Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“Clarence Darrow, the famous labor lawyer from Chicago, had stood tall in the public’s eye for almost two decades, and even those who didn’t much like him respected his vigorous defense of what seemed to be hopeless cases.” Brenda Wineapple, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted a Nation.

“Wise guests wake early at the Royal Karnak Palace Hotel.” Christopher Bollen, Havoc.

“Picture the biggest tree you’ve ever seen, laid on its side and sliced lengthways into boards no thicker than expensive steaks.” Callum Robinson, Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman.

“A wise man once said that next to losing its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose its father.”  Halldór Laxness, The Fish Can Sing.

“History, as the cliché goes, is written by the winners, but this is a history of the losers: candidates who lost their elections, movements that bubbled up and fizzled out, protests that exploded and dissipated, writers who toiled at the margins of American life, figures who became briefly famous or infamous and then were forgotten.” John Ganz, When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s.

“In the next town over, a man had killed his family.” Paul Murray, The Bee Sting.

“As ice gathered several inches thick on the Hudson River and the mercury plummeted below freezing, Hortense Odlum stepped from her chauffeured car onto the Fifth Avenue sidewalk.” Julie Satow, When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion.

“In a moment of panic, we decided to look for a home.” Ayşegül Savaş, The Anthropologists.

“The First Federal Congress was the most momentous in American history.” Fergus M. Bordewich, The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government.

“Terry Tice liked killing people.” John Banville, April in Spain.

“Comrades, In the summer of 2022, I returned to Howard University to teach writing.” Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message.

“Rotating about the earth in their spacecraft they are so together, and so alone, that their thoughts, their internal mythologies, at times convene.” Samantha Harvey, Orbital.

“He stands offstage unseen before seen by millions—oh, sweet polarities!—consolidating adrenaline into twinkling brio.” Bill Zehme with Mike Thomas, Carson The Magnificent.

Posted on by rjonakait

Meritocracy and Hypocrisy

It is not a new word, but the frequency of “meritocracy” coming from the mouths and pens of conservatives has made it a trendy one. The richest of them has made it a catchphrase. Elon Musk: “It’s not like America’s been purely a meritocracy, but it has been more of a meritocracy than any other place. Which I regard as good.” Musk again: “America rose to a greatness over the past 150 years because it was a meritocracy more than anywhere else on Earth. I will fight to my last drop of blood to ensure that it remains that land of freedom and opportunity.”

Musk, who is not averse to hyperbole (Isn’t your ability to fight gone long before your last drop of blood oozes onto the Tesla leather?), surprisingly qualified his meritocratic statement about America. He concedes that this country has not been a pure meritocracy, only that it has rewarded merit more than any other place.

The United States has always had limits on meritocracy. In the first place, let us not confuse merit with opportunity and advantage. The rich have always had more opportunities than others. (If you got it, you get it.) Those born into rich families have always had more opportunities. (It is easier to score if you are born on third base.)  And, of course, opportunities have always been limited in this country by race, ethnicity, religion, locality, gender, and other factors. Perhaps there has been a meritocracy in a certain pool of Americans, but that pool has been restricted. At times, it has not included Irish, Swedes, Italians, Hispanics, Asians, Catholics, Jews, women, and, of course, Blacks. Put another way, meritocracy has often been confined in this country to white male Protestants.

Even when attempts at expanding that pool have been made, they have often been circumscribed. In the 1940s, for example, some department stores started for the first time hiring Black women for sales, but there were quotas. An executive of Lord & Taylor, which was a pioneer in hiring Blacks, told The Afro-American: “It seems to me that it is only fair that the person with the best qualifications should be hired, regardless of color . . . with limitations of course. [Emphasis added] It is only natural that we don’t want to flood our place with colored people, even if they all had the best qualifications.” (Quoted from Julie Satow, When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion, 2024.)

