All political systems are unjust. There’s always someone getting screwed over.
Although the degree to which you get screwed over in a post-industrial welfare state is nothing like getting screwed over under a dictatorial military regime with no legal minimum wage, all trade union activity banned, forced convict labour, and only subsistence farming to provide food. That's why labour struggles are bound up with political democracies.
Hierarchy; noun: 'a system in which members of an organization or society are ranked according to relative status or authority'.
As soon as you use a classification of people (such as 'class') along those lines, you are in some way agreeing that some people, not yourself necessarily, think that different people have a different status or authority. And if you think being higher up the 'hierarchy' is better then you might be willing to help people rise up the 'hierarchy' rather than challenging the very concept of a 'hierarchy' as having any validity.
('you' is not anyone on this thread, just a 'someone for the sake of argument')
(Of course to counter certain injustices, you have to measure things such as rates of pay for eg men and women and people of different ethnic backgrounds -but I would say that this is not the same as putting different people on a 'hierarchy'; and that includes 'class').
I talk about my class because it is part of my identity; I am classifying myself as having a working class background. This is because I know the struggles of people from my background and I stand up for their right to be heard.
My husband tells me I shouldn’t discuss class, but I tell him that he is a middle class heterosexual white Oxford-educated male with all the privileges that brings, so class isn’t important to him. But it is to me.
As soon as you use a classification of people (such as 'class') along those lines, you are in some way agreeing that some people, not yourself necessarily, think that different people have a different status or authority.
Some people do think that. In fact, quite a lot of people think that, although not everybody agrees on the same hierarchy.
"Class" is mostly a socio-cultural clustering. You can cluster people by shared social norms and common traits without needing to imply that one cluster is superior to another. You may choose to assign a hierarchy to those clusters, but it's not a necessary part of forming such clusters.
My boss makes a lot more money than me and she gets to tell me what to do 40 hours a week. You betcha she has a different status and more authority than I do, and she shops in better stores, too.
My boss makes a lot more money than me and she gets to tell me what to do 40 hours a week. You betcha she has a different status and more authority than I do, and she shops in better stores, too.
You've conflated two things here. Your boss gets to tell you what to do at work because you have a hierarchical work relationship. That doesn't require your boss to make more money than you or shop in different stores, and needn't imply anything about your relative status outside work.
My boss gets to tell me what to do at work, and makes roughly the same as I do. We have similar tastes in clothes, but different tastes in beer (he drinks Miller Lite. I like beer to have flavour.)
Merry Vole wrote: As soon as you use a classification of people (such as 'class') along those lines, you are in some way agreeing that some people, not yourself necessarily, think that different people have a different status or authority.
To which Caissa responds: Yes, people do have different objective relationships to the means of production.
As soon as you use a classification of people (such as 'class') along those lines, you are in some way agreeing that some people, not yourself necessarily, think that different people have a different status or authority.
Thinking that people have different status is not the same as thinking they ought to have different status or that one status makes them better than another.
It is like saying one ought to be colour-blind with regards to race: if we lived in a society in which nobody had ever suffered disadvantage because of that social construct that would be a good attitude to take; but in our world it's shutting the door after half the horses have bolted. In order to fix the damage one has to recognise the source of the problem.
I agree @Dafyd . Which is why I am trying to understand why we have 'social classes'. Is it, as @Caissa said, due to the different relationships to the means of production?
I can see why someone might be proud of their 'working class' roots. But do 'upper class' people feel the same? And if not, why not? And with respect to 'middle class' often the word 'smug' comes to mind. I hasten to add that my job probably puts me in the latter 'class' but you wouldn't come to that conclusion if you looked at my immediate family.
My concern in all this is that I think in the not-too-distant past there was an underlying sense that 'social classes' were 'how things were meant to be'. Of course no-one believes that now, but does this shadow still linger?
I can see why someone might be proud of their 'working class' roots. But do 'upper class' people feel the same?
I think a lot of people are proud of their ancestry and upbringing, for a whole range of reasons, which might include, but not be limited to "I had an ordinary upbringing and everything I've achieved has been off my own bat" or "members of my family have been masters of the hunt for the last 400 years and I'm carrying on the tradition". More generally, I think there's a tendency for people to think that the way that they do things is "the right way to do it" - whether that's work, or social activities, or how they display their home, or choice of language, or accent, or attitudes in general, or whatever else.
