The Limits of Meritocracy in a Racially Divided Society

Two Contrasts: “Selection” Versus “Formation” and “Blindness” Versus “Indifference”

“Meritocracy” is one of those civic incantations we repeat with confidence, as if the word itself were synonymous with justice. Naively understood, it commits to assigning scarce opportunities—college admissions, employment, promotions, public honors—to the most “meritorious.” Yet, this promise rests on two pillars that are often conflated. The first is fairness in selection: using rules that are neutral, transparent, and blind to irrelevant traits such as race. The second is fairness in formation: referencing the long, premarket process by means of which people acquire the capacities, credentials, habits, and networks that allow them to be competitive in the first place. Our debates typically focus on the first pillar and ignore the second. The result is a thin conception of meritocracy: clean procedures that cloak an unequal social infrastructure.

Contemporary disputes over “color blindness” clarify what is at stake. Some critics advocate that institutions should ignore race when allocating opportunities. I do not deny the moral appeal of color-blind rules, because “race” as such is not a morally relevant category. But “blindness” can easily slide into “indifference”—refusing to acknowledge the relational and developmental conditions that can determine who actually meets neutral standards. These observations point toward a synthesis: A defensible meritocracy keeps rules blind at the point of selection, while cultivating and repairing the formative paths that lead to that point. As I’ve advocated elsewhere: “relations before transactions,” as a matter of both temporality and priority. Justice is not achieved by neutral transactions alone; it must also be concerned with the institutions and relations that determine the development of human potential.

To see why, begin with the concept itself. In common usage, “meritocracy” is procedural. We imagine a committee with a rubric, a hiring manager with structured interviews, an algorithm that weighs the same factors for every applicant. There is obvious value in such neutral devices—they discipline favoritism, reduce the role of social connections in formal decisions, and anchor judgments in job-relevant criteria. But the procedural focus hides a prior question: Who is prepared to meet the bar?

Preparation is not merely a function of innate talent and effort. It is shaped by schools and teachers, neighborhood safety, parental resources and stability, peer effects and role models, access to information, rehearsal opportunities, test familiarity, and the invisible circulation of recommendations. A regime can be impeccably fair at the point of award and still reproduce inequality because it is indifferent to the path that leads to the award. Call the first part fairness of selection and the second fairness of formation. A thin meritocracy honors the former and neglects the latter. A thick meritocracy insists that both matter and, further, that it is the legitimate business of a just society to promote equality of access for all, insofar as it is feasible, to the paths of human development that precede the point of award.

The distinction between race blindness and race indifference is easily blurred but normatively crucial. Race blindness is a rule that governs decisions: It requires that race not be used as a criterion when allocating opportunities, thereby guarding against favoritism and preserving equal protection. Race indifference, by contrast, is an orientation toward the social world: It reflects a refusal to attend to the ways in which racialized histories and networks shape the development of capacity. One can be race blind at the point of selection while remaining attentive—indeed, morally responsible—for the conditions under which candidates become qualified. The danger arises when blindness in decision is conflated with indifference to development. In that case, neutrality at the point of award risks ratifying inequalities that are themselves the product of structured disadvantage. A defensible meritocracy must therefore combine blindness in judgment with vigilance about the processes that produce the qualities being judged.

Advocates of blindness and opponents of indifference are addressing different aspects of equality. Blindness supporters believe that neutral rules and laws ensure fairness and that unequal outcomes are expected in diverse societies. Opponents of indifference argue that true equality requires social recognition and inclusion that go beyond formal rules, noting that racially segregated networks perpetuate disadvantages. They contend justice involves strengthening social foundations—family, schools, safety, and cross-group connections—so that race neutrality does not reinforce existing racial inequality.

What, Then, Must Be Done?

From this vantage, the reform agenda practically writes itself. A thick meritocracy has two layers. The first is fairness in selection: no racial preferences, criteria that are relevant to the task, clarity about what is being measured, due process for applicants, and insulation from political patronage. The second is fairness in formation: a race-aware diagnosis of the disadvantages embedded in families, neighborhoods, schools, and networks—without a race-based allocation at the point of selection. Interventions here are capability building and network opening: early literacy and numeracy, high-dosage tutoring tied to rigorous curricula, teacher quality and classroom management, mentoring and alumni networks that reach beyond the usual feeder schools, apprenticeship pathways into first jobs, transparent promotion ladders, even reentry programs that reduce the stigma of a criminal record for those who have demonstrably rehabilitated. Such interventions need not be formulated in explicit racial terms, though they can be expected to have racially egalitarian effects. A succinct way to describe this posture is race conscious in diagnosis, race neutral in allocation, and relational in method. It preserves the moral core of merit—rewarding achievement—while fostering the social processes that create achievement.

