Originally published at: A "nepo baby" unabashedly admits that privilege paved his way | Boing Boing
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OK, that one took a minute. Oy…
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Can’t unhear it.
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I’ll take that over the BS claims of nepo-babies that they did it all themselves. There has to be some acknowledgement that an equally or better qualified candidate likely missed out on getting the job because they didn’t win the genetic lottery.
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On this side of the pond, he would have been constantly being asked if he was one of a pair of people with that name
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Honestly, “knicker” was my first thought, as well. But no, it was not to be…
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So, he’s admitting that he is cognizant of leveraging his father’s fame; but is he living up to (or trying at least) the expectations that come with it? I think that’s the real question.
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It’s a separate follow-up question, and a good one. I don’t follow basketball but it doesn’t sound like he’s trashing his family name like RFK Jr. is with his.
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Same here, and I’m taking it as a good sign that I couldn’t make the connection until the video explicitly spelled it out.
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I mean what else is he supposed to do? Assuming that coaching basketball is really what he wants to do with his life? Can’t fault him for being born into those circumstances. I mean if growing up he watched a lot of basketball b/c his father was a coach, had 24/7 access to a talented mentor etc. That is all privilege but can you be mad at that? Which isn’t to say there’s some privilege that does feel like BS like the fact that he may get an interview for a position solely on his name.
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What annoys people most, as I noted above, is the claim that nepotism had nothing to do with getting the position. Kerr knew better than to do that, but a lot of nepo-babies (including non-famous ones) don’t.
A simple admission like that goes a long way, and models admissions of broader privilege in our society.
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Just a minor thing to point out: He didn’t just watch his dad coach, he watched his dad PLAY in the NBA and win three rings with Bulls on their second Jordan-led 3-peat, and then win again on two different iterations of Tim Duncan-led Spurs.
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He could go back to the origial Scottish pronunciation.
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Yeah; I don’t follow the NBA, but the idea that the son of a famous player might be setup to be a decent player/coach is not unreasonable beyond just the name. I dunno if that part counts as privilege or not though, but consider that someone who grew up with access to the advice and learning of being that close to a famous player probably has advantages that some random dude with the same ancestry might not have.
That being said, that might also amount to nothing. Lots of kids don’t know anything about what their parents did for a living; my mom sold insurance for decades and I don’t really know anything about it, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if Nicholas played a lot of basketball/etc growing up and in that environment it might be be surprising if the guy has a lot of insight.
That all said, I think saying what he did is a good move; I’m also the beneficiary of a lot of luck and skin color in where I got to (no fun parents opening doors stuff, but being a cis white dude is playing on Easy a lot of the time), and I try and be clear about how much luck was a factor in my life whenever I talk about my career/etc.
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Wayne would have been a more suitable first name.
Funnier too.
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This is the definition of privilege: being born into a situation where your path forward/up is easier than others.
It doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong, just that you’ve had it easier than others might have. The Venn diagram between privilege (where you’re born with advantages) and outright nepotism (where your family members arrange for you to get things over people who were actually MORE qualified) has some overlap, but they’re not the same thing.
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Yeah, not trying to evade / diminish it, but wondering what the separation is between things that are unique about your birth vs what’s just things that happen as you grow up. For example, what if you were childhood friends with someone like Bill Gates or another early programmer that was less obscenely wealthy as a kid - you would have a leg up on someone else starting from a similar socioeconomic background if you wanted to be a developer.
Alternately, this guy might have been born to a dad who was a famous NBA player but then died when Nicholas was young; he would still have access to a lot of the ‘name recognition’, but he wouldn’t have had access to the sort of tutelage I was talking about.
I suspect the right answer is that it’s all various flavors of privilege and that I’m splitting hairs, and probably trying to define them separately perpetuates the idea of privilege as an inherently ‘bad’ or ‘good’ thing rather than just a fact of your life, such as your height or some random genomic data.
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Humility is underrated in America. Anytime anyone acknowledges other people or other factors for their success goes a long way in my opinion. I don’t understand America’s obsessions with self involved narcissists.
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It’s the Big Lie of capitalism. It both justifies why the wealthy deserve it, while keeping everyone else from working together.
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