Lani Guinier, a Boskey Professor at Harvard Law School and a noted scholar on democratic theory and voting rights, argued Monday night at the Center for Film Studies that meritocracy is a racist and unjust system that favors the wealthy.
The talk, the culminating event of Wesleyan’s Sustained Dialogue on Race and Class in Higher Education, focused on how higher education plays into the democratic construct of meritocracy. Meritocracy, according to Guinier, is a system for the privileged to hold onto privilege while being immune from criticism.
“Talent plus effort equals merit, right? That’s the equation,” Guinier said. “But how do we define talent and effort? We define talent and effort on the individual level without taking into account background.”
Guinier emphasized how higher education caters to the upper class. She explained that although only two out of five high school graduates go to college, much of the funding for universities, even private ones like Wesleyan, comes from taxpayers. In this way, according to Guinier, the lower classes are subsidizing the upper classes’ continuing stranglehold on power.
“In many ways higher education is operating in a way that is antithetical to democracy,” Guinier said.
Guinier asserted that certain methods of measuring potential and achievement in students, like the SATs, were merely indicators of class status. According to Guinier, this merit-based system ignores the circumstances, which might deprive the individual of the chance to succeed.
“[Meritocracy] says to those who win, ‘you deserve to be here,” Guinier said. “To those who lose it says, ‘You are stupid.”
She argued that race and racism are bound together with the structural problem of meritocracy.
“It is important to understand the way race functions as the language of class,” Guinier said. As an example, Guinier cited the way poor white people ally politically with the upper class, often against their interests. Because they lack a language to deal with their class issues, they only have the language of racism to express their discontent, and therefore ignore potentially helpful allies because of bigotry.
Students responded positively to Guinier’s ideas, breaking out into spontaneous applause or affirmative whistling several times during the talk.
“She brought up issues that people generally feel uncomfortable discussing,” said Marta Martinez ’05.
“I think [Gunier] points out things that people know about the inconsistencies with the way people get places in colleges,” said Melanye Price, Assistant Professor of Government.
After the lecture, note cards were passed out. Audience members were encouraged to discuss issues brought up in the lecture with their neighbors for a few minutes and then write questions for Guinier onto the note cards. The audience asked questions ranging from the effects of Wesleyan’s ownership of the Long Lane Property to why Guinier worked within a Democratic framework rather than a Marxist or socialist one.
“It was great the way the audience was engaged fully in these critical issues,” said Iris Jacob ’06 who co-moderated a discussion on the talk and these issues on Tuesday night.
Many students felt that they agreed with these issues beforehand, but that Guinier had provided them with some important scholarly evidence to back up their ideas.
“I thought it was great; just a whole lot of common sense,” said Alan Yaspan ’08. “It was very cool having facts and information to use [with ideas.]”
Aside from her work at Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and with the NAACP, Guinier is well known for her nomination under President Clinton to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. To the outrage of her supporters, pressure from conservatives forced her to withdrawal from that nomination, without even a confirmation hearing.
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