Member-only story
The Entitlement Pipeline: Why Parents Called Cops on a Black Toddler
If you’ve ever wondered how or why youth sports parent behavior spins out of control, sometimes it starts early.
(Editor’s Note: Corrections have been made as new details have emerged.)
There is a pipeline that transforms a 19-year-old college student who calls the RA because his neighbor’s music is too loud into a 30-year-old who calls the cops because his neighbor’s kid is making his kid look foolish on the soccer pitch. At the beginning of this pipeline is emotional immaturity mixed with white entitlement, in the middle is the gaining of wealth and status (probably the beginning stages of home ownership), and what comes out is impotent rage masquerading as fairness and responsibility.
The irony, of course, is that those butthurt parents in Winter Park, Florida did this child a favor. Their frustrated ejection of three-year-old Nevada (that’s his name, apparently) will only further burnish his legend as a wunderkind of sport. This is another example of The Streisand Effect, in which the attempt to use the legal system to restrict someone or something only ends up further bolstering the target’s prominence in the public eye.
But before we get to the legend, let’s get a few facts straight.