A foundational American myth has been about meritocracy and the ability to get ahead through one’s own ability. As Dara Horn says in People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present (2021), the legend “is that it doesn’t matter who your parents are, or who their parents were, or where you came from—that what matters is what you do now with the opportunities this country presents to you, and this is what we call the American dream. The fact that this legend is largely untrue does not detract from its power; legends are not reports on reality but expressions of a culture’s value and aspirations.” How many qualified women for how many years were rejected by medical schools and law schools because, well, they were women?

In spite of our history of the limitations on opportunities, many conservatives are furthering the legend by pretending that our meritocracy has been undermined. And what has undermined it? DEI. Yep, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. As though seeking the meritorious from a diverse pool, or equalizing advantages and opportunities, or seeking to include an overlooked source of qualified people is the most egregious thing that a democratic country could do even though it would seem obvious that the larger the pool from which we seek to draw talent, the more likely we are to get the best.

Another enemy, they say, is “wokeness.” I guess it’s also egregious in a “meritocracy” to want to make sure that all types of people feel as though they are equal and welcome participants in the pool.

Let Elon Musk speak again, “DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it.” To say that DEI is racist implies two things: 1) You don’t believe that the previously excluded races, ethnic groups, women, or religious groups require special attention in order to join the meritocracy pool, or 2) You think that anything that undermines the hegemony of white males is threatening.  Although the opposition to DEI may have many roots, most charitably it is based on the belief that diversity is the enemy of meritocracy. It assumes that the only way diversity is achieved is by allowing less qualified people of color or women (or other groups) to leapfrog over what are assumed to be more qualified white males. Even if that is sincerely believed, those with that belief should still want to expand the pool from which the meritorious are drawn. Doubt the sincerity of those who cry out for meritocracy unless they also seek broadly for the meritorious.

At another time, Musk maintained, “The point was not to replace DEI,…but rather to be a meritocratic society.” How are you to have a meritocracy if you do not actively encourage participation by all?

Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, says Trump has told him to “clean house of the woke crap. All that stuff. Climate stuff, the (Critical Race Theory), the DEI and genderism. Get rid of it.” Not clear how “Climate stuff” got in there, but it’s clear that Trump and his cohort are fed up with trying to break down the barriers that have prevented a true meritocracy to emerge.

A familiar pattern: If something goes wrong, and if anyone other than a white male is in charge, the pejorative cry of “diversity” is uttered again and again. The mayor of Los Angeles is a Black woman, and something definitely went wrong in Los Angeles recently. However, she did not attain her position as part of a DEI movement. She was not appointed by some person who thought it would be politically correct to have a black person (and woman as mayor. No. She was picked by the electorate, just as Trump was. But still conservatives talk about her as if she were part of a DEI or woke movement.

 If a white male had been in charge, his competence might be questioned, but we don’t point to the “old boys” network that might have put him there in the first place. And we only blame DEI if a non-conservative has done the appointment or hiring of a non-white male. If Pam Bondi turns out to be a less than a stellar attorney general, diversity will not be blamed. After all, a conservative president nominated her. (Fox News presents a lot of women as hosts and commentators. Aren’t they a product of diversity?)

The anti-diversity group, however, may proclaim that the country has been successful in the expansion of the meritocratic pool and that, sadly, the pool has been exhausted. Is that why they are advocating for the expansion of H-1b visas? It is certainly the case that having more of those visas is good for businesses of rich conservatives. Among other things, they can pay those workers less. However, if the barriers to success were truly overcome in the U.S., would we need to import workers from out of the country? Shouldn’t Making America Great Again mean making sure that all Americans in fact have the opportunity to attain merit? (Not all conservatives agree that we should expand the availability of H-1b. Laura Loomer, an ardent supporter of Trump, has said, “Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third world invaders from India.”*)

There are things wrong with DEI and wokeness. It is fair to criticize these movements and policies, but a meritocratic society needs more than such criticisms. It requires plans and action to expand the pool from which we seek the meritorious. I have not seen that from conservatives, and without such expansion, it sure looks as if they want to see again a future dominated by white males.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

The steamer, Sestri Levante, stood high above the dockside and the watery sleet, carried on the wind blustering down from the Black Sea, had drenched even the small shelter deck.” Eric Ambler, Journey into Fear.

