Do white working classes have culture?
A frequent complaint of readers on blogs and elsewhere in the right-wing press is that white people in England are not allowed to express their own culture values. That somehow ethnic minorities are stopping them. Apparently multiculturalism is to blame.
Of course this is quite more bizarre given: Britain outside London and parts of Birmingham is still overwhelmingly white; many seasonal newspaper claims of an attack on “our way of life” turn out to be rubbish; and I can’t remember a single case of an ethnic minority actually stopping a white person from cultural activity. Unsurprisingly, when I ask a complainer how minorities are destroying their culture, I get no reply.
But there is a problem – that of middle class attitudes towards working class and ethnic minorities cultural practices. And the two are increasingly intertwined.
It seems to me that many middle class liberals and conservatives quietly make the assumption that white working class culture is of little value and therefore not really worth recognition or protection. While there are constant discussions around arts funding and promoting “post-enlightenment values”, comparatively little attention is paid to community spaces, sports facilities and other local establishments. Community solidarity has become a dirty phrase.
The blame could be attributed to increased social and geographical mobility, more individualism or even New Labour ignoring the concerns of the white working classes. But oh no, ethnic minorities and multiculturalism are to blame apparently. It is they who are purposely trying to destroy the public services, we get the impression.
To this extent the right-wing papers are worse, paying lip service to the idea that white culture is under attack while only to sell more papers through sensationalism rather than campaign for anything useful. They know it is all too easy, yet completely futile, to blame minority communities, yet they do it anyway. They build up frustration and resentment by finding easy scapegoats without exploring the underlying issues. But we (should) know all this anyway.
Where many middle class liberals get it horribly wrong is with the idea that culture is only something that ethnic minorities have, not white working classes (their own “culture” is simply lifestyle), and that it’s a static organism that needs protection. This is where multiculturalism fails.
This attitude, which many in the past would have labelled Orientalism, is part of the new scourge of liberal racism. It is also the view that while “ethnics” have great food and music, their conservative and patriarchal attitudes should be ignored because, well, that’s how they all are.
This patronising version of multiculturalism frequently works against liberals of minority backgrounds because there is an assumption that they are “unrepresentative” of the broader swathe of nutters and the only ones worth listening to are the angry conservative men. Why else would Faisal Bodi be asked to write on forced marriages, or Germaine Greer think Monica Ali is not authentic enough, or Tony Blair think gang violence was part of “black culture”?
And this attitude impacts women too. Writing for Catalyst magazine on Canadian multiculturalism, Zohra Moosa explained how such attitudes play out there:
Canada has some of the most advanced asylum law in the world, under which gender-based persecution is recognised as a legitimate basis for making an asylum claim. Women can therefore apply for asylum if they are being assaulted by their husbands. However, in order to make a convincing case, women may need to play into stereotypical, racist renderings of ‘their culture’.
For example, South Asian women making claims sometimes have to rely on concepts that they are, as Sherene Razack says, ‘victims of exceptionally patriarchal cultures’ to convince officials that their lives are genuinely at risk. This then allows ‘white Canada’ to conceive of itself as the culturally superior rescuer of the Other from backward ‘cultural dysfunction’.
In the Independent last Monday Johann Hari made the same point how multiculturalism is betraying women. But the problem here is less about government policy and more about condescending attitudes of the middle classes towards ethnic minorities.
Liberal journalists and commentators are understandably unwilling to demonise minorities given there is already much implicit and explicit racism in the rightwing press. But this protective behaviour can frequently tip over into a patronising exchange if the same standards are not applied that they would to their white counterparts.
The norms and values of any imagined community, whether based on culture, religion or race, are never static or homogenous. They are constantly being negotiated, fought over and carry baggage from history, religion and soci-economic factors. If that can apply to whites, why not brown or black people?
We see this play out when so-called community leaders are molly-coddled by the media on the basis that their culture, as defined by those ‘leaders’, should be protected from attack. Anyone of the same background challenging those attitudes can be labelled anything from ‘traitor’ to ‘self-hating’ or of a ‘colonial mindset’ from the same leaders, while being ignored by some liberal commentators afraid of demonising anyone. For the Daily Mail and Telegraph types this presents an open goal because some of those criticisms, especially around religious extremism, are valid.
