Merit in Meritocracy: Uncovering the Myth of Exceptionality and Self-Reliance Through the Voices of Urban Youth of Color

The American Dream and the Creation of the Socially Isolated

As the most recent U.S. election exposed, whole groups of Americans feel left behind or shut out of the middle-class lifestyle “promised” to them in the American Dream. Despite this lived reality, there is a persistent American belief that if an individual is poor or jobless, it is somehow due to their own shortcomings and inadequacies (Wilson, 1974/2012; Young, 2004). This chiefly comes into play when considering urban communities of color, which are socially isolated from the individuals and institutions that represent mainstream society (Young, 2004). This isolation serves at least two purposes: It creates difficulties in accessing the necessary social networks to propel inner-city community members toward successful futures and opportunities that mainstream U.S. society has access to more readily (Quane & Wilson, 2012; Young, 2004). And, beyond this, isolation renders the urban poor as “other” and undermines any larger systemic critique, sustaining a sense of permanency for urban people of color in this isolated position (Baldridge, 2016). The forms of capital deemed valuable for social movement are part of a larger legacy of racism in the U.S., and therefore continue to isolate and create an apartheid, based on race and class, between the resources available to youth of color and those in White, middle-class communities and educational systems.

In a recent analysis of U.S. census data, Patten and Krogstad (2015) noted that while there has been some slight improvement in child poverty rates with the recovering economy, Black and Hispanic youth fared poorly when compared with White and Asian American teens in terms of recovery. For example, Berliner (2013) noted that the U.S. has one of the largest income gaps between wealthy and poor citizens, which has contributed to many of the social problems urban youth face, including education. Furthermore, Black youth are the most likely to live in poverty at a rate of about 38% (Patten & Krogstad, 2015), while Hispanic teens (36.9%), though faring slightly better, also continue to lag behind White youth (13.7%) and the total U.S. population of adolescents (23.0%; Murphey, Guzman, & Torres, 2014). In addition, only 9% of the low-income youth obtain college degrees (Berliner, 2013). Without additional forms of capital and the networks to access it, Wilson (1974/2012) asserted, “consignment to inner-city schools helps to guarantee the future economic subordinancy of minority students” (p. 163).

Yet, as Berliner (2013) observed, politicians and Americans in general embrace narratives where the exceptions are the rule:

. . . the wonderful but occasional story of a child’s rise from poverty to success and riches . . . the heroic, remarkable, but occasional impact of a teacher or a school on a child. These stories of triumph by individuals who were born poor, or success by educators who changed the lives of their students are widely believed narratives about our land and people . . . But in fact, these are simply myths that help us feel good to be American. (p. 1)

These hegemonic narratives of exceptionality and bootstrapping are the stories we love to tell ourselves and are celebrated in the press, on television, and in the movies. These narratives create the landscape by which the youth in this study come to embrace them as well.

Meritocracy

Meritocracy is steeped in the values of the American Dream (Meroe, 2014). To make sense of this American Dream and educational inequality, we define and examine meritocracy and how these beliefs further isolate and, in many ways, create an apartheid in American education. Michael Young in his satirical fictional tale argued that meritocracy would preserve and increase inequalities (Young, 1958). Meritocracy has been defined as: (a) individuals’ abilities to succeed on the basis of their individual aptitudes and actions; (b) success is based on moral virtue; and (c) equal opportunity applies to all regardless of origin or social identity (Hochschild, 1995). Hence, it is believed that individuals earn rewards based on their abilities and efforts, solidifying the ideals of individuality, which are firmly rooted in American Democracy and the American Dream (Knight, Roegman, & Edstrom, 2016). All of this is premised on the idea that the U.S. offers an open system for economic and social mobility, despite evidence indicating that few manage this type of movement (Hill & Torres, 2010).

Today, meritocracy is the narrative that justifies social inequality, allowing a select few to be “above the rule,” with some defining it as an adapted aristocracy (Meroe, 2014; Patel, 2015). This social system places emphasis on individual abilities and efforts, providing incentives to foster those qualities that support the narrative espoused by the larger society (Meroe, 2014; Wiederkehr, Bonnot, Krauth-Gruber, & Darnon, 2015). These merit-based qualities are manifested as biological, such as “I.Q.,” or through additional cultural resources, such as wealth (Meroe, 2014). Those who fail to meet these standards, or to have access to the necessary cultural resources, are relegated to social Darwinistic perspectives (Meroe, 2014).

