Meritocracy In The United States

Hierarchy, a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority. In the United States, hierarchy is not uncommon. In Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ifemelu an African immigrant from Nigeria experiences the reality of what the “American Dream” truly is like for an immigrant. Adichie uses her character's life as to show how race affects her in America. Ifemelu moved to the United States with the illustration that she would easily be able to get a job, go to school, find love and be able to send money home in Nigeria. Instead, she was faced with many obstacles like racism. Racism is one of the major social issues of the modern world. It affects millions of people worldwide and is one of the deepest social problems in the United States.

In “To reduce inequality, abolish Ivy League,” author Glenn Reynolds offers a couple modest proposals to attempt to fix a large problem. Currently, in America, people almost incessantly argue about the topic of inequality. Someone clearly needs to find an answer, and Reynolds thinks he has it. His proposes to abolish all Ivy League schools, or restrict them in certain ways. He uses an ample amount of the three rhetorical appeals, logos, pathos, and ethos, to strengthen his argument. By the end of his article, his argument can convince most readers that his solution will effectively fix the problem, although it does not convince them that no one has a better solution.

The Tea Party movement has had mixed reviews when looking in hindsight of their more active years, dating back to Tax Day in 2009. The Tea Party did increase enthusiasm for the Republican Party after the 2008 loss to Barack Obama, resulting in more Senate seats for Republicans and control of the House of Representatives. The Tea Party also impacted civilians’ view of government by putting the citizens’ eyes back on the Constitution. To prove the point, the organization gives out pocket-sized versions of the Constitution at their meetings (pg 48). Therefore, the Tea Partiers’ actions not only reached out to government officials, but also the American

Classism is an issue so large that it has become a global pandemic. In the United States alone, the allocation of ~90% wealth in a 10% population serves as a clear indication that there is a wide gap in the quality of lives of many individuals. The wealthy use many strategies to maintain their power against the poor. In order to control the economy, they dictate the price of the dollar, causing it to inflate when necessary to oppress the working class. The problem classism has on us today is that it separates the country into two parts, rich and poor. Although the majority of the U.S. population belongs to the working class, and keeps the nation running, the smaller upper class feel

We know this because we’ve seen it before. The authors of this guide are former congressional staffers who witnessed the rise of the Tea Party. We saw these activists take on a popular president with a mandate for change and a supermajority in Congress. We saw them organize locally and convince their own members of Congress to reject President Obama’s agenda. Their ideas were wrong, cruel, and tinged with racism - and they won.

Meritocracy is the holding of power by a select group of people based on their ability to perform. Meritocracy is a combination of merit, which means reward or worthy praise and aristocracy, which means high class. Spring discusses Nicolas Lemann’s argument of the importance of standardized testing and how it determines the economic status and income of Americans (2008, p. 396). Spring connects meritocracy to standardized testing by discussing how educators used the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to classify students for college placement.

In “The Merits of Meritocracy” David Brooks compared children in a traditional day society and children in present day society by giving different examples on how they would grow up with different qualities. David Brooks starts off his excerpt by giving himself some sort of credential, in order for him to be in the position to talk about his main point by using his own daughter’s life to illustrate her busy life which is filled with many activities and opportunities. He depicts his daughter’s life which can also represent children in today’s middle class as a fulfilling childhood which will lead into a prosperous adult life. David Brooks centralizes his point by comparing traditional children with modern day children by introducing the idea

There are some truths so unimaginable that, as humans, we tend to default in hopeful thinking. The essays analyzed: “The Happiest and Unhappiest Jobs in America”, by Jacquelyn Smith, and “We Are Not All Created Equal: The Truth about the American Class System”, by Stephen Marche present arguments that although the American Dream continues to give hope of a brighter future, many people now are struggling more than ever to attain it. Although their arguments falls on the negative line of observation, I am a firm believer that a dedicated person has an equivalent chance of succeeding as someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Anthony DePalma considers the two contrasting lives of Mr. Zannikos, a self-made business owner, and Mr. Peralta, a struggling illegal immigrant, to further illustrate the arguments of Smith and Marche. The main factors that contributed to the changing of Mr. Zanniko’s and Mr. Peralta’s stories includes their citizenship status, their support system in the Unites States, strategic planning towards their goals, the closeness of ties to home.

In chapter 5, the author mentioned about how factors of race and gender help to frame elections, which these two important factor are the particularly stratification systems in modern America. According to the article, the author uses the quote as a demonstration, “Nicholas Winter notes that “race and gender are two particularly important stratification systems in contemporary America. Both define appropriate relationships among individuals and between individuals and groups, and both play important roles in structuring society, culture, and politics both today and throughout American (and human) history.” This is the case in both our understanding of the position of African Americans within society and our understanding of the position of

People living in America has a different point of views on American dream. According to me American Dream is a way to achieve success, if you are willing to do hard work then you will succeed your American Dream because there are so many opportunities in America That we can take advantage of and make our American Dream successful, as it states in the song by Homeboy Sandman “It's a work in progress and it may always be But even overseas opportunity is known to be in” (“America, The beautiful”) American dream relates to the typical ideology because the typical ideology of American Dream states “America is land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can go as far as their own merit takes them” (“The Meritocracy Myth”). The importance of the American Dream for my generation of students is that my generation will work hard towards

“Meritocracy is a term first used by the social philosopher Michael Yong in his book The Rise of Meritocracy 1870-2033, to describe a hypothetical society in which people are allocated to positions in terms of merit, which Yong defines as ability plus effort.” (Boronski and Nasima 11)

“There is a diversity of ideas in the Occupy Wall Street Movement concerning how, exactly, to deal with the corporate take over of our democracy. We don’t always agree on every issue. But, the Occupy Wall Street Movement is about changing the fundamental way our system operates. We all seem to agree on that.”

I believe the Elite Power theory because I believe there are elite people that place people in certain position to control the outcome of events. For example, the election of the president I believe is chosen that way. We vote for the president however I believe there are people in high places such as executive, legislative, and judicial branches that control outcome of the election. If I believe in the elite power theory, I definitely believe there are a few that control policy and the government.

Politician from all walks of life nowadays agree on one thing: we need to build more meritocratic societies. That is, societies where everyone, no matter what their background is, has the chance to succeed on their own merits. This is a beautiful idea responsible for some great things like free education for all, and a real effort to end nepotism in business and government. We have largely done away with the old world of feudalism where lords couldn't manage their estates, commanders couldn't understand the principles of battle, and peasant were brighter than their masters. No longer is background an impossible obstacle to advancement. An element of justice has finally entered into the distribution of rewards. It's been going on for about two

Social stratification is the system of inequality based on ranking people or groups based on power, prestige, and wealth (www.sociologydictionary.org, 2017). This term is often seen as a cultural trait of the society and not a reflection of individual differences and involves inequality as well as beliefs that encourage the inequality. Social stratification can be either closed (ascribed) or open (achieved) and characterized by social mobility. There are two types of social mobility: vertical and horizontal. People who lives in open type societies often work harder to move up but in closed type system the social status determine by birth, like caste system and suppresses any desire for achievement.