Day after day I see ethnic minorities being blamed for “destroying the English way of life”. They do nothing of the sort. The problem for them, and the white working classes, is the snobby attitudes of many middle class commentators and policy makers. Blame them.
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“Unsurprisingly, when I ask a complainer how minorities are destroying their culture, I get no reply.”
Well one obvious reply might be that a culture of free speech is being slowly replaced with one of (self) censorship, cf the MoToons.
But your main point seems spot on.
There is no end to the condescending racism of the smug lefty middle class.
>>> Do white working classes have culture?
Yeah, it’s those naan bread things with little bits of spring onion in them. 80D
Sorry, couldn’t resist it.
As I said on CiF, there has to be a better name for the thing you are talking about than ‘white culture’.
I agree soru, makes you cringe doesnt it? Anyway….what about the Asian middle class? I think they’re very condescending and pompous too, off with their heads!
If “white culture” is a bad term, is “black culture” also?
Of course to the middle class “white culture” is Shakespeare and Mozart, aka “culture”, and “black culture” is 50 Cent, aka “crap” but we’re too polite to say so.
White middle class, Asian middle class, pish tosh I say
At public school, I was at the bottom of the class
Taking it up the arse for every class
Why is there no such term as black trash? Bin liners are black. Is this the reason?
I blame all the middle classes. I’m not one of them, honest guv!
Well Chris C, some would argue that 50 Cent projects himself as ‘authentically black’, making ‘blackness’ synonymous with ghetto culture, the media laps it all up to stereotype and demean black culture, narrowing black culture into a bunch of gangsta rap poses, forgetting Ralph Ellison, Jazz music, and the rest of it.
If middle class white media laps up the 50 Cent culture, some black rappers pander to that stereotype too.
50 cents has been watching too much James Bond
Probably too simple and logical, but as far as I am concerned:
race, sex: fixed at age 0
culture, ethnicity: fixed by age 12
class, sexuality: fixed by age 22
sub-culture, occupation, nationality, religion: changeable at any time
There are exceptions, like someone deciding at age 40 to become a doctor or a lesbian, but they are pretty rare.
The tricky thing is that sometimes things at different levels have the same name, like how ‘black’ is both a race and a subculture, ‘muslim’ both an ethnicity and a religion.
What? You have a post about class and don’t inform me?
So that’s how it is!
I think there are “white working-class cultures” spread around the country. Guardian readers swanning around in their 2CV’s probably find it in them to appreciate Morris dancing in Zummerset as much as Bhangra dancing in Brent. Unfortunately I have never understood any such culture (coming as I do from the big mixing-pot of available Labour that has been London since the late 18th century.) Yet if I had not made inroads into Bruschetta-eating territory I would probably be lumped in as “white working-class” by those who define such categories – in fact I am surprised never to have been asked how many ferrets I have and where I keep my pigeons. My nightmare is that “white working-class” community leaders are appointed and turn out to be Bernard Manning and Kat from Eastenders. You are spot-on about the problem being that for all the progress made in the last 30 years the people who run things are still the same old middle-classes however. (So when are you going to do something about it by becoming Guardian comments editor?)
So much capacity to offend on this topic…
I guess I tick the boxes for middle class now but the working class culture I was raised in was the real deal; we had our banners, our galas, our heroic tales of Little Moscow’s last stand, our Miner’s Institutes where generations had eagerly awaited distinguished lecturers. Shared purpose, shared values, knowing you could rely absolutely on your neighbours. That ain’t sentimental, it’s how it was. All gone now. And we know who to blame. Immigration causing the decline in WWC culture? Don’t make me laugh.
Once that’s gone, as the last miners cough their lungs up while the government stalls on the compo, you can’t get it back. You get the culture of the devalued, the abandoned and the purposeless; marinade that in trashy, envy-based, mass-produced pseudo-culture and what results is not something you would want to preserve.
When I was still a nipper we moved to the sticks (my dad was a village copper) and the white working class culture I found there revolved around, well, killing things. Lovely people and the food was great, but still based on killing whatever the toffs felt was beneath them. Whether or not you think that a good thing, it is being driven into oblivion by muslim radicals, oops, middle class liberals.