Societies have a large set of largely unspoken rules , and it works better if people know what the rules are. So there is a tendency for people to prefer to associate with other people who know how to behave, because then there aren't any surprises, and everyone knows that they're playing by the same rules. People who know the rules of your particular society are usually those that grew up in a similar environment.
I don't particularly share that opinion - my personal set of friends and colleagues are a fairly international group, so with people coming from so many different cultural backgrounds, there tend to be fewer assumptions and a lot more clarification. I find that a more interesting environment than a monoculture.
-more interesting -and, I would have thought, more healthy. Which is why we should be sceptical of classifications that, deliberately or accidentally, become barriers between people from the world over.
My boss makes a lot more money than me and she gets to tell me what to do 40 hours a week. You betcha she has a different status and more authority than I do, and she shops in better stores, too.
You've conflated two things here. Your boss gets to tell you what to do at work because you have a hierarchical work relationship. That doesn't require your boss to make more money than you or shop in different stores, and needn't imply anything about your relative status outside work.
My boss gets to tell me what to do at work, and makes roughly the same as I do. We have similar tastes in clothes, but different tastes in beer (he drinks Miller Lite. I like beer to have flavour.)
I didn't conflate 2 things - our society did that. It's nice that your workplace is so egalitarian, but not everyone has that. Moreover, the money people make at their jobs, or don't make, does for many affect their status outside of work. Just look at how people are treated at the supermarket check-out when they're paying with a food stamps card.
I once interviewed for an administrative assistant job at a boutique financial management firm. The interviewer at one point said it was a good place to work because the people they were serving were "all nice - they have money."
To reinforce @Ruth 's point, much of the upper/middle/lower "class" (at least as used in North America) has a strongly intrinsic descriptive origin, but ultimately translates into massive proscriptive assumptions.
It's pointlessly obvious to argue that "wealth doesn't make people better", but simultaneously impossible to deny that society and our societal systems often behave as though it does.
It's pointlessly obvious to argue that "wealth doesn't make people better", but simultaneously impossible to deny that society and our societal systems often behave as though it does.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “better”. If, for example, you’re running a boutique financial management firm then rich people are far better, because they’re the ones that might provide you with an income by buying your services.
IMO, people generally treat rich people better because rich people are more likely to be able to give them some money.
There's wealth, yes, but often within older corporate workplaces, other dynamics are at work that indicate layers of privilege. Those employees with family and social connections often exercise a great deal of power and influence over who gets hired, promotions and salary increases. The niece of the financial director may be working part-time at the reception desk but is also the person who sits across the dinner table from management and tells them the office gossip. The new board member may be someone who roomed with the managing director when they were at university together. Old ties from certain schools, neighborhoods, country clubs, inherited wealth etc still hold strong. It's more than nostalgia, more of a sense that "this person is one of us, we get to chat after church each Sunday, we hang out at the same golf club, they won't rock the boat, they'll know when to keep their mouth shut, their sister might marry my step-son"). Power is so often about who you know and feel comfortable around, shared class backgrounds and agreement on the secrets that need to be kept.
Those employees who aren't in the inner circle may be the ones who do far more of the work but aren't at ease socialising with management and so don't get to do the lobbying behind the scenes, the whisper campaigns at cocktail parties. the jostling for perks and quick promotions. It isn't that the wealthy can pay for smarter book-keepers or publicists, it is that they know who can't afford to become a whistleblower because management is family.
Those who come into corporate workplaces from disadvantaged backgrounds or on diversity programmes aren't allies in the same way. They operate as individuals not as a group with strong interests in moving forward together. The history of middle-class women in corporate employment has indicated an emphasis on self-protection, rivalry and an inability to lobby together or support one another. #MeToo changed some of that in that many corporate career women realised they needed to stand together if they were to get media and public credibility, but the unequal conflict across racialised capitalism remains.
