President Donald Trump signed the “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy” executive order in April, promoting hiring based on individual merit, rather than gender, race or socio-economic status, and promising a “colorblind society.”
The order’s title is misleading. America has never offered true equality of opportunity. Rather than advancing meritocracy, prioritizing individual merit in this way could merely cloak widening inequalities. Even senior policymakers, such as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, fret about the bifurcation between the increasingly wealthy and the further impoverished.
That inequality undermines meritocracy, which only truly works in a society with equitable access to opportunities. Worsening inequality makes the appeal to meritocracy look hollow without significant structural reform.
Take three examples of how inequality shapes people’s lives. First, Chicago’s life expectancy gap. Residents of the predominantly white Loop area live, on average, to more than age 87, while in nearby majority Black West Garfield Park, average life expectancy is 67, according to Chicago Sun-Times reporting of city data. Second, America’s gender wage gap: Women earned 85% of what men earned in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center. Third, one in five children — 13 million kids — faces food insecurity, notes antihunger nonprofit Feeding America.
These inequalities intersect with race, gender and gender identity discrimination. But a common thread is income inequality and its counterpart, wealth inequality. Families in the top 1% of the U.S. wealth distribution held 27% of all wealth in 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office, up from 23% in 1989. Much of the population struggles to access food, housing and quality education, making the idea that government can turn on a “meritocracy” switch look fantastical. Without access to basic opportunities, individuals cannot overcome systemic barriers, and meritocracy fails.
Many University of Chicago scholars study inequality, including Marianne Bertrand, an economist who researches the gender wage gap, racial discrimination and CEO pay. I’ve been lucky to work with Professor Bertrand, who suggests that tackling these issues requires big societal shifts, such as fundamentally rethinking parental-leave policies.
Lab students should hear from these scholars to understand the scale of the problem. We can also help address the issues by volunteering with organizations such as the Chicago Food Depository, the Chicago Coalition to end Homelessness, and Chicago Votes.
These organizations are seeking a true meritocracy that provides opportunities to those who’ve been historically excluded. That will not be achieved by executive order but by grassroots efforts pushing for structural change.