Of course village life was more complex, organic and mutually supportive than mere shared interest in carnage. But that aspect too is now found only in the remoter spots which have not been colonised by second-home owning Sikhs and Somalis who only show up at weekends.
On the situation in London I plead utter ignorance, but elswhere, in the places I know well, the real culture of ordinary working people has been slowly eroded (or ruthlessly eradicated) by those who very often belonged to it only a generation before.
Good article Sunny. WWC culture took a battering during the industrial revolution as we became basically cattle to be cared for to ensure our continued utility. Grounds of health and safety have seen much of our culture disappear – backswording, cheeserolling, sheepworrying, proper boxing and so on all fell by the wayside leaving us with the rather gay morris dancing.
Then in the modern age we’ve seen them do away with football terraces and try to feed us watercress instead, to say nothing of smoking bans etc. They shut down all the local breweries with their health concerns. FFS, these days we’re not even allowed to play proper darts. Now they even try to keep us in school ’til at least 21 – not studying anything working class and useful, of course, but basically trying their damndest to make us all middle class. That just can’t ever work.
The middle classes speak of culture as opera, ballet and imported theatre. Says it all, really, doesn’t it? Not my bloody culture at all. Hardly surprising we’re a bunch of chavs now, is it?
And, back then, we had winters, young lad, winters to make you shiver. And it were pure white so it was, snow everywhere.
Where there were days, nay lad, weeks, when London was cut off from outside world. Or as some young whippersnappers say these days, when the outside world was cut off from London.
And Don, did you have Hovis for tea? Bloody hell Bert, it were all good back then. I remember…..
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.
Can we also ask what is middle class culture.
As for culture what are we talking about. It seems easy to associate certain types of food, music, religion with some groups. black music with black people, Sikh religion and Bhangra with Sikhs etc.
Here we have two possibles music and religion. Well the working classed generally have liked pop music which is of course popular music and not exclusively working class. Also they have largely been secularised but if they have been religious it has usulally been Christianity. Again not exclusively working class.
Further it is a good point if we ask what is being destroyed exactly by the influx of other ethnic groups. If we ask how do they stop an aspect of culture existing no answer emerges. Yet another paranoid myth.
Yet here’s a though. I am working class and lived with my very working class grangparents as a kid. The only things I can think of which could be regarded as culture belong only to my grandad who was a miner. They include the following list.
Pigeons
Pigs trotters
Brown peas
Snuff
Shirt bands
Chickens in the yard
Inability to read or write
Talking in tongues as he was a pentacostal church goer who thought coal was one of gods minerals.
Interestingly talking of culture disappearing most of the above have disappeared. Now my grandad went to a black church and often brought black people home. mmmm did those naughty plotting black pentacostals suppress the pigeon keeping and pigs trotter eating.
Better watch out for them then!
Review
Pigeons of course have not disapeared but they have in our family
William,
I am having huge difficulty in keeping a straight face on this thread. I consider myself working class, in origins at least, but obviously up there with the better end of the working class, where we could afford a fish supper between us as a treat. I don’t think we thought of ourselves as a culture, that was for poncy anthrolologists or some such. If you were defined, it tended to be by religion.
I have absolutely no idea how anyone can get their head around what is meant by working class culture. What I did was get drunk, eat curries and then head to the dancing. Is that a culture? You’d probably have got your head butted if you’d suggested to any of my mates it was. It was just what you did. Culture was for snobs. Culture was stuff like Opera and ballet and all that. I still can’t stand either of them.
What we did seem to be was aspirational, and most of the people I knew moved upwards from being fringe neds to uni to professional jobs, or running businesses or whatever.
There is something that does bug me sometimes and that is the media films etc. That is the Royal Family, Billy Elliot and other stuff. Firstly we were no where near as scruffy as that or nose picking like the guy in the Royal Family.
Hovis? Luxury.
Other stuff which may or may not be off the topic. The place I go to most in terms of religion is the Ambedkar Buddhist Temple in Wolves. As many of you know the members are mostly made up of Indian Dalits who converted to Buddhism. They are not like any media image of a scruffy illiterate dark skinned dalit. Most of them look, appear and talk like regular Indian people.