I agree with all of that, MaryLouise. I teach a module on young lives, and my students are currently writing essays on the impact of community on young people and the values and skills needed by professionals working with them. Social and cultural capital are key aspects of this. As I discussed earlier, my class and culture prevented me from going to college and becoming a teacher and instead set me up for a life in low paid work and low expectations. It was the people who came into my life, the female owners of the care home I worked in, that changed the course of my future. This is my motivation as I work with my students, that I can be that person who inspires them to reach out and achieve what they want to; I know from personal experience that there may not be anyone else in their lives saying this to them. It’s also the reason my research is into supporting students with mental health challenges - I tell them I am bipolar and part of their community (distance learning students with mental health challenges commonly report a lack of support from their families and lack of a student identity). My acknowledgement of my class and identity isn’t a barrier, instead it liberates me to make a difference in the lives of my students.
Even now, as a middle class middle aged woman, I feel my class background on a daily basis. I use different language at home to my husband for everyday things like meals and furniture, and yesterday I did not know how to pronounce the word ‘agate’ at my in-laws. I now work in academia but I am lucky to have lots of nurses and social workers as colleagues in my faculty as they are down to earth. When I talk to colleagues in the psychology and education faculties they have a liking for academic language which I have difficulty processing (not helped by having bipolar disorder as this causes processing issues).
My poor English language education is one of the reasons I avoid posting in purgatory as although I am a person who reads and understands scientific medical journals and used to write hospital policy, I often lack the ability to construct my arguments well and am not always confident in my voice. Class, like other identities, has a lasting legacy.
@Heavenlyannie, yes, I can identify with so much of what you shared.
When Zoom seminars began last year, many of the younger students I know were intimidated because so many of those on Zoom all had walls of books behind them, sitting in studies or home libraries. Big desks, anglepoise lamps, artworks and vases of flowers, closed doors for privacy. The poorer students came from two-room apartments or what we call RDP (Reconstruction and Development Housing programme), subsidised housing with outdoor toilets or community ablution blocks and only a sink in the kitchen for washing, no table free for homework. Students buy secondhand books for school or technical college courses and after exams sell them right away to be able to buy more books. The idea that people can have the space and money to just keep every book they have found important made students feel as if they were uncultured and their homes on Zoom so inferior.
Yes, online calls have invaded our homes and highlight differences - the lack of privacy from this must be difficult for those students living in poor, overcrowded conditions. When we discuss preparing for study at the beginning of the year we mention having a regular place to study, which might be the kitchen table or else the library (though not in lockdown for the latter which some struggled with). Luckily our online tutorial software (we are a distance learning institution so online tutorials were normal pre-covid) presumes we won’t be using webcams as default, so our students don’t have that problem. Many of my students attend evening tutorials while putting the kids to bed anyway.
My poor English language education is one of the reasons I avoid posting in purgatory as although I am a person who reads and understands scientific medical journals and used to write hospital policy, I often lack the ability to construct my arguments well and am not always confident in my voice. Class, like other identities, has a lasting legacy.
This is an excellent example of how I know my class privilege. As the son of an Oxford-educated vicar I grew up with the idea that I could reasonably expect to hold my own intellectually in all but the most capable company so, while I'll listen carefully to those with expertise, I'll quite happily stick in my two pen'orth. And yet you are clearly the more diligent and able scholar, and have far more right to that confidence than I.
I've been very conscious of that trope of someone positioning themselves in front of a wall of books to look erudite and have been deliberately setting myself up against a blank wall for online meetings to minimise those messages.
I've found that the blurring or blanking of backgrounds doesn't always work, depending on how the meeting is set up by the meeting convener.
I blur mine or turn off the webcam - my room is tiny and I wouldn’t want my colleagues to be distracted by the shelves of fabric and wool, and Valerie the tailor’s dummy. I’ve also, regretfully, removed the pink kitty ears from my headset after accidentally leaving them on for a meeting with my supervisors ☺️
I’ve spoken at several online conferences this year and feel sorry for the younger student speakers, often speaking from tiny bedrooms. The pandemic has disrupted the boundaries between public and private.
When I moved here, in my mid thirties, I found it puzzling that people asked where I went to secondary school, even though I had a a post grad degree and other qualifications. After living here for a while I realised that the question wasn't actually about my education, but was a way of trying to place my background. Did my family have money so I was educated at one of the elite and expensive private church schools or did I come from the working class eastern suburbs and go to a state funded school?
Amongst a certain in-group this is still a concern.
The facility to blur or replace your background does help too.
