Opinion Today: Examining “luxury beliefs”

Progress, but for whom?

View in browser|nytimes.com July 11, 2024 By Lindsay Crouse Opinion Writer and Producer What if we defunded the police, and you began to feel unsafe at home? What if we decriminalized drugs, and addiction in your neighborhood soared? If progressive views are more just, why is Donald Trump's conservative platform gaining in popularity within some marginalized communities? In our latest Opinion video, we meet Rob Henderson, a former foster child who went to Yale on the G.I. Bill and was surprised by the views he encountered when he got there — in large part because the people expressing them weren't asking questions like the ones above. Instead, he found that many of the people expressing these ideas the loudest — and the most casually — were largely disconnected from the majority of society, especially poorer communities like the ones he grew up in. He came to call these views "luxury beliefs." Henderson is quick to clarify that not all progressive views are luxury beliefs, and not all luxury beliefs are progressive (he points to "trickle down economics" as one conservative view that fits into this framework). And of course, the only way progress happens is if people push for it, and privileged people often have platforms from which to do so. But from his vantage, Henderson sees a disturbing trend in some of today's loudest activism: the tendency to promote views that make the person expressing them look good — like card carrying members of the elite communities where they learned them. Meanwhile, these elites remain largely protected from the consequences of those views. The outcome is a further divided nation. Henderson challenges viewers to question whether certain beliefs that sound good in theory actually represent progress — and if so, for who? 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