I keep seeing this in discussions of all kinds of social policy, like about health care, or education.
Some people, it seems, are deemed "deserving" of health care, or education, with the presumption that others are not.
For an example, look at this article from CNN yesterday about the connection between affirmative action and the scandal of wealthy parents cheating to get their offspring into elite colleges.
[D]efenders of using racial preferences in college admissions now have a new response to complaints that undeserving black and brown students are getting help:
What about the college cheating scandal?...
[T]he scam strays into the affirmative action minefield because it raises questions that have long driven the debate over racial preferences: What's the difference between a deserving or undeserving college student?...
The conservative legal movement that helped shape the five conservative justices who now sit on the Supreme Court has long preached the virtues of a "level playing field." Many of its leaders have chided progressives for creating an "entitlement mentality" and pushing unqualified and undeserving students into elite colleges where they're "mismatched."
While the reporter who wrote that story seems to be trying to lay out the dynamics of the issues fairly, his mindless repetition of the idea that there are deserving and undeserving students is harmful. It perpetuates the conservative idea that some people deserve the fruits of their wealthy and technologically advanced society, and others don't.
If that's what someone thinks who's trying to be fair about the situation, then, really, they've lost the thread.
Education, in a healthy democratic society, is about developing your people to the fullest extent of their personal possibilities.
It's a benefit to everyone in the society when everyone is well educated, not just to that person.
It's like health care. When someone can get health care, they personally benefit, but so do all the people around them, from not getting transmissible diseases, from not having to take care of people who've fallen into disability from easily treatable conditions, and so on.
But decades of conservative and libertarian propaganda have made us lose sight of this obvious fact. Like Margaret Thatcher, they believe there's no such thing as society.
They want us all to believe that it's every individual for himself, and let the weaker be damned.
They want us to think that education is simply a means to climb the ladder of social hierarchy, and that the privilege of being well educated should only be doled out to "the right sort of people."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, speaking at an education policy town hall on the weekend, had the perfect framing to respond to this sort of attitude on education — or on many other divisive social policy matters:
Here’s what she said, beginning with talking about her father and his education experience:
“He told me about what his life was like, where as a teenager he got up and left his apartment at five o’clock in the morning every day to get on to the 6 train or to get onto the 4 train, and ride a very dangerous subway during the 1970s at 15 years old to go to Brooklyn Tech because it was seen as his only opportunity to have a dignified life. And he loved his experience at Brooklyn Tech, because he went to a good school.
My question is, why are there only five—or a handful—of schools in New York City that are seen to give us this life? My question is, why isn't every public school in New York city a Brooklyn Tech caliber school? Every one should be.
My concern is that this right here, where we’re fighting each other, is exactly what happens under a scarcity mindset. This should not be the fight [pointing between herself and the audience] -- this should be the fight [pointing between upwards, indicating the wealthy elite, and the rest of us]."
If enough resources of good quality were provided for everyone, there would be no need to discuss who's "deserving" and who isn't.
We all deserve a top-notch education.
We all deserve easily accessible and affordable health care.
We all deserve food on the table and a roof over our heads.
In the wealthiest country the world has ever known, the scarcities of all these social goods are artificial, because the few, the elite, are hoarding as much as they can grab of the society’s wealth all to themselves.
Until people begin to understand that this is what’s really playing out, they’ll keep being tricked into voting against their own interests and fighting with each other over the crumbs while the rich laugh.