This would be an immediate and short-term way to resolve or conceal visible and shaming differences. The deeper problem though, and this is often invisibilised when learners are in class or not using webcams for online distance learning, is that very real disparity in home environments and learning opportunities. Those who grow up in homes without books or television or music are later at a loss when friends or work colleagues talk about popular culture or politics. The Internet is only for study purposes because prepaid electricity means you can't waste limited household power playing games or browsing online. At our local library, queues of students get a free 25 minutes each on the library computers so they can do research and submit essays.
Working-class culture is about scarcity and precarity of resources, low expectations. Most of the adult literacy students in my area grew up believing that reading books for fun or playing games on the Internet is a waste of time and that going to music concerts is pretentious stuff for posh people, just another way of acting as if you're better than those who raised you. (The sociologist Jacklyn Cock once wrote a tribute to the "stern, stoic grandmothers" of South Africa.) What is prized in working-class Black neighborhoods is grit, resilience and making do with next to nothing. There's a tough-minded no-nonsense survival instinct that is admirable even if the deprivation that keeps these attitudes going from generation to generation thwarts and narrows so much in their lives.
My poor English language education is one of the reasons I avoid posting in purgatory as although I am a person who reads and understands scientific medical journals and used to write hospital policy, I often lack the ability to construct my arguments well and am not always confident in my voice. Class, like other identities, has a lasting legacy.
This is an excellent example of how I know my class privilege. As the son of an Oxford-educated vicar I grew up with the idea that I could reasonably expect to hold my own intellectually in all but the most capable company so, while I'll listen carefully to those with expertise, I'll quite happily stick in my two pen'orth. And yet you are clearly the more diligent and able scholar, and have far more right to that confidence than I.
I saw a NYT article about how "talking back" was perceived as rude when the author was growing up. I had the opposite experience, with many childhood memories of praise when I spoke up around adults. I realised the author was a woman of colour, and the difference was immediately explained.
In my family, I know my little sister was treated differently to me around the dinner table, not at all encouraged to speak, while my younger brother and I matched wits with our parents.
Hence, I feel able to voice my opinion on almost any topic...
Moreover, the money people make at their jobs, or don't make, does for many affect their status outside of work. Just look at how people are treated at the supermarket check-out when they're paying with a food stamps card.
Sure - but this is caused by the money that they have (or don't have) rather than the fact that their boss can give them instructions at work. And the fact that you don't get paid nearly as much as your boss isn't caused by the fact that they give you direction at work either.
I once interviewed for an administrative assistant job at a boutique financial management firm. The interviewer at one point said it was a good place to work because the people they were serving were "all nice - they have money."
That's a rather revealing statement, isn't it? It's obviously false, but I think what it's pointing at is a cultural difference between people with money and those without. The people with money know how to follow a set of cultural rules that are familiar to the interviewer, and interact in ways that they find familiar and predictable. @MaryLouise above talked about the "tough-minded no-nonsense survival instinct" prized in working-class Black neighbourhoods, and that going to a concert would be "just another way of acting as if you're better than those who raised you." That's a very different culture - and one that would doubtless seem much more aggressive and abrasive to the interviewer in the boutique wealth management firm.
I've found that the blurring or blanking of backgrounds doesn't always work, depending on how the meeting is set up by the meeting convener.
I have everything set up in zoom to insert a fake background (I've got a few work-related images that I cycle through), which is great until some oddball decides that it's completely necessary that this meeting has to happen in Cisco WebEx or something.
So for those rare cases, I've managed some careful framing to position myself in front of a blank bit of wall, rather than let my house bleed in to the meeting. If I needed to do this a little more often, I'd set OBS up to to the virtual greenscreen thing, and then present the resulting image to whichever piece of conferencing software was in use as a camera.
... but I think what it's pointing at is a cultural difference between people with money and those without. The people with money know how to follow a set of cultural rules that are familiar to the interviewer, and interact in ways that they find familiar and predictable. @MaryLouise above talked about the "tough-minded no-nonsense survival instinct" prized in working-class Black neighbourhoods, and that going to a concert would be "just another way of acting as if you're better than those who raised you." That's a very different culture - and one that would doubtless seem much more aggressive and abrasive to the interviewer in the boutique wealth management firm.
I often struggle with this. I'm presently inhabiting an "its nice to be nice" persona, particularly when dealing with American politics in other places. But while I'm doing it, at the back of my mind is a nagging feeling that I come across as the utterly middle class, white, rich* liberal that I am. I am concerned that I'm not even touching people who are deservedly angry about the state of the United States and justifiably feel excluded or oppressed by the mainstream. What use to them is my plea for unity?
