Maybe it’s the old flower child in me coming out but in addition to the economic apartheid, I feel like there is something in it that is intentionally designed to break the spirit; an emotional component. An evil made even more insidious because its applied in such a way where the average white person has no clue that its even present, and designed to convince black people that “if you just worked harder” you could advance. This is something intended to crush the spirit, and gaslight everyone involved into believing there isn’t a problem, all while providing cover to those who are supposedly in charge of spending the tax revenue on behalf of the people. We see it with the recent string of SCOTUS decisions, clawing back laws that were designed to end apartheid, for example laws related to voting, education, etc. We see it with the food deserts that many black families are forced to endure, the substandard housing, the barriers to receiving loans and mortgages, the low likelihood of being afforded a reasonable education, and on and on.
The concept of meritocracy is fascinating. The power of the aristocracy fell when people stopped believing that Kings were appointed by God (and thus deserving of their position). Almost no-one would accept the condition of the poor if it was openly dictated along racial lines, or by some other kind of system that didn’t veil itself behind the idea of personal responsibility - including the poor themselves. South Africa of course was unable to sustain such a system. I wonder if the decline of the middle class and of social mobility (which is largely occurring in a generational way, as children being worse off than their parents), will also weaken the idea of meritocracy. It’s really the most important foundation of liberal ideology as a belief system.
