The Illusion of Equality

A passage that stood out to me in Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991 by de la Cadena is the last passage of the book which reads: “The hegemonic acceptance of the "legitimate" hierarchies produced by education accommodates the relationship between the dominant and subordinate forms of discrimination. This hegemony of educational hierarchies makes dominant culturalist racism not only possible but apparently unquestionable and thus all the more formidable” (pg. 330). This book discusses how there was a shift from using race as a form of discrimination to forming social hierarchies based on intelligence and intellectual achievement. Education was said to have a “corrective power” and supposedly cancels the original inferiority of “Indians” or Indigenous groups.

This theme strongly reminded me of the concept of meritocracy and how contemporary discourses around meritocracy champions the idea that individuals should advance based on their abilities and efforts rather than inherited privilege. One’s educational achievement is often used as a marker of the effort that invested, thus, individuals are regarded to have deserved their place in society due to their merit. However, this quote by de la Cadena challenges this notion by underscoring how educational hierarchies can reinforce existing power dynamics and forms of discrimination.

For instance, even in today’s meritocratic societies, the quality of education one receives, access to resources, and socioeconomic background can significantly influence one’s access to higher education, and thus, their ability to compete in a meritocratic society. Similarly, the author’s mention of “dominant culturalist racism” speaks to the idea that educational systems may perpetuate biases and cultural norms that favour certain groups over others. For example, merit-based selection processes can inadvertently favour those who conform to the dominant/privileged cultural norms or possess advantages stemming from their socioeconomic status. A salient example that comes to mind is an infamous SAT question which asked to find a similar analogy for a Runner in a Marathon. The correct answer was “Oarsman: regatta” which requires knowledge of vocabulary that is more likely to come up in the daily lives of affluent white students than in the lives of less affluent minority students. The SAT is meant to be an unbiased, standardized test to measure a high-school student’s readiness for college and provide schools with a common data point to compare applicants. However, as we have seen, cultural biases exist in the exam, despite the design to be unbiased.

Furthermore, the notion of “legitimate hierarchies” in education resembles the meritocratic belief in the legitimacy of rewarding merit and that one’s place in society is directly caused by their invested effort. However, as de la Cardena suggests, these hierarchies can entrench themselves in ways that legitimate existing inequalities, making it difficult to challenge them effectively. Therefore, the use of intellectual achievement to validate social hierarchies is a dangerous practice since it fails to correct the systemic barriers to education and recognize that there are a myriad of factors that affect one’s ability to access quality education and increase social mobility.