I remember a few years ago posting about how I hated being polite, that I refused to be polite because it was a social farce. I have come full circle on that, at least as regard the present political situation, but also in the way I approach people, no longer seeking to be so competitive and abrasive. Sometimes I think its an outworking of the Holy Spirit, but at other times I'm pretty sure I'm fooling myself.
My poor English language education is one of the reasons I avoid posting in purgatory as although I am a person who reads and understands scientific medical journals and used to write hospital policy, I often lack the ability to construct my arguments well and am not always confident in my voice. Class, like other identities, has a lasting legacy.
This is an excellent example of how I know my class privilege. As the son of an Oxford-educated vicar I grew up with the idea that I could reasonably expect to hold my own intellectually in all but the most capable company so, while I'll listen carefully to those with expertise, I'll quite happily stick in my two pen'orth. And yet you are clearly the more diligent and able scholar, and have far more right to that confidence than I.
@Arethosemyfeet this gives a good example of that mix of educational, gender and class privilege plus an inculturated obliviousness that was the norm in British academic and social life for so long. Generations of boys like yourself I imagine were brought up at home and in school to confidently debate any topic from the discontents of the Russian peasantry to the failings of the Raj in India or famine in the Sudan, based on some directed reading and the odd BBC documentary. It was considered acceptable to speak for others or on their behalf because they didn't have the same platforms or proximity.
If I want to learn more about the British working class, I want to hear and read working-class voices and firsthand experience. It's important that an issue like the Windrush Scandal foregrounds those who faced deportation, those whose families arrived in Britain in 1948 and their lived realities and accounts of racial discrimination in the UK. The authenticity and complexity of what happened/happens in colonial histories of Africa or India relies on accounts from those who were there, oral testimonies and translated memoirs of those who were colonised or fought for freedom. The former white or middle-class elites have to stand back and listen, they are no longer required as intermediaries or spokespersons. That's why 'own-voice' narratives are so important.
When someone like Desmond Tutu arrived at Lambeth conferences, the power of what he had to say didn't derive from theological degrees or a mitre in his hand. He came from the poor: his mother was a domestic worker who took in washing, the family had lived in a shack in Roodepoort and as a tubercular boy Tutu sold packets of peanuts at the railway station. He had wanted to study medicine and couldn't afford that, so he went off to the Anglican seminary. All of this is so well-known in South Africa that it is core to Tutu's deep credibility as someone who never forgot his origins as marginalised and poor.
*I'm in the top 10% wealthiest people in the world, meaning that my net worth is greater than US$93,170. That's all in the equity in our home.
Much though I love also being in the top 10%, I think the methodology of that article is flawed because it looks at total dollar value rather than considering how much that dollar will actually buy.
Purchasing power is more important than the number of arbitrary tokens (dollars, pounds, dinars, etc) one owns. So if person 1 has $100 and person 2 has $75 then the linked article would say person 1 is richer. But if person 1 can buy 5 whatevers with their money, but person 2 can buy 10 whatevers because everything is cheaper where they live then person 2 is actually richer.
Oh I agree. I just grabbed the first one with a figure people could grasp to make a tangential point. I didn't want people to think I was planning to launch a rocket into space or something.
When we think about whether we are wealthy, we should consider the relative positions of everyone, not just those in our suburb. The reality of my situation compared to so many others is that I am a middle aged bloke who has never experienced violence, hunger, fear or homelessness, and is very likely never to experience those things. I reckon that puts me close to the top half of that 10%, whatever definition of wealth is used.
Reading Grace Dent's* memoir Hungry currently. For her - north of England, working class, attending comprehensive in the 1980s - there was never any suggestion of going to university, or any career beyond leaving school at 16 and going to work in a factory or shop.
Whereas I, north of Ireland, working class, attending grammar school in the 1960s was definitely encouraged to aim for university, albeit with little in the way of careers other than teaching or nursing.
Comments
Although the degree to which you get screwed over in a post-industrial welfare state is nothing like getting screwed over under a dictatorial military regime with no legal minimum wage, all trade union activity banned, forced convict labour, and only subsistence farming to provide food. That's why labour struggles are bound up with political democracies.
