Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. Meritocracy is not perfect, but explicit discrimination is so incredibly prone to abuse and corruption that is not even a contest. Society is made of individuals. We can hope they strive towards a phenotype-blind process, and shun the ones that explicitly discriminate. Or we can institutionalize explicit discrimination and raise everyones awareness to phenotype discrimination. For which the rational self-interest response is to discriminate. Trapping us all into an endless prisoner dilemma lose-lose tarpit.
One doesn't get a fat paycheck just because they are intrinsically awesome. One gets a fat paycheck because turnover costs, especially opportunity costs, are higher.