Article: ‘Luxury Beliefs’ That Only the Privileged Can Afford

[RZehr]

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/l ... d-7f6b8a16

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. For example, a classmate told me “monogamy is kind of outdated” and not good for society. I asked her what her background was and if she planned to marry. She said she came from an affluent, stable, two-parent home—just like most of our classmates. She added that, yes, she personally planned to have a monogamous marriage, but quickly insisted that traditional families are old-fashioned and that society should “evolve” beyond them.

My classmate’s promotion of one ideal (“monogamy is outdated”) while living by another (“I plan to get married”) was echoed by other students in different ways. Some would, for instance, tell me about the admiration they had for the military, or how trade schools were just as respectable as college, or how college was not necessary to be successful. But when I asked them if they would encourage their own children to enlist or become a plumber or an electrician rather than apply to college, they would demur or change the subject.

In the past, people displayed their membership in the upper class with their material accouterments. As the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen famously observed in his 1899 book “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” status symbols must be difficult to obtain and costly to purchase. In Veblen’s day, people exhibited their status with delicate and restrictive clothing, such as top hats and evening gowns, or by partaking in time-consuming activities, such as golf or beagling. The value of these goods and activities, argued Veblen, was in the very fact that they were so pricey and wasteful that only the wealthy could afford them.

Today, when luxury goods are more accessible to ordinary people than ever before, the elite need other ways to broadcast their social position. This helps explain why so many are now decoupling class from material goods and attaching it to beliefs.

Take vocabulary. Your typical working-class American could not tell you what “heteronormative” or “cisgender” means. When someone uses the phrase “cultural appropriation,” what they are really saying is, “I was educated at a top college.” Only the affluent can afford to learn strange vocabulary. Ordinary people have real problems to worry about.

Similarly, a 2020 Yahoo News/YouGov survey found that the richest Americans showed the strongest support for defunding the police, while the poorest Americans reported the lowest support. Consider that compared with Americans who earn more than $50,000 a year, the poorest Americans are three times more likely to be victims of robbery, aggravated assault and sexual assault, according to federal statistics. Yet it’s affluent people who are calling to abolish law enforcement. Perhaps the luxury belief class is simply ignorant of the realities of crime.

Most personal to me is the luxury belief that family is unimportant or that children are equally likely to thrive in all family structures. In 1960, the percentage of American children living with both biological parents was identical for affluent and working-class families—95%. By 2005, 85% of affluent families were still intact, but for working-class families the figure had plummeted to 30%. As the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam stated at a 2017 Senate hearing: “Rich kids and poor kids now grow up in separate Americas.”

In 2006, more than half of American adults without a college degree believed it was “very important” that couples with children should be married, according to Gallup. Fast-forward to 2020, and this number had plummeted to 31%. Among college graduates polled by Gallup, only 25% thought couples should be married before having kids. Their actions, though, contradict their luxury beliefs: Most American college graduates who have children are married. Despite their behavior, affluent people are the most likely to say marriage is unimportant. Their message has spread.

Occasionally, I raised these critiques with fellow students or graduates of elite colleges. Sometimes they would reply by asking, “Well, aren’t you part of this group now?” implying that my appraisals were hollow because I moved within the same milieu. But they wouldn’t have listened to me back when I was a lowly enlisted man in the military or when I was washing dishes for minimum wage. If you ridicule the upper class as an outsider, they’ll ignore you. The requirements for the upper class to take you seriously—credentials, wealth, power—are also the grounds to brand you a hypocrite for daring to judge.

[Ken]

Take vocabulary. Your typical working-class American could not tell you what “heteronormative” or “cisgender” means. When someone uses the phrase “cultural appropriation,” what they are really saying is, “I was educated at a top college.” Only the affluent can afford to learn strange vocabulary. Ordinary people have real problems to worry about.

Yep, one of the best examples of that is the use of the term LatinX. Which is a ridiculous white liberal affection and a perfect example of "cultural appropriation" since it isn't a word that actual Latinos actually use themselves. My wife who is Latina and bilingual thinks it is ridiculous. And my very proper Chilean father-in-law thinks it is the latest Gringo horror like McDonalds or Starbucks that is ruining his country and language.

It is unpronounceable in Spanish and ridiculous on its face since Spanish is a gendered language and every single noun or title is either masculine or feminine. The police are "Policia" not PoliciX. A teacher is a maestro or maestra not a maestrX And so forth. Are white liberals going to change every noun in the Spanish language to avoid gender?

