White privilege as a luxury belief

Rob Henderson channels Telemachus

I have just read the memoir of Rob Henderson (“Troubled: A memoir of foster care, family and social class”) and it requires some reflection.  To summarize, Henderson is a 30-something survivor of a chaotic childhood in which he was removed, at age 3, from the care of his drug addicted mother and bounced around the California foster care system.  He was adopted at age 7 only to have his adoptive family fall apart destroying the gains he had been making towards a newly integrated life.  After high school graduation he recognized that staying in his small-town California home would result in incarceration and slow self-destruction due to substance abuse.  He left home, joined the army, became a successful technician, sorted out his childhood trauma and, taking advantage of the GI Bill, earned a PhD from Ivy League universities.  He has developed a large following to his Substack writings and is now a successful published author. 

The thesis of his book, backed up by relevant research, is that, to maximize their flourishing, children need the stability of two parents in a committed family relationship.  Oh dear… To compound this sin, he coined a devastating new term: “luxury beliefs”.  These are beliefs held by society’s elites which are not to be practiced but are to be promoted to the lower classes such that there is a proper separation in worldviews.  Things like believing that children aren’t best served by the stability of two parents in a committed family relationship.  Rob Henderson has been cancelled and the legacy press will not recognize either his book, his Substack or even him.  “Follow the science,” you see.

Henderson’s views are hard-hitting given that he suffered the consequences of the elite’s luxury beliefs and so knows whereof he speaks.  But these are not new observations.  Charles Murray wrote an academic treatment of a similar topic in his 2012 book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America”.  Also, it has been known for decades that the absence of a father in a child’s life is both highly correlated and likely causal if the child is subsequently incarcerated.  So why is Henderson singled out for cancellation?

I think his overwhelming sin is to use language as a weapon to shine light on hypocrisy.  “Luxury beliefs” is most succinct description of what I sensed but couldn’t articulate.  Reading his chapter on the phenomenon of luxury beliefs allowed a penny, long suspended in my mind, to finally drop.  He exposed the hypocrisy and created language to memorialize that hypocrisy.  His overriding criminal act was to not recognize that only the people who can afford such beliefs are allowed to militarize language in this way.  Henderson is way out of his lane.

To say that I am a fan of Henderson and his courage in writing his book and his Substack is to trivialize the meaning of “fan”.  Get his book and read it. 

But why do I bring this up?

In 2018, I supported an organization that did very good work to provide some stability to kids living on a local Indian reserve whose families were dysfunctional in the manner of Rob Henderson’s family.  At a fundraising dinner for this organization, one of the workers, a young, blond girl, told the audience of the difficulties, challenges and glories of doing the work they were doing.  But then she started talking about the illegitimacy of the reaction of “colonials” when stepping over an inebriated First Nation person sprawled across the exit of the commuter train.  “Colonial”?  His inebriation was my fault?  And then she unloaded the MOAB (mother of all bombs) – my white privilege was responsible for the suffering of on-reserve kids.  My cheque book went quietly back into my pocket. 

In reflecting on Henderson’s book, it occurred to me that white privilege is the ultimate luxury belief.  This young, white girl, knowing nothing about the people in the audience and probably not much more about the people on the reserve, felt secure in calling us racists.  Could she have been more unconsciously racist herself with such a witless remark?  Or maybe it wasn’t unconscious.  Maybe she was another Robin DeAngelo-in-the-making seeking her fortune by promoting luxury beliefs to equally witless people who, as modern flagellates, need to draw their own blood to justify invitations to the right cocktail parties.  Elites are not often the sharpest knives in the drawer.

I was raised in a small resource town that had a high income per capita only because everyone worked for the company and so got a modest but similar wage.  No one was unemployed in my hometown.  My father was a businessman/entrepreneur who did not work for the company.  As a result, it was assumed that we were rich.  Until I was 18, even I thought we were rich.  I was disavowed of this when I asked my dad if, instead of university, he would sell his business to me.  He gave me a stare, laughed out loud, and said, “Absolutely not!”  He wanted me to get a job with a big company that could provide employment stability, benefits, and a pension.  In a blue collar town, my dad made a blue collar income, and he shielded his kids from the tough economic times that descended when the company was on strike or commodity prices dropped.  Company workers had wages from the union during strikes.  My dad had to manage with whatever cash he had been able to put aside.  We weren’t rich.

I have written about this in a previous substack article so won’t belabour my anger at this stupid notion of white privilege.  Thanks to Rob Henderson, I now have words to describe my formerly inchoate frustration.  White privilege is a luxury belief designed to, as King Julian stated in the movie Madagascar, keep the classes separated.

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The Great Plagues of 1348-51 in Europe resulted in a significant social dislocation of the formerly separated classes.  In 1347, peasants living subsistent lives doffed their caps and bowed before the more gently born.  In 1352, those peasants who survived the Black Death were freed from bondage to estates and saw their wages soar due to labour shortages.  With new wealth they bought new fancy hats and fur wraps once available only to the wealthy.  “Whatever happened to the separation of the classes?”  King Julian again.

In response, the wealthy were horrified at this narrowing space between the classes.  Hats were not being doffed, bows were not as low as before, and many peasants just walked off the estate and offered their services to someone down the road where the benefits and salaries were better.  But mostly the elites resented the wearing of clothes formerly restricted to the wealthy.  It caused a significant shift in both luxury beliefs and luxury haberdashery. 

Henderson identifies this in a contemporary example by pointing out that, to the elites, the Broadway play “Hamilton” was the best ever when it was too expensive for plebs like me.  When it aired on Netflix and was attainable to me, those same elites declared it to be mediocre at best.  Then, as now, elites are not often the sharpest knives in the drawer.

The point to all this is that a fundamental human drive is to create and maintain the separation of the classes.  This is done through the formulation of luxury beliefs designed to create personal habits which crush entire social sectors. These beliefs are then promoted to the “lower classes” ensuring a large group of people to doff their hats and bow low.  “You will own nothing and be happy.”  Sound familiar?

Mr. Henderson, building on the insights of Charles Murray and others, has captured the spirit of this innate human drive, and given us a very powerful verbal weapon to both understand the phenomenon and to use it as a defensive hammer against those who would maintain the separation of the classes by fostering toxic practices for the hoi palloi but not the hoi oligoi.  “For thee but not for me.”

In 391 a monk named Telemachus had finally had enough and jumped into a gladiatorial ring to stop the inhuman spectacle of men killing men for the entertainment of the hoi polloi.  Many in the crowd disagreed with his intent and my description.  Anticipating Henry II, they rained stones down upon him killing him in the process; “Will no one rid us of this meddlesome priest?”  His martyrdom to end a manufactured luxury belief so captured the imagination of Emperor Honorius that the emperor issued a proclamation to end the sport. 

Could Rob Henderson be a modern Telemachus?  By naming the source of this fundamental drive to make the lives of others miserable, will at least some toxic luxury beliefs be destroyed and ended? His cancellation is not quite as final as that of Telemachus, but his courage is impressive.  We would do well to pay attention to his message.