There
is
a common feeling that many of us
have experienced in professional
or academic environments,
especially when we struggle
against gender or racial bias.
It’s called “imposter
syndrome”—the feeling that one
doesn’t deserve one’s position and
that others will discover this
lack of competence at any moment.
I felt this way as a female
graduate student in a science
field in the 1990s. I felt it as a
young journalist of color in a
white-dominated industry.
The
rich
and the elite among us appear to
feel the opposite—that they are
deserving of unearned privilege. A
recent
series
of stories
in New York Magazine headlined
“The Year of the Nepo Baby” has struck
a
chord
among those who are being outed
for having benefited from insider
status. Nepo babies are the
children of the rich and famous,
the ones who are borne of naked
nepotism and whose ubiquity
exposes the myth of American
meritocracy. Nepo babies can be
found everywhere there is power.
The
New
York Magazine stories have
predictably generated defensive
responses from nepo babies. Jamie
Lee Curtis, actor and daughter of
famed Hollywood stars Janet Leigh
and Tony Curtis, wrote a lengthy
post
on Instagram
defending her status. Although she
admitted that she benefitted from
her parents’ fame—“I have
navigated 44 years with the
advantages my associated and
reflected fame brought me, I don’t
pretend there aren’t any”—she also
clapped back at critics, saying
she was tired of assumptions that
a nepo baby like her “would
somehow have no talent
whatsoever.” Curtis went further
in claiming that the current focus
on people like her was “designed
to try to diminish and denigrate
and hurt.”
Curtis is
clearly a talented actor, of that there is
no doubt. But, in defending her privilege
from critique, she reveals just how
deserving she considers herself. It is the
converse of imposter syndrome—the insider
syndrome.
The act of
calling out nepotism doesn’t necessarily
imply that nepo babies are not talented.
(Nepo babies are sometimes talented—and
sometimes not.) It means pointing out that
some talented people are able to benefit
from family connections and fame that other
equally talented people are not able to.
The
critique is intended to call out elitism,
not “diminish,” “denigrate” or “hurt,” as
Curtis accuses journalists of doing.
Journalism that exposes power and its
corruptive influence among elites punches
up, not down. Curtis is hardly a
disadvantaged person whose well-being will
suffer from such coverage. Rather, stories
pointing out her parental advantages could
potentially help to even the playing field
so that it is unacceptable in the future to
consider family connections in film and TV
auditions.
Recall
the
college
admissions
scandal
of 2019 when it was revealed—again
through good journalism—that
wealthy parents like TV star Lori
Loughlin used all the power and
money at their disposal to bend
the rules of elite school
admissions for their children.
Many of those children may well
have deserved to get into the
schools they attended. But, in the
face of stiff competition, untold
numbers of equally deserving youth
who did not have powerful and
wealthy parents willing to break
rules were not admitted. Now, many
of those same nepo babies’ parents
who were tried and convicted are
using their money and connections
to win
shortened
prison sentences.
But
Hollywood
celebrities, however much they
enjoy prestige and privilege, are
an easy target. Nepotism is rife
in all
the halls of power—in the world of
art,
sports,
and even journalism,
and especially in corporate
and political
circles.
Billionaires
(especially
those in tech) may propagate the
myth of the merit-based American
dream, but some of the most
dramatic success stories began
with a parent using their wealth
or connections to give their child
the upper hand. Take Bill Gates,
the founder of Microsoft, who
became one of the world’s
wealthiest people in his 30s.
Gates’s early success was largely
due to the well-documented
connections that his parents
flexed on his behalf to get his
fledgling company off the ground.
Other tech
nepo
babies
include Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg, whose father loaned
him $100,000 to start his company,
and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,
whose parents were early investors
in his online retail business to
the tune of nearly
$250,000.
Nepotism
is
part of the fabric of capitalism.
For centuries, unfair advantages
were available to those who have
historically faced fewer hurdles,
through the sheer luck of being
born into a family with wealth,
connections, or respect within
their field. Indeed, in order to
beat back the imposter syndrome,
many advise channeling
the
unearned confidence
of a mediocre
straight white man.
Our
economy
is rigged
to encourage nepotism by ensuring
that the already wealthy pass
their wealth—and by extension the
power that their money buys—to
their children. The Center
on
Budget and Policy
Priorities
(CBPP) pointed out how the tax
code is written in order to
benefit the moneyed classes.
According to a CBPP report,
“High-income, and especially
high-wealth, filers enjoy a number
of generous tax benefits that can
dramatically lower their tax
bills.”
Nepo babies
who defend their status reinforce the notion
that wealth, fame, and privilege equal
brilliance, talent, and genius. The reality
is that the privileged among us simply have
the means to cheat. The rest of us are sold
the lie that working hard will bring
rewards—rather than unearned wealth.
This,
in
turn, encourages cheating among
those who cannot rely on nepotism
to gain power. One well-known
example of the
“fake-it-till-you-make-it”
approach is Anna
Sorokin,
a woman whose fabricated lies
about wealth and power landed her
in prison and made her the focus
of a Netflix show. Sorokin faked
being a nepo baby—a German
heiress—in order to live a lavish
lifestyle. Sorokin learned that to
gain the edge that moneyed elites
have, one must internalize the
insider syndrome.
Republican
Congressman
George
Santos,
who was recently exposed as a
fraud for lying about his work
experience, wealth, and even
ethnicity, is another prime
example. His political party has
made a habit of encouraging (real
or fake) nepo babies like Donald
Trump, who openly
admitted
to tax avoidance
in a debate and whose company was
convicted
of criminal tax fraud.
The
GOP
has for years led the charge to protect
the
interests of the wealthy
while insisting on means
testing
and drug
testing
for the rest of us to receive
benefits.
In truth,
the emperor has no clothes. The meritocracy
of American capitalism is a myth built on
smoke and mirrors, on lies and false
confidence. The current long-overdue
conversation around nepo babies may help to
further class consciousness among Americans
who may see a bit more clearly now just how
scantily clad the emperor really is.
This
commentary was produced by Economy
for
All, a
project of the Independent Media
Institute.