What makes it even more dumb is that the English translation of Latino is just Latin. Which is a perfectly fine gender-neutral word. For example, here in the US we have the "Latin Grammys" every year which are the music awards for the Latino recording industry. It isn't the LatinX Grammys.

Anyway, I hear teachers in my school using this term to describe their students in faculty meetings when I guarantee that not a single one of their Latino or Hispanic immigrant parents uses the term themselves.

In 2006, more than half of American adults without a college degree believed it was “very important” that couples with children should be married, according to Gallup. Fast-forward to 2020, and this number had plummeted to 31%. Among college graduates polled by Gallup, only 25% thought couples should be married before having kids. Their actions, though, contradict their luxury beliefs: Most American college graduates who have children are married. Despite their behavior, affluent people are the most likely to say marriage is unimportant. Their message has spread.

Yep. In this case I think most professional class folks know at least one fellow professional who is a single parent through divorce or just because they decided to have a child later in life and they are mostly doing OK since they have the resources to do so. And so there is a reluctance to condemn that 30-something single parent lawyer or doctor or manager who has things together.

By contrast, in a lot of working class circles, there is a very real effort to keep your girls from getting pregnant because of the knowledge that single girls getting pregnant at age 16 or 18 is more or less a sentence of poverty and struggle. Upper class people tend not to worry about their girls getting pregnant out of wedlock. They are more worried about getting them into Stanford or Vanderbilt. So it is two different realities. There is a difference between a 15 year old getting pregnant by accident and a 30-something professional woman who decides she wants a child by adoption or sperm donor. I don't necessarily agree or approve in either case, but I recognize the difference.

[Sudsy]

Hmmmm, I don't think I should be reading this full article because it says - 'Continue reading your article with a WSJ subscription Intro Offer
$2 per month' with the link you gave. Are the paragraphs beginning 'Similarily' and 'Occasionally' ones I should be paying this offer to read or are these quotes from somewhere else ?

[Pelerin]

It is unpronounceable in Spanish

…

Anyway, I hear teachers in my school using this term to describe their students in faculty meetings when I guarantee that not a single one of their Latino or Hispanic immigrant parents uses the term themselves.

Unpronounceable in English too, I thought. My mind always stumbles when I come across it. I’ve only ever encountered it in reading and it never really occurred to me that there’s people who actually say it out loud though I suppose if I had thought about it I would have known they must exist. Anyway I’m curious, how do people actually pronounce it? I think in my mind it usually ends up something like, “lah-TEENKS”—which sounds more Dutch than Spanish.

[Josh]

I would say “Latin X”. When I’ve had to read something with that word in it, I’ve just said “Latino or Latina” instead.

[Soloist]

Unpronounceable in English too, I thought. My mind always stumbles when I come across it. I’ve only ever encountered it in reading and it never really occurred to me that there’s people who actually say it out loud though I suppose if I had thought about it I would have known they must exist. Anyway I’m curious, how do people actually pronounce it? I think in my mind it usually ends up something like, “lah-TEENKS”—which sounds more Dutch than Spanish.

Wife: yes, how does one pronounce it? I always read it like Latin X, sort of like Space X

[ohio jones]

Wife: yes, how does one pronounce it?

It's a luxury pronunciation that only the privileged can afford.

[Ken]

I would say “Latin X”. When I’ve had to read something with that word in it, I’ve just said “Latino or Latina” instead.

Except that the letter X is pronounced "eckes" in Spanish not "ex"

There are virtually no words that end in X in Spanish and none that are of Latin origin. The few you find are foreign words ending in X. That's because there is simply no way to conjugate words ending with X as a neutral-based letter. This makes words that end in X unpronounceable and confusing.

For example, the plural of Latino is Latinos. What is the plural of LatinX and how would you pronounce it in Spanish?

[RZehr]

For example, the plural of Latino is Latinos. What is the plural of LatinX and how would you pronounce it in Spanish?

A.I. says: The plural of "LatinX" can be "Latinxs" or "Latinxes." In Spanish, it would be pronounced as "lah-teen-equis" or "lah-teen-eques." The pronunciation may vary slightly depending on regional accents.

I would have suggested LatinXos

[Ken]

For example, the plural of Latino is Latinos. What is the plural of LatinX and how would you pronounce it in Spanish?

A.I. says: The plural of "LatinX" can be "Latinxs" or "Latinxes." In Spanish, it would be pronounced as "lah-teen-equis" or "lah-teen-eques." The pronunciation may vary slightly depending on regional accents.

I would have suggested LatinXos

Then how do you pronounce the singular in Spanish if the letter X itself is pronounced "equis"