Portside

The insidious myth of meritocracy belies increasingly insane levels of inequality in the US that prevent even younger generations born into the middle class from achieving “the American Dream,” if by that we mean stable housing, secure employment, and the opportunity to do as well or better than one’s parents.

The over-emphasis on test scores and other quantifiable outcomes – often at the exclusion of other kinds of data – distorts just about every aspect of American society.T hat, in part, is the view of “The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America,” a new book by Harvard law professor and civil rights authority Lani Guinier.