Concrete examples clarify the distinction. Consider college admissions. A university might abandon racial preferences and apply a blind rubric to all applicants. On paper, this seems obviously fair. In practice, large preparation gaps—in K–12 school quality, neighborhood safety, advising and test exposure, and things as simple as knowing how to package a file—shift the admittable pool toward already advantaged pipelines that correlate with race. A thin meritocracy congratulates itself on neutrality and lives with the distribution it produces. A thick meritocracy keeps selection blind but invests upstream: partnerships with underresourced high schools, guaranteed tutoring and advanced coursework, information campaigns that demystify aid, summer bridge programs that remediate gaps before matriculation, and alumni mentoring for first-generation students. The selection rules stay neutral, the formation pipeline broadens, and the qualified-applicant pool deepens.

Labor markets show a similar pattern. Many firms now avoid explicit discrimination and use standardized tools for hiring. Yet they still recruit from a narrow set of schools and rely on networks that mirror the current workforce. Homogeneous teams self-reproduce, even without ill will. The answer is not to add a racial preference at the offer stage. It is to rethink formation and access: skills-based screening that values validated competencies over pedigree, apprenticeships and “first job” programs that build experience for those without elite internships, partnerships with community colleges and workforce boards, structured interviews that reduce noise and bias, transparent promotion ladders so that advancement hinges on observable performance rather than informal sponsorship. The employment transactions remain blind, even as more candidates receive the opportunity to become competitive.

Criminal justice reentry presents a less obvious though no less relevant case. Employers who apply “equal rules” and treat a criminal record as a disqualifying red flag might claim that meritocratic standards justify their decisions. But the practice forecloses the very formation through which a person might demonstrate rehabilitation. Here, anti-indifference thinking can be the difference between permanent exclusion and earned reentry: time-bounded sealing of criminal records for nonviolent offenses, state-backed insurance pools that protect employers who hire returning citizens, community sponsorships and certified training that translate into recognizable credentials. Hiring remains standards-based—no one is owed a job—but the ecosystem provides ex-offenders with plausible routes leading back into the realm where merit can once again be recognized.

While individuals who break the law should be held accountable, preventing those who have completed their sentences from rejoining society undermines true rehabilitation and perpetuates cycles of recidivism, particularly in Black communities. The ongoing association of criminality with dark skin further deepens this injustice. A genuine meritocracy must offer opportunities to those seeking to rebuild after serving their time. With the world's largest prison population, the U.S. cannot afford a system that considers only selection fairness and ignores the imperative to equalize access to opportunity.

Objections to this two-layer model are predictable and deserve answers. The first is that a formation agenda is simply “affirmative action” by another name. It is not. The crucial distinction is between diagnosis and allocation. A thick meritocracy studies how race and class shape development and networks, but it does not use race to award seats or jobs. The supports are eligibility based and open to all who face the relevant deficits. The second concern is that formation reforms will excuse personal responsibility. They should not. The most effective programs pair support with performance contracts—attendance, mastery milestones, behavioral standards—and tie continuation to demonstrated effort. The purpose is to make effort effective, not optional. A third worry is mission creep—that this is social engineering without end. That danger is real, which is why design principles matter: narrow tailoring, local experimentation, credible measurement of outcomes, and sunset clauses that end what does not work. Finally, skeptics argue that “culture,” not “structure,” explains most gaps. But culture is a part of formation. If we believe norms and habits matter, we can invest in teaching, modeling, and reinforcing them—e.g., punctuality, collaboration, long-horizon planning—without dispensing preferences at the finish line.

