History & Words: ‘Meritocracy’ (May 27)
Welcome to ‘History & Words.’ I’m Prashant, founder of Wordpandit and the Learning Inc. Network. This series combines my passion for language learning with historical context. Each entry explores a word’s significance on a specific date, enhancing vocabulary while deepening understanding of history. Join me in this journey of words through time.
📚 Table of Contents
🔍 Word of the Day: Meritocracy
Pronunciation: /ˌmɛrɪˈtɒkrəsi/ (mer-ih-TOK-ruh-see)
🌍 Introduction
On May 27, 1907, San Francisco health officials declared the city’s bubonic plague outbreak officially over, concluding a contentious public health crisis that had persisted for nearly seven years. This date marks not just the end of a deadly epidemic but also illuminates a profound paradox in American society: while the nation celebrated principles of meritocracy and equal opportunity, the management of the plague revealed deeply entrenched racial discrimination that systematically disadvantaged Chinese Americans.
The concept of meritocracy—a system where advancement is based on individual ability and effort rather than wealth, social class, or other arbitrary factors—had been central to American identity since the nation’s founding. Yet the plague response in San Francisco demonstrated how far reality diverged from this ideal. When the first plague case was identified in Chinatown in March 1900, authorities responded by quarantining the entire neighborhood, restricting the movement of Chinese residents while allowing white Americans to move freely, and subjecting Chinese Americans to invasive medical procedures and property destruction that white citizens were spared.
This stark contrast between America’s meritocratic ideals and discriminatory practices provides a compelling lens through which to examine both the concept of meritocracy and the social realities that often contradict it. The plague’s end on this date serves as a historical anchor point for exploring how public health crises can expose and amplify existing social inequities, challenging us to consider the gap between our professed values and our lived practices.
🌱 Etymology
The term “meritocracy” is surprisingly recent, first coined in 1958 by British sociologist Michael Young in his satirical novel “The Rise of the Meritocracy.” The word combines the Latin “meritus” (deserved) with the Greek suffix “-kratos” (power, rule), literally meaning “rule by those who deserve it.” Young intended the term as a critique, warning against a system where intelligence and effort become the new basis for a rigid social hierarchy.
However, the concept itself has much older roots. Confucian philosophy in ancient China emphasized government by virtue and talent rather than hereditary privilege. The Chinese imperial examination system, established in the Sui Dynasty (581–618 CE), represented perhaps the world’s first formal meritocratic system, allowing men regardless of background to compete for government positions through rigorous examinations. Similarly, Plato’s “Republic” outlined a state where guardians would be selected based on ability and trained accordingly. The American founding fathers, particularly Thomas Jefferson, embraced the concept of a “natural aristocracy” based on virtue and talent rather than birth, though their vision excluded women and people of color.
📖 Key Vocabulary
- 🔑 Social Darwinism: A late 19th-century ideology that applied evolutionary concepts like natural selection to human societies, often used to justify racial hierarchies and colonial practices
- 🔑 Quarantine: The separation and restriction of movement of people who have been exposed to a contagious disease, historically applied unequally across racial and social lines
- 🔑 Public Health: Organized efforts to prevent disease and promote health at the population level, often reflecting and reinforcing social power structures
- 🔑 Credential inflation: The devaluation of academic or professional qualifications as they become more common, requiring individuals to obtain increasingly advanced credentials to remain competitive
🏛️ Historical Context
The concept of advancement based on merit rather than birthright gained momentum during the Enlightenment, challenging aristocratic systems of privilege. The American and French Revolutions both drew on these ideas, though their implementation remained limited. In the United States, the ideal of the “self-made man” became central to national mythology during the 19th century, with figures like Abraham Lincoln celebrated for rising from humble origins to the presidency.
By the late 19th century, when San Francisco’s plague crisis began, meritocratic ideals coexisted uncomfortably with Social Darwinist theories that ranked human races hierarchically. These pseudo-scientific beliefs provided intellectual cover for discriminatory practices against immigrants, particularly those from Asia. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882—the first significant U.S. law restricting immigration based on nationality—reflected these tensions, as did local ordinances in San Francisco targeting Chinese businesses and cultural practices.
