Meritocracy

despot, as his job was to be a concerned person for his subjects. Frederick the Great reformed the idea of civil service, where people started to get selected from the middle class and higher ranks. In this reformation what happened was the idea of meritocracy where it didn’t matter what noble family you come from to serve Fredrick to serve in the civil service. However, his support for ideals like religious tolerance led to lasting changes in Europe, and he paved the way for the complete…

Conner Bone HIST 362 April 14th, 2024. Baseball’s Failure as a Meritocratic Institution Many within baseball hold the steadfast belief that the sport as a whole, across its various organizations and systems, has always been a meritocracy. Supposedly, it does not matter who you are or where you came from. As long as you have the skills and athleticism, you can make it big in baseball. And to that end, anyone can be successful in baseball if they work hard enough and persevere. In other words,…

One of the major contemporary criticisms of Black Power activists in the late 1960s was their lack of a coherent definition of the term Black Power and a reliable program that could replace organized forms of non-violent activism. Joseph has shown that this critique continues to pervade historian’s portrayal of the Black Power movement, as scholars continue to portray the period mainly in negative terms, without discussing the distinct ideological and practical contributions of Black Power…

Political parties oversee and tangentially control elections in the United States. These political parties threaten representative democracy and create dysfunction in government. Elected representatives are more stewards to the interests of party coalitions than to the will of their constituents. Coalitions rely on candidates to carry out their agenda and candidates rely on interest group coalitions to keep them in office, therefore allowing political parties to usurp the voter’s clout and…

The American Dream is a difficult term to define due to its subjective nature. Some people view it as the promise of material wealth and a comfortable existence. Others view the dream as the promise of a blank slate upon which they can chart their own paths and determine their own futures. Still others see the dream as the promise of racial equality. The term “American Dream,” then, is perhaps best summarized as a projection of people’s innermost desires. Therefore, a particular formulation of…

in Fortgang’s essay when it is evident in society and the identification of race. So I ask this in response to Fortgang’s article: does white privilege still benefit white people who struggle or have struggled in the past? Fortgang believes in meritocracy and does not believe, “that we are all governed by invisible forces (some would call them ‘stigmas’ or ‘societal norms’), that our nation runs…

Chiquita Brands International Inc. is a multinational producer, distributer and marketer of bananas mainly and other fresh fruit products. The banana division only consists of 19,000 employees mainly working in more than 100 banana farms in countries throughout Latin America like Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador , Costa Rica , Panama and Colombia . It has always cared about their employees who were living in houses (owned by Chiquita) in the banana farms. The company used to provide…

Education is becoming ridiculously expensive, yet at the same time, is now one of the most vital things to survive in this changing world. One of the oldest colleges in American history, Harvard University, founded in 1636, costs $60,659 for tuition, room, board and fees combined. But was it always this expensive? What percentage of 20-somethings actually even went to college back when it all first began? Today, it is almost a given that when high school is done, you are supposed to go to…

America have been disrupted throughout various eras, including Jim Crow laws, the targeting and imprisoning of Civil Rights activists, and mass incarceration through the devious “war on drugs”. Living in a society so focused on the false myth of meritocracy makes it difficult to see the larger reasons why people of color have to work twice as hard to earn half as much, or why greater competition is created between the few opportunities given to them. This impossible feat can often lead to…

dream has decreased and how it is both based off of truth and lies. She states “There are anecdotal rags-to-riches stories of the American Dream we are less inclines to challenge it because it reinforces the protestant work ethic and perception of meritocracy…” (Wyatt-Nichol) this just goes to show that we have already been forced to think a certain way about how it is supposed to work and what “American dream” we as a society are meant to strive…