Translating these ideas into policy yields a set of guardrails. Keep selection blind and job-relevant; publish the rules and stick to them. Invest where returns are highest: early literacy and numeracy, noncognitive skills that underpin persistence and self-control, and school climates that make learning possible. Broaden pipelines without lowering standards: Recruit geographically beyond prestige enclaves, substitute verified skills for prestige signals where feasible, and rely on structured evaluations rather than opaque “fit.” Reduce stigma’s friction where it serves no legitimate safety function by crafting record-sealing rules that balance risk and redemption, aligning “ban the box” with employer safe harbors, and certifying work readiness in ways employers trust. Build contact across lines so that people who would never otherwise meet do so in purposeful settings—mentorships, mixed-network projects, and civic service. Assess value added by rewarding schools and programs that move students the furthest, not merely those that enroll the already advantaged. Pilot, evaluate, and scale, and then abandon what disappoints. The touchstone is always the same: Protect the integrity of selection while improving the equity of formation.

This reframing also clarifies what we mean by “merit.” If merit is only the snapshot of present performance, meritocracy risks sanctifying the past by treating accumulated advantage as virtue. If merit includes trajectory and value added, achievement can be honored without ignoring the conditions that cultivate it. This is not a plea to dilute standards—it is an argument for making standards more meaningful. High expectations are precisely what make investments in formation worthwhile, for the purpose of anti-indifference policy is to expand the set of people who can meet demanding standards, not to change the standards themselves.

Still, we cannot ignore the warnings informed by the failures of racial preferences. Biased modes of selection corrode trust, invite rent-seeking, and stigmatize their beneficiaries. But purely procedural neutrality can legitimate a social order that withholds the relations and resources by means of which merit is formed. A serious public philosophy should absorb both lessons. It should guard the gate (the moment of selection) and repair the path to the gate (the long, formative process that determines who can plausibly approach it).

In that sense, the real choice before us is not meritocracy versus equality but thin versus thick meritocracy. Thin meritocracy is blindness buoyed by indifference. Thick meritocracy is blindness joined to responsibility for formation. The former protects neutral procedures and leaves the rest to chance; the latter keeps procedures neutral while acting on what we know about human development, social networks, and stigma.

A meritocracy worth defending does not ask us to choose between fairness and formation. It demands both. We should keep the selection moment race blind and rule bound, exactly as the defenders of neutral procedures insist. And we should refuse indifference to the social conditions that cultivate capacity, exactly as the critics of thin meritocracy insist. A society confident enough to do both will allocate honors cleanly and grow the number of people who can earn them. That is how we reconcile merit with justice: fairness at the point of award, formation across the life course—blind in judgment, never indifferent in the making of human capital.

Deepening Our Thinking About Meritocracy

Meritocracy remains indispensable. It honors human dignity by insisting that achievement, not ancestry, should determine reward. It expresses the democratic aspiration to judge people by what they do, not by who they are. I would not want to live in a society without this ideal. Yet the lesson of my intellectual journey is that meritocracy cannot stand alone. My early work in economics demonstrated that merit is socially produced: Investments in skill and character are shaped by family, neighborhood, and inherited social capital. In The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, I argued that stigma corrodes meritocracy, ensuring that ability is never judged neutrally, and that the persistence of inequality owes as much to relational deficits as to overt discrimination (Loury 2002). In my Morishima Lecture at the London School of Economics, I sharpened this claim: Relations come before transactions (Loury 2022). To focus only on fairness at the point of exchange is to miss the deeper inequities in the processes that cultivate human potential. Finally, I have distilled these insights into two observations: that development occurs within social institutions and that “race” is not an essence but something we are continually making and remaking through our selective social intercourse. These insights highlight the fragility of meritocracy in a society where institutions remain racially stratified and where racial categories are continually reinforced through our practices of association and avoidance.

Taken together, these arguments point to a necessary rethinking of the meritocratic ideal. We must move beyond a narrow focus on transactional fairness—ensuring that similar résumés receive similar responses—and embrace a broader vision of relational justice. Such justice requires cultivating the institutional and social conditions under which all individuals can develop and display their talents without stigma, exclusion, or inherited disadvantage.

The task, then, is not to abandon meritocracy but to deepen it. We must insist on equal opportunity not merely as a rule of competition but as a commitment to building and sustaining the institutions that nurture human development. Only then can meritocracy be transformed from an ideology masking inequality into a real instrument of social justice.

Some critics contend that the pursuit of “social justice” is a utopian endeavor, arguing that the fairest society is one governed by race-blind laws and procedures, where meritocracy alone ensures impartiality and affirmative action merely distorts fair competition. This perspective maintains that equal treatment under the law is both sufficient and attainable and that efforts to engineer outcomes beyond this are misguided and counterproductive. However, this view overlooks the fact that formal equality at the point of transaction cannot correct for the deep, institutionally rooted disadvantages and social exclusion that derive from race, class, and networked power. Good faith at the point of selection cannot repair damage done at the point of formation.