Wonder if they used to have any equivalent to pigeon fancying or snuff, but haven’t actually asked them.
A thought I once had however was why don’t Dalits sing the blues.
What’s a working class culture anywhere? Seems to me it’s mostly drowning sorrows and letting off steam.
I’ve done a little geneaology and traced my lot back to the early 1700s, and the wonderfully named Jake Fake and his wife Grace from a small Devon village. He was a farmhand and she was a hand loom weaver, as were most of their descendents for the next 200 years. Their sort have largely died out this last century in England, and their culture went with them. However in India their sort are still alive and kicking, and their culture remains.
Was there ever much difference between the two? I’m fairly sure old Jake would have felt more comfortable in the company of an Indian farmhand than an English lawyer. Is it more a difference of era than origins?
Is that a culture?
wiki says:
Researchers in evolutionary psychology argue that the mind is a system of neurocognitive information processing modules designed by natural selection to solve the adaptive problems of our distant ancestors. According to evolutionary psychologists, the diversity of forms that human cultures take are constrained (indeed, made possible) by innate information processing mechanisms underlying our behavior, including language acquisition modules, incest avoidance mechanisms, cheater detection mechanisms, intelligence and sex-specific mating preferences, foraging mechanisms, alliance-tracking mechanisms, agent detection mechanisms, fear and protection mechanisms (survival mechanisms) and so on. These mechanisms are theorized to be the psychological foundations of culture. In order to fully understand culture we must understand its biological conditions of possibility.
By that definition, the answer is yes.
At least, unless you think the reason some people eat curry and some don’t is that only some human brains have a dedicated curry-eating system…
soru,
OK, poncy evolutionary psychologists then.
‘Cause my favourite programme, ‘Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps’ has ended, I’m in the mood to decostruct some of that shite. Are you sitting comfortably, let us begin:
Well the first four lines are just an intro, so we start here:
“(indeed, made possible) by innate information processing mechanisms underlying our behavior, including language acquisition modules”
A bloody four year old could have told them that! It is a frigging Richard Littlejohn moment. It is what we bleeding well do! It must have been quite a revelation to Adam:
“Hey, Eve, honey, see Cain and Abel, they’ve learned to speak”.
“No shit Adam, well who’d have believed it.”
“Eve, honey, I feel inspired by the Lord. Until evolutionary psychologists say it in the 21st C, it will remain a mystery”
“No shit, Adam?”
“No shit, Eve”
“Night, night”
——————————-
“Adam?”
“Yes, honey.”
“I don’t know how to tell you this but Cain is being a bit of a pest”
CRASH, BANG, WALLOP.
“Eve”
“Yes, honey.”
“I think we’ve sorted out the Oedipus complex”
“Well, ain’t you just the man”
“Night night.”
——————————-
Onwards and upwards to cheater mechanisms, where I am winging it, for I haven’t a clue what they are:
Jesus says, for it is he, “Judas, you cheated on me, ya wee bum.”
Judas says “Only ’cause your dad wrote it.”
————————————–
Finally, ’cause fat intellectuals that write for Wikipedia try to kill you with hundreds of facts, when they don’t actually have one:
“These mechanisms are theorized to be the psychological foundations of culture.”
These things were known to humans since the year bloody dot. They neither prove or disprove culture, what they do say, is that we are constrained biologically by reality. We’ve always frigging well known that. Aaaargh.
See that Irvine Welsh guy, I’m starting to think he was right.
So, soru, the answer is, maybe, certainly not yes. And it may indeed be the case that only some folk can eat curry. Like some folk don’t eat quiché.
Interesting post Sunny.
Almost as bad (no, worse) as the latte-sippers in Primrose Hill who trash the WWC culture are the middle class snobs who try to pretend to be one of them.
Julie Burchill ruined all credibility for me when she claimed to be a chav.
“Yeah but, no but, why i’m proud to be a chav”
It’s one thing to empathise, another to patronise.
