Comments on: Nepotism

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Most of us on the right oppose both nepotism and affirmative action, at least if they’re done as instruments of government policy. I don’t have any objection to a privately owned company staying in family hands, nor do I object to a minority business owner deciding to hire primarily employees of his own kind. It’s much more problematic when done by goverment, though.

Aside from the 14th Amendment, a major difference between affirmative action and nepotism, though, is that the former tars all and the latter just the one involved. It’s not so much that the affirmative action admittee is a suspect but that all members of his race are suspect, whether they got in on their own merit or not.

And most minority kids aren’t “hungry.” Indeed, I’m guessing the vast majority of the black and Hispanic kids who got into Michigan Law were from the middle or upper middle classes, not hard-bellied kids from the ‘hood pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. We need to get over this idea that all blacks live in the ghetto.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I think Justice Rhenquist’s daughter failed the first test of new nepotism. Her embarresing tenure as inspector general at GAO should illustrate to Bellow that the new often works as badly as the old

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I know the difference between nepotism as private practice and AA as public policty. However, it annoys me that many of Bellow’s examples of “Great Families” come not from business but from politics: “Americans admire the Adamses, the Roosevelts, and the Kennedys …” So he’s arguing that we should defer to our oligarchical betters who control a good chunk of the state’s power. But if someone suggests using the state’s power to do something similar for minorities, then I suppose Bellow would trot out arguments about individualism, meritocracy, and all the rest of it.

a major difference between affirmative action and nepotism, though, is that the former tars all and the latter just the one involved. It’s not so much that the affirmative action admittee is a suspect but that all members of his race are suspect,

Why? I’ve never understood this objection when it’s made by people who are arguing that individuals should be assessed on their merits and not promoted as a class. If that’s what you believe, why should you then turn around and decide that an entire racial category is “tarred” if a particular individual isn’t up to snuff? If you worked in a company where the CEO’s incompetent daughter got quickly promoted, would you conclude that “all rich people’s children are tarred by her failures”? I doubt it.

And most minority kids aren’t “hungry.”

That’s a metaphorical hunger for success I was talking about, not a literal hunger for food.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I didn’t mean to suggest you didn’t know the arguments involved; I’m just stating why I think the analogy isn’t perfect.

By treating people as a class, we invite thinking of people as a class. We actually do tend to think the progeny of the rich get ahead because of this, whether true in specific cases or not. Indeed, a lot of people seem to think GW Bush got elected because Daddy had been president, despite the fact that this is a situation where Daddy can’t really help all that much. Everyone assumes, for example, that Clarence Thomas got into Yale because he was black. Maybe he did. Or maybe he was just smart as hell.

Fair enough on “hungry for success.” But then there really isn’t any reason to prefer one color of hungry kid to another. If the program really was going to help kids trapped in the ghetto, I’d be a lot more likely to support the outreach.

By: Drapetomaniac

Drapetomaniac — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

>>But then there really isn’t any reason to prefer one color of hungry kid to another.

Except that one color of hungry kid has experienced discrimination based on his race and one hasn’t and won’t.

>>By treating people as a class, we invite thinking of people as a class

I know research on Indian affirmative action programs reveals quite the opposite, that affirmative action attenuates ‘class’ consciousness, and even programs which primarily benefit the better-off members of discriminated groups also improve the lot of the worse-off members. See for example Jonathan Parry’s work on the Bhilai Steel Plant, in Institutions and Inequalities.

I’m sure there must similar work on American affirmative action?

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

“There is much to be said for these “aristocratic” features of dynastic families.”
I say the same about slavery. I mean, just look at those cool plantation houses! And Scarlett O’Hara had those great dresses! What could be wrong with that?
I look forward to the second-rate Bellow’s third-rate, but rather lucky, offspring making that argument. He can talk about it at receptions, maybe to George W. Bush.

By: BAA

BAA — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Only one half of Bellow’s ‘nepotism’ argument concerns the advantages of connections and contacts. Bellow also argues that the “new nepotism” arises from inter-generational intellectual capital. Children of academics, e.g., know what it means to be a academic, they’ve picked up elements of the academic way of thinking, and thus possess a real advantage over the children of non-academics. Thus, Bellow seems to be suggesting that we should expect ‘nepotism’ to be a feature of a well-functioning meritocratic system—much like ethnic ‘clusters’ in certain professions.

By: OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY

OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

NEPOTISM VS. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Kieran Healy weighs in on the Adam Bellow Atlantic Monthly piece that’s getting a lot of attention of late. He applies Bellow’s rationale in favor…

By: Three-Toed Sloth

Three-Toed Sloth — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Hmm…

Mark A. R. Kleiman provides a link to a well-written hostile review of Adam Bellow’s book in praise of nepotism, a tome so embarrassingly stupid that it has to be a parody, but isn’t. The reviewer is one Kelly Kleiman….

By: Three-Toed Sloth

Three-Toed Sloth — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Hmm…