Another objection often raised is that race should not be the focus of discussions about social inequality and that only social class disparities merit serious attention. Proponents of this view argue that economic disadvantage, rather than racial identity, is the true source of social stratification and injustice. However, this perspective fails to recognize how race and class are deeply intertwined in American society, with racial categories shaping access to resources, opportunities, and social capital in ways that cannot be explained by class alone. Class does not, for example, capture the persistent influence of racial stigma in the everyday experience of Black Americans, nor the subtle ways that even unbiased rational selection can unwittingly reinforce stigma (Coate and Loury 1993). We’ve waited for decades for thinly meritocratic processes to iron racial stigma out of the social fabric, and it has not worked, nor do we have any reason to believe it will work. Ignoring racial dynamics risks overlooking the distinct historical legacies and ongoing practices that perpetuate disadvantage for specific groups, even when controlling for economic status.

Connecting to Other Philosophical Arguments

While this article presents my own conception of thick meritocracy, it is helpful to position it explicitly in relation to the arguments of Daniel Markovits and David Miller:

Daniel Markovits (2019) argues in The Meritocracy Trap that meritocracy no longer functions as the egalitarian ideal it once promised; instead, it has become a mechanism of dynastic advantage and inequality. He emphasizes that the children of the elite accrue human-capital advantages from an early age, thereby limiting mobility and converting meritocratic competition into a self-perpetuating caste. He contends that the “arms race” of enrichment (private schooling, credentials, networks) has injured both the middle class and the elite themselves. In effect, Markovits attacks the formation pillar: He shows how structural advantages at the formation stage undermine fairness, even when selection seems procedurally neutral.

My thick-meritocracy thesis shares with Markovits the recognition that the “formation” side matters deeply; I would say that his critique bolsters the case for investment in formation. However, whereas Markovits’s posture is primarily a critique of meritocracy (arguing it has become pathological), my stance remains a reformative defense: I do not call for the rejection of meritocracy altogether but for its deepening (by strengthening formation and maintaining selection). Thus, I adopt the formation critique of Markovits—but I pair it with a normative commitment to meritocracy’s core (selection fairness). In that sense, my concept of thick meritocracy can be viewed as a constructive response to the pathologies Markovits diagnoses.

David Miller provides a more classical defense of meritocracy, linking it to desert, performance, and equal opportunity. In Principles of Social Justice, Miller (1999) argues that a just society distributes advantages to those who deserve them on the basis of merit (skill, effort, contribution) and that fair equality of opportunity is a necessary precondition of such desert claims. He is cognizant of the role of social disadvantage and insists that hiring or allocation decisions should be based on expectations of performance that have been corrected for any illegitimate (e.g., discriminatory) attitudes that might affect performance. Miller therefore offers the normative philosophical justification for a form of meritocracy: Merit-based reward is just, so long as the playing field is fair (or made fair) for all.

My conception of thick meritocracy echoes Miller’s emphasis on equal opportunity and desert—but it diverges from his focus insofar as I place more emphasis on the institutional, social, and relational conditions of formation (which Miller acknowledges but does not center in the way I do). Where Miller emphasizes that merit must be connected to performance in a just context, I emphasize that the pathway to being able to perform must itself be just or at least socially remediable.

Thus, the concept of thick versus thin meritocracy can be mapped onto the debate between Miller and Markovits: Thin meritocracy corresponds to the kind of selection-only model Miller might accept (though perhaps he would say the formation is implicit), and thick meritocracy corresponds more closely to the corrective needed to address Markovits’s pathology but without abandoning the normative core of Miller’s defense of merit.

Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit complements Markovits’s sociological critique with a moral one. Sandel (2020) argues that meritocracy breeds hubris among winners and humiliation among losers, eroding social solidarity. He sees in our obsession with credentialed achievement a failure of humility—a civic vice that divides the successful from those left behind. Sandel’s warning is well taken. Thin meritocracy tempts its beneficiaries to confuse advantage with virtue. Yet we cannot abandon the pursuit of excellence or desert. Rather, we must democratize the conditions of excellence. That is the only way to ensure that achievement reflects genuine effort under fair circumstances. Thick meritocracy responds to Sandel’s moral critique not by rejecting merit but by humanizing it, by embedding competition in a community that honors the dignity of all participants.