In today’s America, meritocracy, merit, and individual achievement are supported through achievement tests or a testocratic merit (Guinier, 2016), conferring educational opportunities to a select few (Berliner, 2013). Based in meritocratic ideologies, achievement testing provides all, regardless of gender, class, culture, or social position, an equal chance of becoming successful because of hard work and merit (Au, 2013; Guinier, 2016). By extension, failing is believed to be due to a lack of ability or deficits (Alon & Tienda, 2007). As Wiederkehr and colleagues (2015) stated, “because of the high stakes associated with school success and failure in determining one’s future, the perceived fairness of society directly depends on the perceived fairness of the school system” (p.2). Because of meritocracy and testocratic merit, educational achievement testing is validated, supported, and circulated bipartisanly (Au, 2013; Guinier, 2016; Wiederkehr et al., 2015). The belief in such policies and meritocracy supports the American belief that education is equal for all (Au, 2013; Kirshner, Hipolito-Delgado, & Zion, 2015), although only some “select” persons have access to the necessary resources (Patel, 2015).

Social Capital

Social capital has been defined as how individual’s access, use, and acquire a range of resources, which are developed through social interactions that facilitate beneficial outcomes (Bourdieu, 1997; Lin, Cook, & Burt, 2001). Two sets of resources have been postulated to assist individuals in society and within social institutions: (1) material resources, such as income and wealth; and (2) cultural resources, such as knowledge, cultural connectedness, and skills (Lin et al., 2001). Cultural resources have been identified to increase individual capacity, connection to one’s community and culture, and access to high-quality educational institutions and teachers (Carolan & Lardier, 2017; Farkas, Sheehan, Grobe, & Shuan, 1990) and reduce the probability of engaging in negative outcome behaviors (Stanton-Salazar, 2011, 2016). Nonparental mentors or empowerment agents, social supports, and cohesive families provide valuable cultural resources that increase the probability for success and achieving positive educational futures (Stanton-Salazar, 2011, 2016).

Social class and the construction and reconstruction of class boundaries are generated and sustained through cultural, social, and other forms of symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1997). We observe the development and maintenance of capital among youth living in communities with more sociocultural resources, who are likely to benefit as a result of access to higher quality teachers, peer groups within a similar social standing, high parental social closure, and increased funding (Carolan & Lardier, 2017; Lareau & Weininger, 2008). High-status youth who thrive within these systems are unlikely to question their social location, nor their privilege of having access to sociocultural resources (Au, 2013; Berliner, 2013). However, adolescents from low-income minority families are less likely to have access to the necessary capital to propel them toward positive futures (France, Bottrell, & Haddon, 2013).

Research Setting

The context for this study is a densely populated urban community located in the northeastern United States that is designated one of the third largest cities in its state (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). Historically an industrial hub, this city, like most industrial cities in the U.S., is a community that has been subjected to a fate of high poverty and its concomitant social problems, such as unemployment, population density, poorly designed city-wide policies, discrimination, and disenfranchisement. This community is racially and ethnically diverse, with more than 80% of the residents identifying as either Black or Hispanic, and nearly one third being foreign born citizens (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). A significant proportion of the residents (30%) also live below the poverty line, with an average income of $33,964 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015). Beyond the societal ills plaguing this city, there are also significant educational challenges that the youth in this community must navigate.

During the 2012-2013 school year, this city had one of the highest dropout rates in the state, accounting for more than half of the 810 dropouts in the county in which it is located. Nearly half (48%) of the students in this district ranked below proficiency in language arts, with even lower proficiency in mathematics (68%). Based on recent school level data acquired from the state, only 9.8% of youth graduating from high schools within this community received a college degree in 2014, far below national averages (59%) during this time (Kena et al., 2014). As with many urban communities, the school district has turned to school choice and instituted an academy structure within each of the high schools; that is, each high school has specific “academies,” such as the School of Architecture and Construction, School of Business Technology, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) programs. Each of these schools has separate graduation rates and grade point averages (GPAs). In essence, this district has created a meritocratic structure, as students with certain GPAs are ‘allowed’ in specific programs, a form of tracking that disadvantages other students.

Researchers’ Position

As part of a larger federal grant initiative, we engaged with many of these youth throughout the summer and in multiple capacities, whether educator, mentor, or advocate. As doctoral students and faculty, we come from privileged locations within society. Though some of us come from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and can begin to identify, and relate with intersectional perspectives of race and gender, we are not at all fully aware of the daily issues and experiences that urban youth participants from this community experience. To develop a rapport with these youth, we divided focus groups among males and females, with interviewers being of the same gender. In addition, doctoral students (ages 27-30 years) and master’s level students (ages 23-25 years) conducted these focus groups. Spending time with these same adolescents in their summer camp social spaces also helped build positive and successful relationships. We also began many of these groups casually and informally, which helped dissipate any unease associated with the discussion.