The global context also matters for understanding these dynamics. The turn of the 20th century marked the height of Western imperialism, with European powers and the United States extending control over much of Asia and Africa. Colonial administration frequently employed rhetoric about “civilizing missions” while enforcing racial hierarchies. Simultaneously, public health emerged as a modernizing force that both improved health outcomes and served as a tool for social control, allowing authorities to regulate marginalized populations under the banner of disease prevention.
Within this context, San Francisco’s plague crisis exemplified how public health measures could be applied unequally based on race. When plague appeared in Chinatown in 1900, white officials immediately blamed Chinese cultural practices and living conditions rather than recognizing the same urban overcrowding and sanitation challenges that affected other neighborhoods. This response reflected and reinforced existing prejudices while undermining effective disease control.
⏳ Timeline
- 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act prohibits immigration of Chinese laborers
- March 6, 1900: First bubonic plague case identified in San Francisco’s Chinatown
- March 7, 1900: Authorities impose quarantine specifically around Chinatown
- 1900–1904: First plague wave hits San Francisco, primarily affecting Chinatown
- 1901: Surgeon General Walter Wyman confirms presence of plague despite local official denial
- 1903: Federal health authorities take control of San Francisco plague response
- April 18, 1906: San Francisco earthquake and fire destroy much of the city
- 1906–1907: Second plague wave affects broader city population after post-earthquake displacement
- May 27, 1907: San Francisco plague officially declared over
- 1908–1909: Rural outbreak in contra costa county indicates plague had established in local rodent populations
- 1910: Last human plague case from this outbreak period recorded
- 1924: Plague resurfaces in Los Angeles
- 1958: Term “meritocracy” coined by Michael Young
🌟 The Day’s Significance
May 27, 1907, marked the official end of a plague outbreak that had revealed fundamental contradictions in American society. The declaration came after nearly seven years of struggle against both the disease itself and the political resistance to acknowledging it. When plague first appeared in Chinatown in 1900, local business interests and politicians had initially denied its existence, fearing economic damage from quarantines and trade restrictions. This denial delayed effective response and allowed the disease to establish itself more firmly.
The plague response had proceeded along explicitly racial lines. Chinese residents faced mandatory examinations, forced vaccinations with an experimental serum, destruction of personal property, and restricted movement. Meanwhile, white San Franciscans remained largely exempt from these measures despite living in a city where plague-carrying rats moved freely across neighborhood boundaries. These disparities reflected not medical necessity but deeply embedded racial prejudices that persisted despite mounting scientific evidence about how plague actually spread.
The 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire ironically contributed to controlling the plague by destroying many rat-infested buildings and dispersing the Chinatown population. However, it also led to a second wave of plague as displaced residents settled in new areas, bringing infected rats with them. This second wave affected a broader population, including white residents, which prompted more comprehensive public health measures. The fact that authorities implemented more humane and scientifically sound approaches when white citizens were at risk further highlights the racial disparities in the earlier response.
By the time the outbreak was declared over on May 27, 1907, it had claimed 113 lives—a relatively low number that masks the significant social damage caused by discriminatory policies. The end of the immediate crisis did not address the underlying conditions that had enabled plague to gain a foothold: overcrowded housing, inadequate sanitation, and systematic neglect of immigrant communities. Even more troublingly, the disease had established itself in the local ground squirrel population, creating an endemic reservoir that would lead to occasional cases for years to come.
💬 Quote
“In the United States, I have noted with regret that the plague has been made a political issue instead of a scientific problem… Such an attitude recalls the Middle Ages rather than the enlightened civilization in which we are supposed to live.” – Dr. Rupert Blue, Public Health Service officer who led successful efforts to control the San Francisco plague, 1908
🔮 Modern Usage and Reflection
Today, “meritocracy” remains a powerful if contested ideal in American society. While most citizens endorse the principle that people should advance based on their abilities and efforts rather than their background, growing evidence suggests that social mobility has declined in recent decades. Factors such as wealth inequality, racial discrimination, and unequal access to quality education create substantial barriers to true meritocracy.
