From the Narratives We Create to the Lies We Tell: Disabling Some Myths of Inequality

Social inequality has a multifaceted character, and any analysis of it is built within the scope of comparisons between people and groups of people that are limited to a specific social context. To understand this phenomenon, we start from the narrative character of personal, individual, and social identities to assess how enabling myths sustain the perpetuation of inequality in contemporary societies. Particularly, three systemic enabling myths of inequality are discussed: 1) the myth of meritocracy, 2) the myth of education as a universal emancipator, and 3) the myth of equal rights in the course of the full exercise of citizenship. It is concluded that the non-universalization of education, the wide distortions of cultural capital, and the asymmetry of the substantive distribution of rights during the full exercise of citizenship contribute to making inequalities systemic, supported by enabling myths that restrict the reformulation of an individual’s self-narrative capability, limiting the possibility of challenging the status quo.