Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It

by Mike Monteiro

What about merit? Great question, if it weren’t that the merit argument is used in the most ironic way possible. I’d ask why a small percentage of the population (for the sake of argument, let’s use white males as our example) has merited taking such a high percentage of available opportunities? Could it be that they are inherently more qualified than other groups? Of course not. No one would argue that point, lest they be thought a fool. That would be akin to arguing that Jackie Robinson was the first black ballplayer good enough for the major leagues. One could argue that those white males are better known, and they’d be right. This has less to do with merit than with a systematic underrepresentation of women and minorities.