John Rawls supplies a parallel foundation to that of thick meritocracy. His principle of fair equality of opportunity—the idea that people with similar talents and ambitions should have comparable chances regardless of their social class—already moves beyond mere procedural equality (Rawls 1991, 73–78). Thick meritocracy operationalizes this Rawlsian principle at the granular level of institutions by ensuring that the pathways to competence, not only the competition for reward, are fair.

The moral depth of thick meritocracy is captured by Elizabeth Anderson’s idea of relational equality. In her classic essay “What Is the Point of Equality?” Anderson (1999) argues that justice is not just about distributing goods or opportunities; it is about ensuring that citizens stand to one another as equals in social life. Inequalities become unjust when they create relations of domination, stigma, or exclusion.

That insight explains why persistent racial disparities undermine the legitimacy of a purely procedural meritocracy. Segregated schools, stigmatized neighborhoods, and exclusionary networks distort not only outcomes but social relations. They teach some to expect deference and others to internalize doubt. A thick meritocracy must therefore be relational as well as procedural. Its mission should extend to reform of the webs of social interaction that shape identity and aspiration.

Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach provides a complementary language for the same point. In “Equality of What?” Sen (1980) argues that justice requires attention to what people are actually able to do and to be—their real freedoms, not merely their formal rights. My fairness-of-formation principle translates this into practice. Expanding capability—literacy, numeracy, self-control, civic confidence—is how society equips individuals to compete on merit without favoritism. Thick meritocracy thus unites Miller’s desert, Rawls’s fairness, Anderson’s relational equality, and Sen’s capabilities into a single developmental ethic: fair rules at selection, fair opportunities in formation, and dignified relations throughout.

Concluding Reflections

The ambition of this article has been to enrich the meritocratic ideal—not to repudiate it. In reprising the arguments of Markovits (this volume) and Miller (this volume), I aim to show that the meritocratic ideal remains defensible only so long as we attend to both selection and formation; that is, only so long as we are alert to the relational, institutional, and identitarian dimensions of human development. I have argued that, in a society marked by interlocking legacies of racial stratification, any invocation of meritocracy that ignores the upstream conditions of formation is incomplete and ultimately unjust.

My “thick meritocracy” is a daunting project: to protect competitive selection mechanisms while addressing inequalities in formation; to remain mindful of race relations and social networks while preserving standards, affirming personal responsibility, and respecting earned desert. But the alternative is either an iron-fisted defense of selection that leaves formation to fate (as Miller condones) or a wholesale condemnation of merit as a vehicle of inequality (as Markovits urges). The richer path lies in a reconstruction rather than a rejection of meritocracy: reforming upstream formation pipelines while holding fast to the ideal of fair selection downstream. This approach accepts Markovits’s diagnosis of distortion in the production of merit, while resisting his implication that meritocracy must therefore be abandoned. And it embraces Miller’s commitment to desert and performance, while insisting more forcefully than he does that the conditions under which performance becomes possible are themselves objects of justice.

The fact of persisting racial inequality remains a central part of this debate in the United States. As we enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century, the political landscape in America is shifting dramatically. In the wake of the 2024 election, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are being rolled back, and affirmative-action policies are increasingly outlawed by judicial decisions. Meanwhile, decades of large-scale nonwhite immigration have transformed the social fabric of the nation, and the unique disadvantages faced by Black Americans—once at the heart of the civil rights struggle—are often viewed as less urgent than in the era when reformers achieved landmark victories.

Yet, the unfinished work of those twentieth-century reformers remains a pressing moral imperative. Their vision of a society where institutions nurture the developmental potential of all, and where justice extends beyond transactional fairness to confront the roots of exclusion and disadvantage, is not only relevant but essential. In this new century, we should recommit to the deeper project of reform by ensuring that the promise of equality and opportunity is fully realized for every American, regardless of ancestry or circumstance, being mindful of the practices that shape opportunity long before individuals compete for rewards. Because, as argued throughout this article, merit is not just a natural attribute possessed independently of social context; it is cultivated within families, schools, and communities, all of which are shaped by historical patterns of social relations, identity, exclusion, and stratification.

Meritocracy, rightly understood, does not begin at the starting gate of the competition. It begins long before. If we ignore that fact, we risk making the defense of meritocratic ideals into little more than a legitimating ideology of inequality rather than an instrument of genuine justice.