OPINION
There's a quite a bit of panic that greets any measure allowing social mobility.
New conversations around diversity (which invariably involve race), equity and accountability measures when it comes to power, position and pay parity are always fraught.
The hysteria around these conversations are in part because they point to an uncomfortable and deeply known truth - they challenge the and point out the very real and invisible affirmative action that takes place every day.
It's affirmative action for the rich.
Hollywood actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are among dozens of people accused of being part of a US$25 million scheme to get their kids into prestigious Ivy league schools like Yale and Stanford.
The measures some of the parents allegedly used include cheating on entrance exams and bribing university officials to say certain students were athletes - even going as far as to have their children's faces onto the bodies of athletes in their applications.
There's not enough focus on this invisible system, so it comes with some satisfaction to see an extreme version of it revealed with stunning effect in the news out of Hollywood.
The brazen entitlement of these accused parents is a magnifying glass on the oiling that is a de rigueur part of our social system.
One lecturer friend told me of an extreme example of this attitude in her class - a young man who informed her he didn't really have to study because 'his parents had a yacht'.
But he was depressingly right. Those afforded such privilege are able to go on to use their networks and inherited to replicate their parents' success - in the law, finance, the media and in medicine - and all, we are assured, 'on merit'.
To start to deconstruct the myth of 'merit', we need to talk about race and the code of being - a more subtle tool in the privilege arsenal than the crass sledgehammer of extreme wealth these parents allegedly used.
To be a 'well rounder' is often used as a discretionary factor in application processes and generally strikes fear into the hearts of ethnic kids, because we've always known 'all rounder' is code for 'not brown'.
In fact, the was found to be to limit enrolment of Jewish students in the WASP student body in the 1920s. By to a 'complex and holistic consideration of all aspects of each individual applicant', Ivy League schools in the US were able to deny the existence of prejudice while managing to curb growing Jewish enrolment.
It's amazing the extreme measures these Hollywood stars have allegedly gone to with all the power and wealth they already have. It's a testament to the threat even those with great power feel to anything that even mildly disturbs their status quo, and the measures they will go to maintain it.
