Misappropriation of Our Culture

We were recently gobsmacked by a revelation in the Washington Post. In an article dated July 9, 2023 titled "What to know about the Horatio Alger Association and Justice Thomas." Years ago, New York City’s local NAMBLA chapter was named the Horatio Alger Chapter. Why? Because he was one of us!

We certainly do not think that Clarence Thomas is one of us nor would he want to be considered as such. In all likelihood, he would hate that association way more than that of having cheated on his taxes, err…, made a mistake on his taxes. Well, what about hairs on that Coke can? No, that is not our thing either. We absolve Clarence Thomas of any association with us.

Then, what do we make of his association with a writer we cherish as one of our own? Brittany Shammas of the Washington Post reports that the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans is an Alexandria, Virginia, based nonprofit that has counted Clarence Thomas as a member for 30 years and which the justice considers a spiritual home to himself and his wife.

The organization was founded in 1946 to inspire American youth with the notion mistakenly attributed to Alger that anyone who works hard can succeed. To this end, business executives who embodied the American Dream were given awards by the Association.

There is no denying that this organization does some good works, but in choosing Horatio Alger and believing that the boys the author wrote about became self-made men is completely off the mark.

Horatio Alger, like we in NAMBLA, loved boys, but his association with them was not appreciated by the First Unitarian Church and Society of Brewster Massachusetts. On discovery of his “gross familiarity with boys,” Alger agreed to leave the Church and never again seek a position in it. It must be noted that no boy ever complained and that the nosy-body elders of the Church came to their conclusion by noticing Alger’s preference to boys over the many marriageable young women who would have gladly been courted by him.

Relocated in New York City, Horatio Alger acquainted himself with New York’s destitute street boys and exhibited genuine concern with them. In the wake of the Civil War, with no social services, boys with no supporting relatives had few resources. Many were newsboys, and contrary to the portrayal in the musical Newsies, none were much older than ten. The Newsboys’ Lodging House which Alger supported helped feed and shelter these kids. The record makes it amply evident that Horatio Alger was genuinely committed to the welfare of impoverished boys.

There is no evidence that he repeated the “gross familiarity” that got him run out of Brewster. But his novels point to his continuing fascination with boys and the urge to help them. This is where the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans gets it all wrong. None of the destitute boys in Alger’s stories lifted themselves by their own bootstraps. These stories that became popular after his death in the early twentieth century all featured a boy doing a heroic or other laudable act and by chance being noticed by a wealthy white man with the latter then taking the boy under his wing to mentor him into middle class respectability.

By falsely claiming that hard work and good intentions will make anyone succeed, the Association to which Clarence Thomas belongs pushes a hideous version of free enterprise that has resulted in a huge disparity of wealth in our nation all the while forcing people to feel that they themselves are not deserving of the greater prosperity enjoyed by the few.

The irony is that Thomas himself benefited from the leg up that the sons of rich families have always had available to them in the form of better education, social connections, and health services – to mention but a few. This does not mean that Clarence Thomas did not have the smarts to succeed when given the opportunity denied to so many others. In his recent joining of other justices in denying the affirmative action to deserving students that indeed helped him reach amazing heights, he has shown a disturbing lack of compassion. The only explanation that a reasonable person can come up with, given what is known about this justice, is that he is a highly conflicted and confused individual. There is further irony in that the justice has, as in the Horatio Alger stories, continued to enjoy the largess of rich friends.

There are countless of intelligent hard-working people who never achieve the wealth promised to them by the American Dream. Achieving great wealth, in some Protestant denomination, is considered a sign of God’s blessing. But careful examination always shows that other factors than just hard work and good character are at play. Those who achieve great heights from humble beginnings, if they are honest with themselves, will recognize other factors favoring their fates, and pure blind luck in a series of unexpected opportunities can propel the occasional so-called self-made individual. He has won one of life’s rare lotteries. But we keep buying the myth.

Most people are lucky to reach a decent degree of comfort and life satisfaction if they have a modicum of support from parents, decent schooling, satisfactory health care, and such. In Horatio Alger’s stories, the destitute boys had wealthy benefactors that did not propel them to great riches but rather to a decent and satisfying life. In his own life, Horatio Alger, though not wealthy himself, provided that needed mentorship to the street boys he encountered.

Like the Conversos forced to keep their true identities hidden from the brutal Spanish Inquisition, we too have maintained ours. There are uncounted unsung Horatio Algers, sharing his orientation who, in various ways, perform and have performed mentoring tasks advancing the welfare of boys. Unrecognized, we live anonymous ordinary lives all the while obeying Draconian and counterproductive laws.

The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans in celebrating Horatio Alger, without recognizing his actual and easily discovered identity, is essentially guilty of misappropriating to its own ends our culture and our common orientation. The Association is hardly unique in such whitewashing. True believers will insist that contrary to ample evidence, that Michael Jackson is not one of us. We can add Allen Ginsberg, Alan Turing, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Oscar Wilde, and others. Some, as the mathematical genius Alan Turing, have been hypocritically appropriated by the gay movement and belatedly celebrated as such by a British government whose collective backside he saved from Nazi domination. What greater feats could he have accomplished had he not been martyred by his own government? What greater contributions could we, albeit not as great as Turing, also accomplish were we not forced to hide or have our good deeds misappropriated?

Societies risk losing a lot when they sideline those they falsely identify as criminal and dangerous.