As soon as you use a classification of people (such as 'class') along those lines, you are in some way agreeing that some people, not yourself necessarily, think that different people have a different status or authority. And if you think being higher up the 'hierarchy' is better then you might be willing to help people rise up the 'hierarchy' rather than challenging the very concept of a 'hierarchy' as having any validity.
('you' is not anyone on this thread, just a 'someone for the sake of argument')
(Of course to counter certain injustices, you have to measure things such as rates of pay for eg men and women and people of different ethnic backgrounds -but I would say that this is not the same as putting different people on a 'hierarchy'; and that includes 'class').
My husband tells me I shouldn’t discuss class, but I tell him that he is a middle class heterosexual white Oxford-educated male with all the privileges that brings, so class isn’t important to him. But it is to me.
Some people do think that. In fact, quite a lot of people think that, although not everybody agrees on the same hierarchy.
"Class" is mostly a socio-cultural clustering. You can cluster people by shared social norms and common traits without needing to imply that one cluster is superior to another. You may choose to assign a hierarchy to those clusters, but it's not a necessary part of forming such clusters.
You've conflated two things here. Your boss gets to tell you what to do at work because you have a hierarchical work relationship. That doesn't require your boss to make more money than you or shop in different stores, and needn't imply anything about your relative status outside work.
My boss gets to tell me what to do at work, and makes roughly the same as I do. We have similar tastes in clothes, but different tastes in beer (he drinks Miller Lite. I like beer to have flavour.)
To which Caissa responds: Yes, people do have different objective relationships to the means of production.
It is like saying one ought to be colour-blind with regards to race: if we lived in a society in which nobody had ever suffered disadvantage because of that social construct that would be a good attitude to take; but in our world it's shutting the door after half the horses have bolted. In order to fix the damage one has to recognise the source of the problem.
I can see why someone might be proud of their 'working class' roots. But do 'upper class' people feel the same? And if not, why not? And with respect to 'middle class' often the word 'smug' comes to mind. I hasten to add that my job probably puts me in the latter 'class' but you wouldn't come to that conclusion if you looked at my immediate family.
My concern in all this is that I think in the not-too-distant past there was an underlying sense that 'social classes' were 'how things were meant to be'. Of course no-one believes that now, but does this shadow still linger?
I think a lot of people are proud of their ancestry and upbringing, for a whole range of reasons, which might include, but not be limited to "I had an ordinary upbringing and everything I've achieved has been off my own bat" or "members of my family have been masters of the hunt for the last 400 years and I'm carrying on the tradition". More generally, I think there's a tendency for people to think that the way that they do things is "the right way to do it" - whether that's work, or social activities, or how they display their home, or choice of language, or accent, or attitudes in general, or whatever else.
Societies have a large set of largely unspoken rules , and it works better if people know what the rules are. So there is a tendency for people to prefer to associate with other people who know how to behave, because then there aren't any surprises, and everyone knows that they're playing by the same rules. People who know the rules of your particular society are usually those that grew up in a similar environment.
I don't particularly share that opinion - my personal set of friends and colleagues are a fairly international group, so with people coming from so many different cultural backgrounds, there tend to be fewer assumptions and a lot more clarification. I find that a more interesting environment than a monoculture.
I didn't conflate 2 things - our society did that. It's nice that your workplace is so egalitarian, but not everyone has that. Moreover, the money people make at their jobs, or don't make, does for many affect their status outside of work. Just look at how people are treated at the supermarket check-out when they're paying with a food stamps card.
I once interviewed for an administrative assistant job at a boutique financial management firm. The interviewer at one point said it was a good place to work because the people they were serving were "all nice - they have money."
It's pointlessly obvious to argue that "wealth doesn't make people better", but simultaneously impossible to deny that society and our societal systems often behave as though it does.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “better”. If, for example, you’re running a boutique financial management firm then rich people are far better, because they’re the ones that might provide you with an income by buying your services.
IMO, people generally treat rich people better because rich people are more likely to be able to give them some money.
Those employees who aren't in the inner circle may be the ones who do far more of the work but aren't at ease socialising with management and so don't get to do the lobbying behind the scenes, the whisper campaigns at cocktail parties. the jostling for perks and quick promotions. It isn't that the wealthy can pay for smarter book-keepers or publicists, it is that they know who can't afford to become a whistleblower because management is family.