“Ed Greenfield collected people the way other men collect comic books or old stamps or vintage cards.” Jill Lepore, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future.

“Whatever Mum’s saying’s drowned out by the grimy roar of the bus pulling away, revealing a pub called The Fox and Hounds.” David Mitchell, Slade House.

“We know so little of the worlds beneath our feet.” Robert Macfarlane, Underworld: A Deep Time Journey.

“Emma sat on the shingle bank and watched the kids on the beach below build a bonfire.” Ann Cleves, Wild Fire.

“On the morning of October 1, 1907, the hotel bellmen and front desk staff were scurrying about the marble lobby, smoothing their uniforms and making final preparations.” Julie Satow, The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel.

“In the spring of 1926 I resigned from my job.” Thornton Wilder, Theophilus North.

“His upper jawbone was massive—a long, curved bone with nine tiny holes meant to hold his teeth.” Kate Winkler Dawson, American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI.

“Castle, ever since he had joined the firm as a young recruit more than thirty years ago, had taken his lunch in a public house behind St. James’s Street, not far from the office.” Graham Greene, The Human Factor.

“By the time Charity had heard about the young woman, it was too late to help.” Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story.

“He lay, flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees.” Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls. (The last line of the novel: “He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.”)

“John F. Kennedy was a man with a keenly developed sense of humor.” Bill Adler (ed.), The Kennedy Wit.

“The night Effia Otcher was born into the musky heat of Fanteland, a fire raged through the woods just outside her father’s compound.” Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“In a broad valley, at the foot of a sloping hillside, beside a clear bubbling stream, Tom was building a house.” Ken Follett, Pillars of the Earth.

“Sir or Lady (as I shall call him) sits on the promontory in our village, deep in movie love.” Hilton Als, White Girls.

“It was in the summer of 1998 that my neighbor Coleman Silk—who, before retiring two years earlier, had been a classics professor at nearby Athena College for some twenty-odd years as well as serving for sixteen more years as the dean of the faculty—confided to me that, at the age of seventy-one, he was having an affair with a thirty-four-year-old cleaning woman who worked down at the college.” Philip Roth, The Human Stain.

“The crowd began to cluster at the corner of Hoffman and Bolton, near the entrance to the Armory, in the late afternoon—a quiet, orderly crowd, more women than men.” Jeff Shesol, Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court.

“The open door was only yards away, and beyond it lay the outside world, eerily unaffected by anything happening inside the abandoned snooker hall.” Ian Rankin, Doors Open.

“The scientists of the Simulmatics Corporation spent the summer of 1961 on a beach on Long Island beneath a geodesic dome that looked as if it had landed there, amid the dunes, a spaceship gone to ground.” Jill Lepore, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future.

“He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor that swung from the rafters.” Virginia Woolf, Orlando.

“The way into the underland is through the riven trunk of an old ash tree.” Robert Macfarlane, Underworld: A Deep Time Journey

“You now have one choice.” Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y.

“Subrata Roy was reclining on a sofa in a pink shirt, orange pocket square, and plaid blazer, his outfit contrasting sharply with the spare, all-white living room.” Julie Satow, The Plaza: The Secret Life of America’s Most Famous Hotel.

“The discourse which follows may appear to the reader as mere fancy or as a dream, penned on waking, in those fevered moments when one is still mesmerized by those conjuring tricks that are produced in the mind once the eyes are closed.” Thomas E. Lumas, The End of Mr. Y.

“Laura Glass was thirteen years old and entering the eighth grade at Jefferson Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when she looked over her father’s shoulder to see what he was working on.” Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story.