> That definition of "merit" implies that whites have more merit than blacks (because they tend to be more privileged) and men have more merit than women. No,

> That definition of "merit" implies that whites have more merit than blacks (because they tend to be more privileged) and men have more merit than women. No, I said that it TENDS that way. Obviously, if a man goes to trade school and a woman does not (for whatever reason), the man has more merit for conducting that trade than the woman, barring any other evidence or considerations. So, privilege allows people to increase their own merit. It's fairly intuitive, and to increase diversity while still embracing meritocracy (which is just good business, IMHO), we need to increase the opportunity for people to improve their own merit. To be utterly clear, I do not (consciously) condone the extrapolation of phenotypical traits to imply very much of anything about a person's capabilities, especially in a business sense. I'm just pointing out that there's not much use in ignoring the reality of the disparity in minority distribution between certain industries and the greater geographical reason will force obvious problems if you're trying to both be diverse and meritocratic—you can't hire people who don't exist (statistically speaking) in the hiring pool. > If the definition of "best qualified" favors white men, then of course white men are more likely to be the "best qualified" candidates. It's a classic example of structural discrimination. I don't think we disagreed; I just don't think there's any point not to acknowledge that the best hires in a pure merit sense are going to lead to poor quality diversity hires. It indicates there's an opportunity here for underserved minorities to fill a gap. IMHO there are problems all up and down the pipeline mucking with natural free market forces; as you said, structural discrimination. But we should be providing people with MORE transparency to help them make better decisions, not LESS transparency because it's an uncomfortable truth. Honestly, I feel like the definition of privilege is fairly close to "unfair advantage". I don't really see a way to pull it apart—again by nature—from how people naturally take advantage of the opportunities they have. But recognizing them baldly is a good way to start.