Before diving into his lecture, Chris Hayes started off with a unique scenario.

“I want you all to consider yourselves scientists in some cruel dystopian universe tasked with…taking people and turning them into sociopaths,” he said.

This scenario describes how cultivating fear and chaos in individuals is driving Wall Street and the American idea of meritocracy, Hayes said. Meritocracy is the idea that power should be given based on achievement.

“If you got a sense that the laws don’t apply to you and combine them with precariousness, you would have subjects that would be willing to do anything,” he added.

Hayes, an MSNBC host, used the scenario to transition into how meritocracy drives inequality in American life as part of his University Lecture, “Twilight of the Elites.” He spoke in Hendricks Chapel and is the first speaker of the spring 2014 series.

When introducing Hayes, Lorraine Branham, dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, joked that she started to read his books before she saw his face on television.

“He looked much smarter on TV,” she said light-heartedly.

But Hayes’ argument became more serious as he unwaveringly spoke to the audience about how the idea of American meritocracy is somewhat of a façade. He spoke about the British writer Michael Young, whose book, “The Rise of Meritocracy,” was a satire.

He made the same connection with the concept of a level playing field in American society.

“There is a really fascinating story about the fact that level playing field is a term invented by a bank lobbyist.”

Though he criticized meritocracy, Hayes suggested that he was connected to it in his own right. His mother was a teacher and his father was a Jesuit Seminarian turned community organizer. He grew up in the Bronx, and told the audience about a test he took to attend Hunter College High School, a magnet school in New York City.

The school had a meritocratic vision when he applied, Hayes said. But today, it no longer does because of a booming test prep industry that favors the rich.

“What essentially develops is a rigged game,” Hayes said, adding how the nature of city schools has changed. He extended his argument into other aspects of American life with hard-hitting data about the American elite.

Social mobility has not changed in 60 years and only four percent of people in American society make it to the top, Hayes said.

He said people think there is a “knight in shining armor” that is in favor of mobility and will rescue them from inequality. This figure never shows up, he said.

Jeanne Michele Mariani, a first-year law student, said she agreed with Hayes on socioeconomic inequality.

“I think that social mobility in America is almost like an abstract concept, I don’t know if it actually exists,” she said.

Derek Bryant, a junior sociology major, said the points Hayes brought up were issues that the Occupy Wall Street movement attempted to bring national attention to.

“The economic inequality, the disparities between the working class and the owning class are something that with the Occupy movement was brought into the mainstream for a while and kind of fizzled out,” he said. “(Hayes’) trying to bring the issue of income inequality back into the forefront is something that’s really worthwhile.”

Published on February 26, 2014 at 1:31 am

Contact Rob: rromano@syr.edu