Because its not, and the absurd shell games that get played to pretend it is are extremely harmful to society as a whole.

You are making a straw man argument that I am "winging" that one person is disadvantaged, therefore the entire system is flawed. That is not the argument I am making.

The argument I am making is in fact a majority of the population (Black, white, or otherwise) is greatly harmed by the myth that the American economic system greatly rewards "merit", how many poor white rural people become CEOs?

Um... does anyone actually believe that “myth”? Last American election was a trust fund kid vs wife of former president... so anyone who still thinks it’s “all meritocracy 100% of the time” is beyond stupid.

But that doesn’t make it a bad ideal. In fact, I’d say that, if anything, that would be an argument that we need more meritocracy (again, just like equality and freedom).

Meritocracy is great, but not when you start with unequal conditions, and make it difficult at every stage in their lives for folks to escape their predicament and do better.

Proponents of meritocracy see it as an ideal to strive for based on the idea that the most competent people should fill the most important roles. It's about trying to make society better through competence.

Opponents of meritocracy see it as a cover for privilege. They see people who are unfairly privileged using meritocracy as an excuse to reward themselves for their privilege.

This is how I would characterize the debate, anyway. It's hard to say whether anyone is arguing that only incompetent people should fill important roles. Nor do I see anyone trying to claim privilege doesn't exist at all, that everyone starts from an equal blank slate.

Ultimately, I don't see any way of breaking this impasse. At least not unless we succeed in creating a post-scarcity society where rewards for filling important roles are at best symbolic and everyone has all their needs met, regardless of ability.