‘Luxury Beliefs’ That Only the Privileged Can Afford
My new WSJ essay, AEI event in D.C., book reviews
You can now read an excerpt from my book Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class in the Wall Street Journal. Here’s a portion:
In the same way that you don’t notice the specifics of your own culture until you travel elsewhere, you don’t really notice your social class until you enter another one. As an undergraduate at Yale, I came to see that my peers had experienced a totally different social reality than me. I had grown up poor, a biracial product of family dysfunction, foster care and military service. Suddenly ensconced in affluence at an elite university—more Yale students come from families in the top 1% of income than from the bottom 60%—I found myself thinking a lot about class divides and social hierarchies.
I’d thought that by entering a place like Yale, we were being given a privilege as well as a duty to improve the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves. Instead, I often found among my fellow students what I call “luxury beliefs”—ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class but often inflict real costs on the lower classes.
[…]
I noticed that many Yale students selectively concealed their opinions or facts about their lives. More than one quietly confessed to me that they were pretending to be poorer than they really were, because they didn’t want the stigma of being thought rich. Why would this stigma exist at a rich university full of rich students? It’s a class thing. For the upper class, indicating your social position by speaking about money is vulgar. Sharing your educational credentials is a classier shorthand, but broadcasting your seemingly altruistic and socially conscientious luxury beliefs is the best of all.
It is harder for wealthy people to claim the mantle of victimhood, which, among the affluent, is often a key ingredient of righteousness. Researchers at Harvard Business School and Northwestern University recently found evidence of a “virtuous victim” effect, in which victims are seen as more moral than nonvictims who behave in exactly the same way: If people think you have suffered, they will be more likely to excuse your behavior. Perhaps this is why prestigious universities encourage students to nurture their grievances. The peculiar effect is that many of the most advantaged people are the most adept at conveying their disadvantages.
You can read the whole thing here (I think that link is ungated, but just in case, you can also read the essay here).
So glad your ideas are penetrating the public consciousness in nation wide news media.
As an Indian American woman from the working class and born of parents without degrees, I can confirm that the class chasm between myself and the rest of my Indian American peers illustrates that race or ethnicity cannot transcend class origin. In fact, people of different non white ethnic groups reserve a special contempt for those of their own group who didn’t make it to the bourgeoisie. Not even being upper caste made up for my family’s financial situation. When I went to a state school, I was aware of being lumped into an ethnic group but it was clear I came from a different orientation than my wealthy peers. I was more direct in my communication, for one thing.
I think women have a special incentive to take on the mantle of gender and racial oppression, especially if they’re not white, because we know that white people will see us as morally superior (along the lines of the study) and it’ll give us social clout among women in particular. Leftist social media culture is less about justice and more about clout chasing and climbing the hierarchy among women, all while laying thirst traps.
I would like to see more exploration of gender in these dynamics among affluent students. I know men are outside the inner world of women, but I would be curious about Rob’s experiences with these people vis-a-vis gender.