Luxury Beliefs
An interview with psychologist and social critic Rob Henderson
This post features an interview with psychologist and social critic Rob Henderson on the concept of ‘luxury beliefs.’
Coined by Henderson, luxury beliefs are “ideas and opinions that confer status in the upper class while often inflicting costs on the lower class.” The purpose of luxury beliefs is to advertise to the community one’s elite social class and education.
Henderson has an interesting background. Korean-American, Henderson was given up for adoption by dug-addicted parents and grew up in foster homes in California. He worked menial jobs before joining the Air Force and being deployed to the Middle East. He went to Yale for undergraduate school on the G.I. bill, then received a Ph.D. in psychology from Cambridge University.
Henderson says that in previous times, the wealthy signaled their social status to society through fancy clothes, luxury goods, cars and yachts. He says, however, today they are often doing it by adopting and expressing esoteric and elitist social justice ideas and opinions that signal to society that they are culturally elite and upper-class educated. Education policy analyst Mike McShane puts it: “Much like second homes on the beach or Bentleys, luxury beliefs are thoughts that can only be afforded by people whose wealth shields them from the very harm those beliefs can cause to the rest of us.”
This is related to virtue signaling and performative activism, which are doing superficial public acts that advertise that one supports social justice causes (Posting a tweet, posting a BLM meme on Facebook, using the ‘correct’ postmodernists social justice terminology, etc.), but without doing the work that actually helps the oppressed and marginalized. They are empty and often narcissistic gestures.
Ironically, many of these ideas not only hurt the lower classes and many minorities the elite are supposedly championing but the ideas counter the views of the majority in the minority and lower class groups.
According to Henderson, the following are examples of luxury beliefs:
“Defund the Police.” Polls have shown that not only do the large majority of every racial and ethnic group reject defunding the police but lowering police presence in poor and racial minority neighborhoods increased crime. This is cataloged as a luxury belief because the wealthy espousing the ideas live in safe neighborhoods unaffected by the increases in crime. Further, Democratic Party Whip James Clyburn and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep. Karen Bass said the Defund the Police slogan cost Democrat candidates seats and damaged the racial justice movement.
Using and judging others by their use or non-use of the latest social justice jargon (Latinx, BIPOC, intersectionality, etc.). This signals one’s cultural elitism and upper-class education while shutting out the views of the lower class and most minorities. Polls have shown that most minorities reject this jargon. Black linguist John McWhorter says that fixating on this jargon and white people studying Robin DiAngelo’s' book White Fragility is “idle” and does nothing to help the lives of poor and working-class minorities.
According to Henderson, other examples of luxury beliefs are land acknowledgments, being for drug legalization that will harm inner cities, advocating loose sexual and marriage norms that harm families and children, promoting “healthy at every size” campaigns that promote unhealthy lifestyles and cause early deaths, and advocating for education policies that hurt poor children at public schools the wealthy would never send their children to.
Henderson writes, “It’s possible that affluent whites don’t always agree with their own luxury beliefs, or at least have doubts. Maybe they don’t like the ideological fur coat they’re wearing. But if their peers punish them for not sporting it all over town, they will never leave the house without it again.”
The following is an excellent long interview with Henderson where he explains in detail luxury beliefs.
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