The San Francisco plague response illustrates how claims of meritocracy can mask systematic disadvantage. Chinese immigrants faced legal barriers to citizenship, restrictions on property ownership, limited educational opportunities, and employment discrimination—all while being blamed for disease outbreaks and poor living conditions that resulted directly from these exclusionary policies. This pattern of blaming marginalized groups for conditions imposed upon them continues to undermine meritocratic principles in contemporary society.
Public health remains a realm where meritocratic contradictions often emerge clearly. The COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, revealed disparities in infection rates, treatment access, and mortality that tracked closely with existing social inequalities. Essential workers—disproportionately people of color and those with limited economic resources—faced higher exposure risks while often lacking adequate healthcare, paid sick leave, or the ability to work remotely. These disparities echo aspects of the San Francisco plague response, demonstrating the persistence of structural inequities in health outcomes.
🏛️ Legacy
The San Francisco plague outbreak left several important legacies. Scientifically, it established that plague had reached North America and become endemic in local wildlife populations. Institutionally, it strengthened federal authority in public health matters, as the U.S. Public Health Service successfully asserted control over a situation that local officials had mishandled. The effective rat eradication programs eventually implemented in San Francisco also established important precedents for urban sanitation and vector control programs.
However, the most significant legacy may be in exposing the gap between America’s meritocratic ideals and its discriminatory practices. The explicitly racial nature of the initial response—quarantining an entire ethnic community while leaving others unrestricted despite shared risk factors—demonstrated how ostensibly neutral public health measures could become vehicles for existing prejudices. This pattern would repeat in subsequent health crises, from the “Typhoid Mary” case to the early AIDS epidemic to the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
The plague outbreak also intensified anti-Asian sentiment that would later contribute to the Immigration Act of 1924, which effectively banned immigration from Asia until 1965. The portrayal of Asian immigrants as disease carriers established a pernicious stereotype that continues to resurface during health crises, as evidenced by anti-Asian harassment and violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.
🔍 Comparative Analysis
When San Francisco officials declared the plague outbreak over in 1907, meritocracy functioned primarily as an implicit assumption rather than a named concept. Americans widely believed that their society rewarded talent and hard work, but had not yet developed the specific vocabulary of “meritocracy” that would emerge in mid-century critiques. The discriminatory plague response reflected prevailing beliefs that different racial groups possessed inherently different capabilities and moral qualities—a view fundamentally at odds with true meritocratic principles.
Contemporary understandings of meritocracy are more nuanced, acknowledging how structural factors can prevent equal opportunity despite formal legal equality. Modern critics argue that meritocracy itself can become an ideology that justifies inequality by attributing success entirely to individual qualities while ignoring systemic advantages and disadvantages. This perspective would view the plague response as not simply a failure to live up to meritocratic ideals but as a case where claims of merit-based treatment actually masked and perpetuated existing hierarchies.
The evolution of public health approaches since 1907 also reflects changing conceptions of fairness and merit. While early 20th-century interventions often targeted “undesirable” populations with coercive measures, modern public health emphasizes community engagement, cultural sensitivity, and addressing social determinants of health—acknowledging that health outcomes reflect social conditions as much as individual choices.
💡 Did You Know?
🎓 Conclusion
The end of San Francisco’s plague outbreak on May 27, 1907, represents a critical moment for examining the tension between meritocratic ideals and discriminatory realities in American history. The stark contrast between treatment of Chinese and white residents during the crisis reveals how principles of equal opportunity and advancement based on merit were compromised by deeply entrenched racial prejudices. As we continue to grapple with public health challenges and social inequities today, this historical episode offers important lessons about the necessity of aligning our practices with our professed values. True meritocracy requires not just formal equality but active dismantling of structural barriers that prevent all individuals from developing and applying their talents on equal terms.
📚 Further Reading
- 📘 “Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague” by David K. Randall
- 📗 “Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown” by Nayan Shah
- 📙 “The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?” by Michael J. Sandel
