No one is equal to anyone, that is how all of us functions (east or west) either implicitly or explicitly. We are not identical elementary particles such as electrons. Second, although against my preference, the article and discussions on this topic would require a "coordinate system" for a definition of metric (to reach what can be called an academic objectivity). But I want to leave that idea aside, and ask a higher order question: What is the alternative to judging a person based on individual merit? Do we want to substitute social or biological determinism (tribalism/racism in essence, one way or another) instead of actual person's merit/character/etc? In reality and practice, on our individual plane we cannot step aside from our biases (we shall only aspire to some ideal), however, on the institutional level and government level, we (citizens) have to demand complete and unconditional continuous effort to denounce and step aside from the evils of (institutionalized) racism/tribalism. (Of cause, we are loosing this battle every year in the doublespeak, slowly but surely). So, no matter what we call it, we should be aware of what the alternative is, especially if it develops into institutionalized process(es) and bureaucratic control (humanity has been there and done that).

Sadly someone had the bad idea to connect government funds to DEI initiatives. You have to get rid of that again. This will only lead to very unhealthy corruption and has proved to be quite fatal for those that disagree, nearly every time. At some point only totalitarian equality remains on the table.

That doesn't mean you must answer with the reactionary response, providing members of society with a way for participation is a good thing. But you need to get rid of the ideologues. Freedom and equality collide at some point. There is the freedom route and the bloody route here. Remember, these people are the ones implementing institutional discrimination. There are real racists but they aren't a significant threat and they have no political power anywhere.

The term and concept of "meritocracy" emerged from a satirical and dystopian work, The Rise of the Meritocracy, by Michael Dunlop Young, a British sociologist, in 1958.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

A persuasion piece which begins from false statements of facts ... lacks strongly in merits.

I don't think meritocracy is a deep concept aside from promoting fairness as it was originally meant to be. The irony that some people complained about a certain github rug in the name of women was quite funny though.

I do prefer it to anything around DEI, but it isn't really something that has any deeper meaning. It meant fairness to people, some people didn't like that.

I have an issue with what some call “meritocracy” today being nothing more than privilege buying better opportunities.

If we are really serious about meritocracy, we need to level all playfields.

That is true. It isn't fair if people have different starts. But trying to correct this or forcing everyone to be equal requires totalitarian control. It has often been tried with very bad results.

The one thing you can do is giving future generations everything they need to accomplish, which primarily is education. This is currently under severe threat by big corporations that want their users to be passive consumers. Their equity campaigns are hollow and will very likely even have a net negative effect.

Open access to literature and open source did at least provide people with the material that they need to learn about many topics. Living conditions, language barriers or simply no time to learn are still inhibitors which need addressing. These leveling takes time and multiple generations and there is no shortcut to this. Current diversity initiatives grant funding to the most wealthy corporations, politicians use this to gain access to them. It is mainly corruption that doesn't empower anybody aside a selected few. An extremely unfair process, good intentions from some that pave the way to hell.

> big corporations that want their users to be passive consumers.

Not only that, but having a good-enough universal public school system would completely destroy large companies that extract lots of money from barely-good-enough private education targeted at middle-class families. We already let that model take hold and they won't just let us improve public schools and cause their collapse.

Though we need to be careful that in leveling playing fields we aren't leveling society in the process.

The levelling is given by how serious a society is about meritocracy. It can go for anything from doing nothing and hoping for the best (us) to everyone having identical schools and upbringing, which is obviously a Very Bad Idea.