meritocracy 的词源

这个词最早由英国社会学家迈克尔·杨（Michael Young，1915-2002）在1958年创造，并用作他书籍《精英的崛起》（The Rise of the Meritocracy）的标题。它来源于 merit（优点，才能）和 -cracy（统治，治理）。相关词汇包括 Meritocratic（精英主义的，功绩主义的）。

[Young's book] imagined an elite that got its position not from ancestry, but from test scores and effort. For him, meritocracy was a negative term; his spoof was a warning about the negative consequences of assigning social status based on formal educational qualifications, and showed how excluding from leadership anyone who couldn't jump through the educational hoops would create a new form of discrimination. And that's exactly what has happened. [Lani Guinier, interview, New York Times, Feb. 7, 2015]

[杨的书] 想象了一种精英阶层，他们的地位不是靠血统，而是靠考试成绩和努力。他认为，功绩主义是一个贬义词；他的讽刺作品警告人们，基于正式教育资格来评定社会地位的负面后果，并展示了排除那些无法通过教育考验的人会如何创造一种新的歧视形式。而这正是我们现在所经历的。[拉尼·古尔尼尔（Lani Guinier），《纽约时报》采访，2015年2月7日]