Research Sample

This study was part of a larger federally funded grant initiative that focused on preventing drug and alcohol use among urban adolescents through environmental and community-based strategies (e.g., policy change and social marketing campaign). The sample of youth (N = 85) consisted of Black and Hispanic adolescents, between the ages of 10 and 18 years. This sample was largely female (n = 64) and Black adolescents (n = 60). Students were sampled through convenience methods from six summer programs throughout the target city.

Data Gathering and Analysis

Students were engaged in 11 focus groups that lasted 60 to 90 minutes each. These were conducted at each of the summer programs in private classrooms, separate from those teens and counselors who were not part of the study, providing youth confidentiality. Males and females were engaged separately and paired with an interviewer of the same sex. Using five semistructured interview questions, focus groups probed for a sense of supportive structures within their community as identified by the youth. As per institutional review board (IRB) approval and written parental consent and student assent, focus groups were recorded and then transcribed verbatim. In addition, notes were kept by each interviewer to refer back to for tacit and demographic information (e.g., location youth lived in, type of program and location of program, and interactions during group).

Analyses utilized a constant comparison approach initially, while also aiming to recognize the relationship between structural inequalities and social categories, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of youth’s meaning making of their social locations. The basic defining feature of constant comparative approaches is that “while coding an indicator for a concept, one compares that indicator with previous indicators that have been coded in the same way” (LaRossa, 2005, p. 841). Three research team members engaged in analysis. Electronic memos and personal notes were maintained throughout the analysis process, which is consistent with engaging in constant comparative methodology (LaRossa, 2005). The first analyst was a doctoral student researcher who was affiliated with the grant initiative. Open-coding was initially used to identify themes inductively. As we analyzed these data, additional themes/concepts, beyond those focusing on drug and alcohol use prevention, were recognized, such as educational attainment and self-reliance. These concepts, and others, were used to flesh out additional indicators based in social capital theory and meritocracy. Research team members also exchanged memos and notes throughout the process, and met as a group to discuss findings and maintain an audit trail throughout the analysis process. Quotes used throughout article are pulled from focus group interview transcriptions. These quotes are representative of multiple quotes that we compiled into a single theme.

Limits of Community Capital

Communities potentially have untapped funds of knowledge and capital, which adolescents, if provided access, can engage (Epstein & Sanders, 2000). Should young people be afforded access to community connections and capital, it would provide them with what Lin et al. (2001) described as social credentials. These social credentials would in turn offer adolescents accessibility to additional resources (Lin et al., 2001). However, as Bourdieu (1997) and others in more recent discussions have observed (e.g., Berliner, 2013; Kirshner et al., 2015; Putnam, 2015; Stanton-Salazar, 2011, 2016), underserved youth of color are often limited in their access to capital that the dominant class actively produces, thus solidifying their current social status. Youth in this study were not necessarily aware of the limits to their community capital; they drew daily on forms of capital that enabled them to “read” the immediate world of their neighborhoods and survive and even thrive within it. This form of capital, however, serves a limited function in terms of pursuing educational futures that would advance them in dominant society (Yosso, 2005).

Youth were adept at recognizing and negotiating neighborhood contexts that they themselves considered potentially dangerous and threatening. As one Black female stated,

You go down the hill, you get called ‘the up’ because you’re not from down here or whatever. If you go up the hill from down the hill, you’ll be called ‘an up’ too, they’ll be wantin to fight, and all that stuff. They have riots because of that. If you come down to our area, they wanna fight, they wanna kill each other, gangs and stuff.

This quote above exemplifies the rules of the community, as “up the hill-down the hill” displays specific areas or “turf” within the community that youth have to carefully navigate. As another adolescent Hispanic male said, “People have told me, ‘You walk through it. Just keep your head down. You don’t see nothing. You don’t hear nothin’. You just keep on walkin.’” The youth were articulate about how to keep safe, how to remain alive, while juxtaposing these skills with a sense of fatalism: that sometimes things just happen, that people are at the wrong place at the wrong time. One Black teenage male expressed,

Seeing people getting shot over these things. I don’t want to go down like that, so I’m just gonna stay out of being in any sort of situation that would put me in danger. That’s why I would stay away.

This sense of fatalism was, ironically, one of the few times we heard youth give a nod to forces other than individual responsibility, acknowledging societal and social contexts at play.

