Racism and Classism: Enemies of Meritocracy

DEI vs white supremacy hires

Photo by Memento Media on Unsplash

Only once in my life did I manage to get a professional job without knowing somebody.

I lucked into my first job after college, if you can call working for $215 per week at a little society newspaper “luck.” I didn’t know anybody there, but the timing and a willingness to work for shit wages was on my side.

From then on, I have never landed a job or significant freelance opportunity without knowing someone. Your story is likely to be similar: In most fields, if you need a job, you need luck or a contact. Preferably both.

I did not understand until fairly recently just what an advantage cronies and nepo babies have. My parents didn’t have any connections I could use to get ahead, and neither did anybody I grew up with. I honestly believed that by going to college, I’d learn the skills I needed to succeed and that would be enough.

I had no idea how many jobs are filled because somebody knows somebody from their own bubble, or how coming from a lower socioeconomic class would affect me for the rest of my life.

The only reason I understand this now is because my bubble burst. Otherwise, I’d probably still retain at least some belief in meritocracy.

This system works quite well if you do know people

Sometimes, all you have to do is put out the word in your network: “Hey, I’m looking for a job. Let me know if you hear about something.” But you have to have a network.

People prefer to hire a candidate they know or who comes recommended by a person they trust. I don’t think most people have any ill intent in doing that at all. It’s hard to judge someone on the basis of a resume and interview, so if someone you trust recommends a candidate, you feel more comfortable hiring them.

But what ends up happening is people hire from within their own bubble – and your own bubble probably is less diverse than ideal. If you are a straight white dude, as so many people involved in hiring decisions are, you probably spend much of your life in a straight white dude bubble and thus are much more likely to hire another straight white dude to fill a really desirable job. And to you, this system seems to work great for you and all your friends, so you naturally question the motives of anyone who wants to change it.

This is why we have never had a meritocracy

What we’ve always had is bubbles full of cronies and nepo babies. And that explains why some people whose work you know to be mediocre at best keep landing impressive jobs while others whose work you know to be very good can’t seem to advance.

Programs like affirmative action and DEI were supposed to help address this problem. Instead of just hiring your friend’s friend, you’d look outside your bubble and perhaps hire a talented person you’d never met. You would, in fact, be more likely to hire on merit if you stopped hiring on connections.

DEI was good for everyone

If you felt pressure to consider the entire pool of candidates out there, you’d pick the very best person you could find. It’s likely that person would be a better choice than if you only drew from the much smaller pool of people you happened to know.

But some people did not like it one bit when they no longer enjoyed the hiring advantages they’d always had. Instead of acknowledging that it was better to expand hiring to a larger pool of qualified people rather than restricting it to a small bubble, some people lashed out.

They claimed every non-while, non-straight, non-male, etc. person was a “DEI hire,” although I think a good term we could have been using before would be “straight white male supremacy hire.”

Race and class are two different things

But they’re cousins. I’m a straight white woman and I acknowledge having those privileges, but despite that, I’ve never landed a job that pays the median wage and one reason is that I lack class or economic privilege.

This system was invisible to me while I was still in newspapers, because I enjoyed good connections in the small world of central Illinois community journalism.

My eyes opened about 15 years ago, when I began to accept I would need to pivot my career into a non-newspaperly direction. Newsrooms have been doing more laying off than hiring in the last couple decades. I sent my resume and carefully composed little cover letters out to places where I did not know a soul, seeking jobs in fields like communications, public relations and copywriting.

It gave me some idea of what this is like for the BIPOC world

My newspaper contacts were useless in the non-newspaper world. It was almost as if I had no professional contacts at all. I just knew a lot of poor, powerless writers, all of whom provided glowing references that hiring managers dismissed because they came from an outside bubble.

Making the move from one bubble to another isn’t easy, and adding some ageism into the mix doesn’t help.

Do you know anyone who needs someone skilled at covering city council, school board and county board meetings, who understands the criminal justice system well enough to cover cops and courts, who can manage a newsroom, oversee election coverage, coordinate coverage of disaster scenes, write editorials, train young reporters and plan special sections and who knows enough media law to keep the place from getting sued for libel?

Of course you don’t. Nobody values any of that now – the newspaper bubble burst a long time ago. I tried but failed to demonstrate how my skills would translate to other fields. Also, I believe I was seen as too old to train for a new role. So instead, I had to hire and train myself. I knew I was good.

Last year, I made more working for myself than I ever made working for others, but it’s a precarious way to make a living and doesn’t come with benefits. I’m lucky to have a spouse with health insurance.

It’s maddening that so many people who possess certain privileges do not understand that they have reached their place in life thanks at least in part to those privileges. Instead, they credit their own merit. If someone outside their circle manages to get a job, it’d just gotta be a “DEI hire” because why else would the hiring manager pass up the chance to hire a straight white guy who knows the same people he knows?

Graduating from a prestigious university, having parents who know people, having enough money to be able to take an unpaid internship or to move across the country, having an appearance that marks you as belonging to a certain group – none of these has anything to do with your talent, skill, intelligence or work ethic.

If you’ve ever wondered why some groups still struggle in spite of our supposed equality, this is why.

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here or on Medium. My new book is The Trailer Park Rules. Tips accepted here at Ko-fi.

All wealthy families are alike; each poor family is poor in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy, if he had written about a trailer park

For residents of the Loire Mobile Home Park, surviving means understanding which rules to follow and which to break. Each has landed in the trailer park for wildly different reasons.

Jonesy is a failed journalist with one dream left. Angel is the kind of irresponsible single mother society just shakes its head about, and her daughter Maya is the kid everybody overlooks. Jimmy and Janiece Jackson wanted to be the first in their families to achieve the American dream, but all the positive attitude in the world can’t solve their predicament. Darren is a disabled man trying to enjoy his life despite a dark past. Kaitlin is a former stripper with a sugar daddy, while Shirley is an older lady who has come down in the world and lives in denial. Nancy runs the park like a tyrant but finds out when a larger corporation takes over that she’s not different from the residents.

When the new owners jack up the lot rent, the lives of everyone in the park shift dramatically and in some cases tragically.

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