Does the white upper class feel exhausted and
oppressed by meritocracy?
Ross Douthat notes:
“And wouldn’t it be especially appealing if — and here
I’m afraid I’m going to be very cynical — in the course of relaxing the demands
of whiteness you could, just coincidentally, make your own family’s position a
little bit more secure?
For instance: Once you dismiss the SAT as just a tool
of white supremacy, then it gets easier for elite schools to justify excluding
the Asian-American students whose standardized-test scores keep climbing while
white scores stay relatively flat. Or again: If you induce inner-city charter
schools to disavow their previous stress on hard work and discipline and
meritocratic ambition, because those are racist, too — well, then their
minority graduates might become less competitive with your own kids in the
college-admissions race as well”.