I agree Sunny. As the product of the white working class myself (now “elevated” as it were to the middle class) it has long been clear to me that the contempt of their “betters” is the far greater threat to WWC identity – from the fragmentation of the white East End (no community there, obviously) to their chav-isation through the media, it is the same old class war. I have to say, although I often DO resent this, I have never blamed immigrants – people will always seek to build a better life for themselves and good luck to them.
Puffy #26
Woke up this morning with another thought and another anecdote which relates to what you are saying.
Recently a freind told me the following. This guy who is Sikh had a white friend at school and they both went to the same University together. This Uni was Warwick (one of the posh ones). Pritpal (not his real name) had a very posh English accent while his white friend had a Wolverhampton one. He said that he got on fine at the University because of his posh accent while his freind was given a hard time because of his.
Food for thought eh!
Incidently Pritpal is someone who prefers Indian people in India and travels there quite a bit. He regards Indian people in the UK as being a bit like the English in Spain, that is, too inward looking.
Food for thought eh!
well obviously the ‘race’ thing is ‘disguising’ what’s the issue which is the age-old ( pretty much across the world) snobby attitude that’s been socially constructed around ‘elites’ and ‘masses’.
of course it doesn’t really make sense nowadays – you’ve got cheap tickets to the opera and everyone watches Big Brother.
but i feel the race thing complicates in the sense that actually a lot of people seem to subscribe to the idea that ‘culture’ is somehow synonymous with ‘ethnicity’ and that ‘white’ is equivalent to ‘bland’ and ‘no culture’. so there are some strange perceptions floating around. if you think about the use of the word ‘ethnic’ in normal language use it’s ‘synonymous’ with ethnic ‘minority’ actually – rather than – everyone is ‘ethnic’ of some kind or other!
of course this always comes back to the underlying problem that so many people understand different things by ‘culture’ in the first place..
William with my favourite sweeping generalisation there. \o/ :rage:
Mind, I was most annoyed the other day to be loitering outside an apartment block, from a balcony of which 5 very drunken Irish guys were passing loud comments on every passing female. The passing females would have been tutting to themselves and whispering “bloody English”. Listen up Bogtrotters: if you’re going to get pissed and idiotic on holiday, do it in your own ****ing language, eh?
Back on topic – Bernard Manning. He really was funny as ****, wasn’t he? Nobody minded his piss-taking until he started on the Indians, whereupon the middle class had him disappeared. There really is a conspiracy at work here, isn’t there? RIP Bernard old son.
bert you are funny you make me laugh.
”bloody english” indeed..!
Yep, sounds like a fully paid up member of the middle class snobby twat brigade! It cross all races and religions and one thing differentiates them — a desire to distance themselves, and stigmatise negatively, the plebians above whom they place themselves. I’ve met Pritpal’s kind many times.
No Bert, Bernard Manning is a racist prick, full stop. Don’t take false idols Berty.
Bernarn Manning was WWC culture. He took the piss out of everything, no holds barred. Does that make him a racist prick? I don’t think a comedian ripping into stereotypes makes racists. Now banning him – that may make racists.
Banning him? Who has ‘banned’ him Bert? Do you mean because he’s not on TV that much anymore? That’s because he makes jokes about the ‘fuckin’ niggers’ and the ‘fuckin’ Pakis’. What a piece of paranoid crap, blaming others for ‘creating racism’ because they don’t put a racist comedian on the telly anymore, hilarious.
He’s not just ‘not on the telly’. He’s basically treated these days about on the same level as a paedophile. 30 years back he was a bit of a folk hero to a lot of people, poor old bastard must be left feeling a little confused. I suppose we can be thankful that Ali G didn’t go the same way – but it was close.
For me one of his best was the egg in the Indian’s garden and the kick in the balls gag. Would you say that was racist, or fucking funny?
Bert you have a knack for bullshit hyperbole. Treated like a paedophile? What a load of rubbish.
Stay out of that Spanish sun, mad dogs and Englishmen and all that, it’s sending you a little loopy with a tendency to exaggerate and crow the victimhood card over an obese racist who doesnt get much TV these days.
Bert, you can laugh at racist comedians all you like, but cut with the persecution complex, it’s really pathetic.
Persecution complex? Er, we’re in a thread titled “do white working classes have culture?”, and we’re actually having to have a debate about it.
