The myth that (especially in the U.S.) society is a meritocracy where those with the most ability and potential end up occupying positions of power is a persistent one because it is useful, but it directly contradicts the evidence that we see around us in one simple way: we know that ability is not determined by genes or gender, yet throughout our society we see persistent patterns of white male ascendance to the exclusion of everyone else. These patterns directly contradict the idea of a meritocracy, and reveal that both patriarchy and white supremacy (among other biases) must be shaping the selection mechanisms by which people move into positions of power. This calculator allows anyone to quickly quantify that bias, by measuring the probability for a particular white-male dominated group to have been selected according to their abilities.
Ever been to an event with an all-male panel, or in a department where all but one person is white? Ever wondered what the probability of that was? Input the number of people and the number of white men in a group below, and click the compute button to find out.
(Your output will appear here)
Although useful as a tool to reveal a key contradiction in the myth of meritocracy, neither race nor binary gender are concrete categories that usefully describe populations, so please don't over-interpret these results.
Also, the numbers used here are of course wildly inaccurate estimates, especially because there is no consistent global definition of race or whiteness, and because various census numbers are combined across different years. In all cases the benefit of the doubt has been given to higher estimates, and for the world population a fudge-factor of 1.5 is included, to ensure that the probabilities computed here are if anything upper bounds.
Accordingly, using these numbers to argue that there should be fewer white men in a group is possibly justified, but using them to argue that there should be more is never justified.
Data for the U.S. and world gender and racial distributions were taken from The U.S. Census and from Wikipedia (!), with additional data on the global gender ratio from Our World in Data. None of these sources have been verified (especially Wikipedia) and the methodology for generating concrete probabilities has been a combination of "guess wildly" and "make something up." In other words, there are no statistical conclusions to be found here, although as stated above, the probabilities computed are likely over-estimates.
Built by: Peter Mawhorter