But the problem in this example would be that this man is using a warped, deeply racist definition of "merit". I don't see how that would invalidate the concept of meritocracy itself.

> When the word "meritocracy" is used to structurally shut down debates of sexism and racism, it is no longer about meritocracy.

There seems to be a strange logical fallacy where "Our group aspires to be X" morphs into "Our group is X" - and then, the "conclusion" is drawn, that "evidence Y that were not X must be wrong, since after all, we are X".

From what I've seen, I'd apply the same thing to the concept of "color-blindness". As a society you can aspire to be "color-blind" all you want - if you still have cop violence against PoCs and "random searches" where the randomness is conditioned on skin color, you obviously aren't color-blind.

So this logical fallacy seems to exist and be widespread. However, I don't see how it would invalidate the concepts themselves.