Fortunately it’s impossible that I should ever feel persecuted, as I am supremely confident that I’m better than everyone else. I don’t even have to explain why, I just know I am. I’ve recommended it before here, everyone should give it a go. Try it, I bet you’ll like it.
Yeah persecution complex Bert, over a fat racist comedian who tells nigger and paki jokes.
Can you tell me who exactly he’s never told offensive jokes about?
I couldnt give a fuck Bert, he’s a racist who tells nigger and paki jokes, just because he makes jokes about his mother-in-law too doesnt change that, lose the persecution complex, you’re usually sensible.
He’s offensive to EVERYBODY. No one gets away. His comedy is all about offending the people in the audience, and they love it. Unfortunately the people not in the audience are worried that those who are there may become offended, so they’ve done their best to put a stop to him. I repeat, I don’t care if I’m offended and I don’t care if I offend others – as long as it’s done in good humour.
Have my comments in this thread been sensible? For the most part probably not. I have no idea as to how you’re interpreting that as a persecution complex though, I thought it was obviously tongue in cheek.
He’s a racist who tells nigger and paki jokes, whether or not he’s offensive to anyone else means fuck all, that it sends you into a twirl of persecution and victimhood is bernard mannings best joke, I suppose.
A twirl of persecution and victimhood? Where was that?
I thought you had a sense of humour?
Hey grab a beer and put on your Roy Chubby Brown DVD or something, this conversation is over.
Roy Chubby Brown is rubbish. Beer isn’t though.
Ok really, who cares about Bernard Manning? Lets get back on topic please.
Julie Burchill ruined all credibility for me when she claimed to be a chav
Well Julie Burchill never had much credibility with me pommygranate.
Bernard Manning is an example of WWC culture. An example that’s disappeared, not because of immigrants but because of the middle classes knowing what’s best for the lower orders. Racism was an excuse, they hated him anyway for the swearing, drinking, smoking and generally being a fat obnoxious working class northern bastard.
Julie Burchill is off topic, Bernard Manning isn’t.
Bernard Manning = Martyr
Surely, if there was less of Bernard Manning and more acceptance Scroobious Pip amognst the WWC, things’d be golden. But what do I know, I’m just a middle class paki/nigger/Manning-ism.
Jagdeep, not a martyr, no. He joined the middle class. Which must have really got them foaming at the mouth.
Bernard ul Manning = Shaheed
I have now accepted Scroobius Pip.
Thankyou Sid, but learn to spell – spell pheonix wrong, and spell Scroobius right.
In my experience very few Brits want to talk about class. This is what marks out British culture – to avoid talking about the one thing that does define us in this country – over and above ethnicity and religion. This is what unites all the classes in this country. This is a national culture.
I tried to figure class out a while ago and came to the conclusion if you are still taking money home to your parents to help them eat and sleep – that’s pretty much working class. It’s the middle classes that give their children a helping hand with house deposits, wills which are the stepping stone into a more mobile future; for working class kids they still have to support their Mums and Dads. OK – you might say then that’s what Asians do – true, but this is actually what the white working classes do, and the avoidance of this contribution is what enables middle class mobility.
This is a positive feature of working class life – and that solidarity extends to neighbours and community networks. Middle class values, on the other hand, are more to do with individualism and individual social mobility, and when this is exhausted, the middle classes invent the need to volunteer and form mutual associations to support ‘community’. Working class families on the other hand are busy helping kin, Mums, Dads, kinship to help them out of poverty. They don’t have time to be volunteers – they are volunteering 24/7 in life. These strike me as some of the main differences – the flow (or reverse flow) of money from one generation to another.
As the British working class were created very quickly, historically speaking, over a couple of hudred years out of dispossessed peasants, people whose skills had been mechanised, Irish and other immigrants and others, and it received constant inflows and people got out by rising into the middle classes or fell out into the lumpenproletariat it was never a class in the same definite way that the peasantry were. Its cultures were also shifting and improvisatory and varied from place to place as well as time to time. For a long time work and trade union and education and self-education had a lot to do with what made working class culture. The period since the second world war has seen the destruction of both working-class identity and working-class culture as well and its replacement by an imposed top-down culture. What would have been or become local working-class culture is taken up by the entertainment media and made into mass culture.