Those who come into corporate workplaces from disadvantaged backgrounds or on diversity programmes aren't allies in the same way. They operate as individuals not as a group with strong interests in moving forward together. The history of middle-class women in corporate employment has indicated an emphasis on self-protection, rivalry and an inability to lobby together or support one another. #MeToo changed some of that in that many corporate career women realised they needed to stand together if they were to get media and public credibility, but the unequal conflict across racialised capitalism remains.
Even now, as a middle class middle aged woman, I feel my class background on a daily basis. I use different language at home to my husband for everyday things like meals and furniture, and yesterday I did not know how to pronounce the word ‘agate’ at my in-laws. I now work in academia but I am lucky to have lots of nurses and social workers as colleagues in my faculty as they are down to earth. When I talk to colleagues in the psychology and education faculties they have a liking for academic language which I have difficulty processing (not helped by having bipolar disorder as this causes processing issues).
My poor English language education is one of the reasons I avoid posting in purgatory as although I am a person who reads and understands scientific medical journals and used to write hospital policy, I often lack the ability to construct my arguments well and am not always confident in my voice. Class, like other identities, has a lasting legacy.
When Zoom seminars began last year, many of the younger students I know were intimidated because so many of those on Zoom all had walls of books behind them, sitting in studies or home libraries. Big desks, anglepoise lamps, artworks and vases of flowers, closed doors for privacy. The poorer students came from two-room apartments or what we call RDP (Reconstruction and Development Housing programme), subsidised housing with outdoor toilets or community ablution blocks and only a sink in the kitchen for washing, no table free for homework. Students buy secondhand books for school or technical college courses and after exams sell them right away to be able to buy more books. The idea that people can have the space and money to just keep every book they have found important made students feel as if they were uncultured and their homes on Zoom so inferior.
This is an excellent example of how I know my class privilege. As the son of an Oxford-educated vicar I grew up with the idea that I could reasonably expect to hold my own intellectually in all but the most capable company so, while I'll listen carefully to those with expertise, I'll quite happily stick in my two pen'orth. And yet you are clearly the more diligent and able scholar, and have far more right to that confidence than I.
I've found that the blurring or blanking of backgrounds doesn't always work, depending on how the meeting is set up by the meeting convener.
I’ve spoken at several online conferences this year and feel sorry for the younger student speakers, often speaking from tiny bedrooms. The pandemic has disrupted the boundaries between public and private.
Amongst a certain in-group this is still a concern.
This would be an immediate and short-term way to resolve or conceal visible and shaming differences. The deeper problem though, and this is often invisibilised when learners are in class or not using webcams for online distance learning, is that very real disparity in home environments and learning opportunities. Those who grow up in homes without books or television or music are later at a loss when friends or work colleagues talk about popular culture or politics. The Internet is only for study purposes because prepaid electricity means you can't waste limited household power playing games or browsing online. At our local library, queues of students get a free 25 minutes each on the library computers so they can do research and submit essays.
Working-class culture is about scarcity and precarity of resources, low expectations. Most of the adult literacy students in my area grew up believing that reading books for fun or playing games on the Internet is a waste of time and that going to music concerts is pretentious stuff for posh people, just another way of acting as if you're better than those who raised you. (The sociologist Jacklyn Cock once wrote a tribute to the "stern, stoic grandmothers" of South Africa.) What is prized in working-class Black neighborhoods is grit, resilience and making do with next to nothing. There's a tough-minded no-nonsense survival instinct that is admirable even if the deprivation that keeps these attitudes going from generation to generation thwarts and narrows so much in their lives.
I saw a NYT article about how "talking back" was perceived as rude when the author was growing up. I had the opposite experience, with many childhood memories of praise when I spoke up around adults. I realised the author was a woman of colour, and the difference was immediately explained.
In my family, I know my little sister was treated differently to me around the dinner table, not at all encouraged to speak, while my younger brother and I matched wits with our parents.
Hence, I feel able to voice my opinion on almost any topic...
Sure - but this is caused by the money that they have (or don't have) rather than the fact that their boss can give them instructions at work. And the fact that you don't get paid nearly as much as your boss isn't caused by the fact that they give you direction at work either.
