘Miasha

Merit

Dear Princess ‘Ishka,

Today I am going to talk about merit. The thesis I want to defend is that merit is not a criterion to make good laws and that meritocracy is, against wide-spread intuitions, ruinous as a political methodology.

Let’s start by looking at the concept of merit in its general connotation. Merit is an attribution of positive value to an action a person has successfully performed with her own efforts. For merit, a person can receive praise, honors, prices, social status recognition, money or flowers. Merit is the somewhat more institutional sister of praiseworthiness, because it is often associated with formal responses, sometimes even legal ones, whereas praiseworthiness more often calls for informal responses.

I don’t think this distinction is neat or can be made any neater, but it is enough for me to talk about merit as opposed to praiseworthiness. The point is this: praiseworthiness is not something you base a political organization upon, whereas merit can be the foundation stone of meritocracy. Practices of praising other people are spontaneous cultural products, to the extent that it would be difficult to criticize them without making a pedantic moralist of oneself. But merit, in my current usage, is something people would like to fix in the form of law, hence it is less spontaneous and can be criticized without further preliminary apologies on my side.

At a first glance, merit is a very good starting point to administrate a society in accordance with. The more talented and effortful one is at performing a certain task, the more social recognition one should obtain. This, I believe, is the plain and simple reason why many people believe that a meritocracy would be the best form of political administration of a society. However, this simple view faces following unsurmountable challenges: 1) Talent and effort are not innate capacities of individuals, but crucially depend on each person’s specific upbringing, economical background, and sociocultural environment; 2) Meritocracy focuses on talent and especially effort as unique criteria of valuing a person’s actions, without giving priority to the person’s own realization as a good citizen; 3) In a society based on merit, what is most praiseworthy should per definition be pursued more than what is less, hence everybody should be theoretically pushed to occupy the most prestigious positions in a society, meaning that those who fail at the task will be less praiseworthy, and those who succeed will be praised by default.

Let’s take a closer look at these points, for I had to face strong opposition to defend each of them (click here for more). Starting with point number 1), my opponent would be tempted to accuse me of being a social determinist. Why is this charge important? Because it would mean that I would not be valuing willpower as a source of social and political change but I would prefer to see society and history passively unfolding without people having any saying in it. This view would amount to skepticism about political influence on society, so I better defend myself if I want to propose a political alternative, rather than retreating into skepticism.

I am not a social determinist. Indeed, as I have already argued (especially here), it is precisely because of the social, cultural and economic limitations we face that willpower can make sense and can allow us to think optimistically about social change. Freedom in the sense of a state of being unconstrained is unintelligible. The only freedom that there can be is freedom of choice and choice needs criteria, hence constraints. This said, each one of us has different constraints and can be capable of different things therefore. Nevertheless, there are cases of impairment in one’s personal development due to poverty, oppression, trauma, disease, depression, systematic discrimination, etc. that can’t be approached simply by saying “with enough effort, everybody can make it”. That’s blind stupidity. For the conditions that can undermine a person’s flourishing are at least as many as those which can foster it.

One could always reply that meritocracy could at least work for “normal cases”. This again is to get things wrong. If you have the background allowing you to put effort into what you do, what you do should be the only thing that counts for your integration in a society, not that you do it better or by trying harder than the others. A society based on solidarity and on the healthy and fair contribution of each one of us is much better than a society, where killing yourself of hard work will provide you with barely enough recognition for you not to be killed by frustration beforehand.

Moving to point 2), meritocracy overlooks completely a person’s realization. “Why?” my opponent would be asking “If you strive for something you value greatly, then why shouldn’t you be realized with the social recognition of your efforts?”. Well, because in a society based on merit, what counts is for you to put as much effort as possible into anything that is valuable in general, not something that can be valuable for you to be doing insofar as it is you and not somebody else. Take a very intelligent person, Bob, who loves biology over anything else, medicine in particular. In a meritocracy, Bob has the intelligence to study both biology and medicine, but with medicine, he will receive more social recognition, because medical doctors are more useful than biologists when one considers the total amount of medical doctors a society needs as opposed to the number of biologists needed. So, Bob would have good reasons to opt for a career that will make him quite frustrated, instead of following his dream of becoming a biologist. Biology and medicine are radically different professional fields, and the best that meritocracy can say is that any of the two will do good, as long as practiced with effort. This is not true of people like Bob. What we should say instead is that any of the two will do good, as long as practiced by the right people, namely those who would be professionally realized in their practice.

Point 3) is simply an immediate consequence of point 2). If meritocracy is not centered on the value that each citizen can provide to her wider community insofar as she is realized in what she does, but rather on her putting as much effort as possible into something that is valuable in general, the result is that citizens should strive for what is valuable in general and not for what they might best be suited for (given the socio-cultural, economic, personal constraints). If you are doing a job that involves less effort than another one, you should be considered less praiseworthy, no matter how equally needed both jobs are. Society is going to reward with much greater recognition professions that require higher academic degrees and that are very demanding in terms of hours of work. Physicians, engineers, CEOs, university professors, etc. are going to be more praiseworthy than cleaners, construction workers, artists, etc. unless those of the latter class become CEOs themselves. This is an unavoidable consequence of any meritocracy, which also goes under the name of classism.

As an alternative, I do not hope for either nepotism, or social stagnation in terms of people not being moved to aim at higher positions than those they already occupy. The alternative to meritocracy is a society that fights poverty, discrimination and all those factors that undermine the possibilities for a person to flourish. It is a society that values cooperative work over genius and individual success and a society that helps each one of its components to be praiseworthy and deserving of respect and recognition, but that does not institutionalize praiseworthiness as a reward for effort.  It is a society centered on genuine individual and collective realization, with less frustration and negativity and more happiness for each one of its members. And although this is very sketchy, it is a society where no one would have to feel like saying “I had to work ten times harder than anybody else to obtain my place”. The reason? Because the alternative to meritocracy would simply be a fair society.

Forever yours,

‘Miasha

PS. See also my ‘Dream‘ for a closely related discussion.