While recognizing and articulating the “rules” of their neighborhoods and taking some pride in skillfully navigating them, this expertise was contextually bound. Their slice of even their city was small—a neighborhood or ward. The skills and energy necessary to navigate their day-to-day lives were not seen as possible building blocks beyond surviving. In other words, the expertise and capital accrued to navigate their current contexts were sources of pride and were essential, but youth did not see these as potentially helpful in creating lives for themselves beyond surviving. While they valued their skills as a form of self-reliance, we could not identify any scaffolding of their current skill bank to possibilities for the future other than cultivating a sense of self-reliance and survival. We place this side-by-side with societal narratives that emphasize the development and maintenance of capital by/for White, middle-class society that more seamlessly serves future, in this case, educational goals (Baldridge, 2016).

Their neighborhood capital is exceptionally important to youth in their local contexts, but the value of this survival currency drops as youth navigate communities or institutions, such as those in higher education, where physical danger is not the overriding concern. These youth are embedded within social networks that may not provide access to the cultural resources meant to carry them forward toward their imagined futures. As a result, these youth begin to see little opportunity within their current community, resulting in a narrative of “no hope” and a drive to leave. Moreover, these futures, as will be discussed below, are tied to pursuing further education beyond what was offered in their local communities.

Living the Contradictions of Exceptionality

Having concluded that any change for the better in their city was beyond their imagining, the youth turned their thoughts toward envisioning their own futures. Believing that their community had no real resources to offer them, the only pathway the youth could imagine involved being the exception to the rule, the one that “got out.” This depended on them being resourceful, essentially being able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Below we develop two subthemes that speak to the contradictions of this exceptionality: youth acceptance of “individual responsibility” and youth espousal of “education as the pathway to success.”

Implications

Urban communities have been described as “opportunity deserts,” as they lack the necessary organizational and individual-based empowerment resources that will help bridge teens of color toward successful futures. Youth living in urban communities often experience limited supportive structures both within the home and outside, with youth attending schools where the students vastly outnumber the teachers, and the teachers (whether perceived or otherwise) are viewed as uncaring and unsupportive (Taines, 2011). It is also important to note that because the teaching force in America’s schools are largely White, with middle-class backgrounds, students of color, as noted in our data, may not necessarily feel comfortable engaging staff in supportive relationships (Boucher & Helfenbein, 2015). In addition, staff may not be able to further cultivate the capital that the youth do utilize, drawn from their own communities, which could be built upon. However, at the same time, research has continuously emphasized the importance of close relationships, particularly those that emphasize proacademic identities, so the need for adult partners who can foster these kinds of relationships is important to continue to develop.

Stanton-Salazar (2011) highlighted the significance of empowerment agents for low-income youth of color. Practitioners, both those within and beyond school settings, must consider their roles as empowerment agents, who can facilitate and support low-status youth toward developing closer connections between their goals and ways in which to achieve them (Stanton-Salazar, 2011). Those involved with mentors in their community are likely to develop capital that can be passed along generationally. This is in firm opposition to the individualized bootstrapping mentality professed through meritocracy and sustained through a need to survive in their environmental context. As empowerment agents, practitioners assist youth with acquiring the necessary resources to achieve and empower them to gain mastery over their lives (Christens, 2012; Stanton-Salazar, 2011), as well as move toward a critical read of their social environments. As Christens and Kirshner (2011) discussed, having access to the types of networks that cultivate trusting and supportive relationships increases the motivation that youth will succeed in school, as well as outside in their social world. Thus, the nature of transformative educational success depends on practitioners engaging in bridging relationships for/with youth (Christens, 2012), coupled with cultivating a critical read of the world (Stanton-Salazar, 2011).

Because structural constraints and inequitable distribution of resources impede life chances particularly for marginalized groups, we emphasize here the development of critical consciousness toward enhancing their future possibilities (Watts, Diemer, & Voight, 2011). Scholars have emphasized that critical consciousness building allows for a more nuanced analysis of inequitable social conditions and how to take action to change them (Diemer & Rapa, 2016; Forenza et al., 2017). Youth who are provided access to empowerment-based mentors can begin to develop the necessary counternarratives to question their current social locations (Stanton-Salazar, 2011) and how inequities can be called into question (Christens, 2012). We suggest this as a beginning step toward youth learning to question ideas of meritocracy that lends itself toward bootstrapping “solutions” rather than broader societal interventions.

Existing structures, such as after-school programs, may be possible sites for this kind of cultivation of critical consciousness, but this would also require a shift in their current routine ways of working. As of yet, we do not have evidence that these sites routinely see this as a part of their work, nor that the adults working in these sites necessarily see themselves as empowerment agents. Further work with these adults, toward their work with youth, as well as the documentation of those after-school programs that do demonstrate critical consciousness work, may move us closer to creating more sites and relationships of opportunity within low-resourced communities. In the city in which this study took place, there is a growing coalition among community organizations serving youth, which could provide a collective voice for change, and provide further resources as they deepen their analyses to critically consider inequities.