That's a rather revealing statement, isn't it? It's obviously false, but I think what it's pointing at is a cultural difference between people with money and those without. The people with money know how to follow a set of cultural rules that are familiar to the interviewer, and interact in ways that they find familiar and predictable. @MaryLouise above talked about the "tough-minded no-nonsense survival instinct" prized in working-class Black neighbourhoods, and that going to a concert would be "just another way of acting as if you're better than those who raised you." That's a very different culture - and one that would doubtless seem much more aggressive and abrasive to the interviewer in the boutique wealth management firm.
I have everything set up in zoom to insert a fake background (I've got a few work-related images that I cycle through), which is great until some oddball decides that it's completely necessary that this meeting has to happen in Cisco WebEx or something.
So for those rare cases, I've managed some careful framing to position myself in front of a blank bit of wall, rather than let my house bleed in to the meeting. If I needed to do this a little more often, I'd set OBS up to to the virtual greenscreen thing, and then present the resulting image to whichever piece of conferencing software was in use as a camera.
I often struggle with this. I'm presently inhabiting an "its nice to be nice" persona, particularly when dealing with American politics in other places. But while I'm doing it, at the back of my mind is a nagging feeling that I come across as the utterly middle class, white, rich* liberal that I am. I am concerned that I'm not even touching people who are deservedly angry about the state of the United States and justifiably feel excluded or oppressed by the mainstream. What use to them is my plea for unity?
I remember a few years ago posting about how I hated being polite, that I refused to be polite because it was a social farce. I have come full circle on that, at least as regard the present political situation, but also in the way I approach people, no longer seeking to be so competitive and abrasive. Sometimes I think its an outworking of the Holy Spirit, but at other times I'm pretty sure I'm fooling myself.
I'm terribly confused Ted.
*I'm in the top 10% wealthiest people in the world, meaning that my net worth is greater than US$93,170. That's all in the equity in our home.
@Arethosemyfeet this gives a good example of that mix of educational, gender and class privilege plus an inculturated obliviousness that was the norm in British academic and social life for so long. Generations of boys like yourself I imagine were brought up at home and in school to confidently debate any topic from the discontents of the Russian peasantry to the failings of the Raj in India or famine in the Sudan, based on some directed reading and the odd BBC documentary. It was considered acceptable to speak for others or on their behalf because they didn't have the same platforms or proximity.
If I want to learn more about the British working class, I want to hear and read working-class voices and firsthand experience. It's important that an issue like the Windrush Scandal foregrounds those who faced deportation, those whose families arrived in Britain in 1948 and their lived realities and accounts of racial discrimination in the UK. The authenticity and complexity of what happened/happens in colonial histories of Africa or India relies on accounts from those who were there, oral testimonies and translated memoirs of those who were colonised or fought for freedom. The former white or middle-class elites have to stand back and listen, they are no longer required as intermediaries or spokespersons. That's why 'own-voice' narratives are so important.
When someone like Desmond Tutu arrived at Lambeth conferences, the power of what he had to say didn't derive from theological degrees or a mitre in his hand. He came from the poor: his mother was a domestic worker who took in washing, the family had lived in a shack in Roodepoort and as a tubercular boy Tutu sold packets of peanuts at the railway station. He had wanted to study medicine and couldn't afford that, so he went off to the Anglican seminary. All of this is so well-known in South Africa that it is core to Tutu's deep credibility as someone who never forgot his origins as marginalised and poor.
Much though I love also being in the top 10%, I think the methodology of that article is flawed because it looks at total dollar value rather than considering how much that dollar will actually buy.
Purchasing power is more important than the number of arbitrary tokens (dollars, pounds, dinars, etc) one owns. So if person 1 has $100 and person 2 has $75 then the linked article would say person 1 is richer. But if person 1 can buy 5 whatevers with their money, but person 2 can buy 10 whatevers because everything is cheaper where they live then person 2 is actually richer.
When we think about whether we are wealthy, we should consider the relative positions of everyone, not just those in our suburb. The reality of my situation compared to so many others is that I am a middle aged bloke who has never experienced violence, hunger, fear or homelessness, and is very likely never to experience those things. I reckon that puts me close to the top half of that 10%, whatever definition of wealth is used.
Whereas I, north of Ireland, working class, attending grammar school in the 1960s was definitely encouraged to aim for university, albeit with little in the way of careers other than teaching or nursing.
*Food critic for The Guardian