Who’s to Blame?

We’ve all grown up with the same story: The underdog works twice as hard as everyone else, proves their worth, and earns success through nothing but grit and determination. By the end, we’re supposed to believe that hard work always wins and that if someone is already rich, they probably didn’t get there the “right” way. It’s a great story. It just doesn’t explain real life very well. 

Before we knew it, wealth stopped being a result and started being treated like a moral flaw. If you have too much of it, the assumption is you didn’t work hard enough or worse, you rigged the system. To be fair, many wealthy people do use every resource available to them. But that raises a more uncomfortable question: What exactly is the difference between a rich person maximizing their opportunities and anyone else trying to do the same? Let’s be honest—if you woke up tomorrow as Elon Musk’s kid, you probably wouldn’t say, “You know what, I’d rather struggle for character development.” No, you would use your resources like most people would. Systems like nepotism and unequal access do contribute to inequality. That part isn’t controversial. What’s less clear is why we frame the issue as a failure of individuals rather than a system that consistently rewards people for doing exactly what we would do in their position. 

In reality, this kind of behavior isn’t unique to the wealthy; it’s human nature. It’s just more obvious when wealthy people do it. People use whatever advantages they have all the time. Students become experts at “building relationships” with professors the week before grades are due. Parents magically rediscover long-lost connections when internship season rolls around. Networking events are less about enjoying a cup of coffee with a recruiter and more about figuring out who might be useful later. None of this is considered wrong; it’s considered smart. But all of a sudden when wealthy people do the same thing with bigger, better resources, it suddenly becomes a moral issue. The behavior didn’t change; the scale did. 

In “Excellent Sheep,” William Deresiewicz describes how students at elite schools aren’t just working hard: They’re being quietly funneled into a narrow definition of success that prioritizes prestige above all else. It’s not enough to do well; you have to do well in the right way, in the right fields, with the right names stamped across your résumé.

Once prestige becomes the goal, background starts to matter just as much as effort. Two students can do the exact same work, but the one with the more recognizable last name or better-connected family often walks away with more credibility. Systems like legacy admissions don’t just reflect this reality; they formalize it. What makes this even more disheartening is that it’s not some glitch we can easily fix. The moment you’re born, your starting point is already set. While most kids are getting new sneakers for their 14th birthday, others are getting a head start so large it might as well come with a private jet. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s just how society has evolved. It’s the result of systems that have developed over time, not individual moral failure. 

The shift from hard work to nepotism didn’t happen because people suddenly became less moral; it happened because the system changed while the story stayed the same. As sociologist Max Weber observed, early ideas about success framed wealth as a reflection of discipline and character. That belief never really disappeared, but over time, success stopped being something people built from scratch and became something that could be passed down. Money turns into access, access into opportunity, and that same opportunity begins to reproduce itself. You can see this clearly in “Pedigree,” where Lauren A. Rivera shows that elite employers don’t simply choose the most qualified candidates: They select for “fit,” favoring those with the right backgrounds, schools, and social cues. In a system like that, certain advantages become a lot more useful. 

The problem isn’t that people use the advantages they’re given; it’s that we still pretend success exists in a vacuum. We tell ourselves a story where outcomes reflect effort, even when the system clearly rewards access. That doesn’t mean hard work doesn’t matter. It just means it doesn’t work alone. And until we’re honest about that, we’ll keep blaming the players instead of questioning the game, and we’ll keep calling success a merit when it works out for the same types of people every time.

Badu Smart is a member of the class of 2029 and can be reached at bsmart@wesleyan.edu.