DEI, My Ass: The Case for Black Nepotism
We do not live in a meritocracy. We live in a society that was shaped by brute force to facilitate the ongoing mediocrity of the ruling majority. As such, I believe, firmly, that Black people should engage in nepotism across the board in order to get ahead (just like white people have for centuries).
America has long held on to the farce that anyone can “pull themselves up by the bootstraps” in this country. Many would argue that this is hard to do when you have no bootstraps. Black descendants of slaves have an added layer of difficulty – any boots we had before were stolen, and every time we attempted to make our own boots, we were murdered, bombed, redlined, and beaten into bootless submission.
The sister myth of this country centers on the idea that we are a “meritocracy.” Our society believes that because there is no classic feudal system or established social hierarchy, like in Britain, that we somehow operate in a place where people get ahead because they deserve it. Ha!
But we don’t live in a meritocracy, and we never have. How did the Kennedys take over politics like locusts? Political genetics? LOL. Did Colin Hanks get his first few roles in Hollywood because he went to the auditions and blew them out the water with absolutely no help from his two famous actor parents? Ivanka Trump was appointed as a senior White House adviser in 2017, after her dad became President. I mean, this blog post basically writes its fucking self at this point. Camman. Elon Musk, anyone?
Spanish, Portuguese, and English settlers came to America beginning in the 1400s and they thrived — not because they were smarter or more morally-just than the native inhabitants, but because they were incubators of disease (passing illnesses at catastrophic levels), and more apt at inflicting larger scale violence with guns. That’s the thing. Our country wasn’t built solely on nepotism; it was also built on the blood of those who did not benefit from the nepotism at play. The folks who were able to come here and literally claim land as their own because they “found” it, who then passed down that land to their descendants, who then trafficked humans from across the ocean to work for generations on that land without any pay, to then inherit the wealth generated by both the land and also the “ownership” of that free labor, are the same people who claim to have a problem with nepotism, DEI, reparations, or anything of the sort. Give me the biggest of breaks.
It's complete bullshit, and all of it is a farce to keep the majority of us off the scent of the real tea, which is that most of the dominant class of people don’t, and never have, deserved anything that they have in this country.
I’ll never forget when I got to Harvard Law School. It was the culmination of years of work (coupled with the limited privilege I accessed as a middle-class person with a supportive, two-parent household and access to education). I believed, when I arrived, that I would be joining the brightest minds in the future of the legal practice. What was true was that my peers would significantly influence the future of the legal practice. What was absolutely false is that these were the brightest minds. They were…minds. Minds molded by years of better schools, tutors, focused environments that supported their basic needs and education, guidance from experienced people, lives free from the distractions of racism, and sprinkles of nepotism along the way. There were very few people there who were smarter than those I went to school with from the hood in Savannah, GA. Yet, their lives looked entirely different. That’s by design. Because nepotism is embedded into the fabric of white American society, but if we know that, then the dominant class can no longer keep us behind the 8 ball with the carrot and stick of individual hard work and meritocracy as our only means of advancement. As long as we are playing a different game than them, they will always win. The attack on DEI right now is a reflexive reaction to us getting closer and closer to the central truth of all of this – the people who have dominance, power, position, and preeminence do not deserve it, and it’s perfectly okay to bring people into the fold for reasons other than stated “merit.”
At every stage of my life, when interacting with white people, I noticed how matter-of-factly they did nepotism (and cronyism). No one ever says anything when parents got their kids their first job. Nor when they pull strings to get their kids into educational programs. Or when they use their legacy to leverage college admissions. Nepotism is a key tool in community building, and a valid strategy for advancement. So why shouldn’t Black people use nepotism to our advantage to build security and generational inheritance in the way that white people have done for centuries? I, for sure, will be nepo-ing all over the place. And who gone check me, boo?