Roger @ 56 – Excellent points.
“The period since the second world war has seen the destruction of both working-class identity and working-class culture as well and its replacement by an imposed top-down culture”
Does the welfare state have anything to do with this? Has it given dignity yet taken pride?
Does the welfare state have anything to do with this? Has it given dignity yet taken pride?
That’s a biggie.
And I suspect it’s also eroded the self-worth of a generation or two of immigrant populations who have benefited from the dole. And here I’m thinking of my British-Bangladeshi countrymen.
Graham – haha, funny man. I don’t think I’ll be making Guardian comments editor anytime soon. I prefer being from the outside you know, playing the game but being my own master.
And yeah, I do agree that Kat from Eastenders and Bernard Manning are probably not useful WC role models, although Bert seems to have gone down that route anyway.
Halima, very interesting points… I think I largely agree.
I don’t watch Eastenders. What other choice was there, to be fair?
“I tried to figure class out a while ago and came to the conclusion if you are still taking money home to your parents to help them eat and sleep – that’s pretty much working class.”
Well according to Halima that makes me working class then (and there’s me thinking I could pass for posh folk). I disagree, for what it’s worth – as a child who went to a comp in a suburb of north London, it was quite mixed between the working and middle classes. I remember going to my first girlfriend’s house at 16 (ok, I was a late developer) and being shocked to find:
Books, a piano, “ethnic” wall hangings, and her mum and dad sharing a glass of vino (red at that) in the afternoon.
I had stepped into another world.
Another anecdote – at 17 I had left school and was working in Selfridges. A girl joins me in the canteen and we get talking. She asks me what I’m doing here and explains she’s a student. She says – why don’t you do a degree? I had the A’s after all. And do you know what? I HAD NEVER CONSIDERED IT. It was what posh people did . It was simply outside my and my family’s frame of reference. Anyway, the girl persuaded me to look into it and two weeks later I was an undergraduate. Otherwise I might have worked my way up to floor manager by now.
That’s class for you, in my experience. I never saw the girl again BTW.
”Does the welfare state have anything to do with this? Has it given dignity yet taken pride?”
I think the kind of welfare state we have has has a damaging effect. Again, it’s top-down. It doesn’t give much dignity either, actually, but then the dignity of labour is something that’s gone too. I doubt if someone who works for an advertising agency feels that there’s any dignity to their job now, any more than a shelf-stacker for Tesco’s. In fact, the latter is more likely to think there’s more point to their job than making enormous amounts of money.
Puffy.
Thanks for sharing – sometimes it’s the ordinary tales that tell you more about class than thoeries of the classes, their histories and mutations. I liked your story by the Sainsbury – we’re not all endowed by social capital to know how to make the best of our talents, and there’s something about nature versus nurture in your story which is testimony to how much middle classes can enable, groom, unlock talent – this is a good thing. I can understand why you might disgree with my hunch – for it was just a hunch – nothing more. I stopped trying to figure out class a long time ago – largely because it’s difficult to define, and the only thing that made sense to me were little stories like yours that make you aware of our class backgrounds.
Anyway, speaking of role models – I thought some of the best working class heros are to be found lurking in Ken Loach or Mike Leigh’s movies.
Hi Halima. Ken and Mike. I must admit I do get them a bit mixed up (heresy!). Which one was it who did Kes?
I have mixed feelings about them (or is it just one of them?). In any case the Ken Leigh who did Abigail’s Party and Life Is Sweet may be a brilliant film maker but he clearly despises the working class (and especially their middle class aspirations – remember the restaurant scene in LIS?). I don’t think this is necessarily conscious, but it’s there, I think. Or is that heresy too?!
But maybe he is deliberately mimicing working class people’s aspirations to be middle class, and making a mockery of this to illustrate how we must NOT do things…
I’ll try and look out for the negative slippages next time – it’s been a long time. Ken is the one who did Carla’s Song – Mike is the one who did Secrets & Lies.
white culture we have been torn into groups like germans irish english scottish italian spanish and each has thier own culture mine eats pasta and shows affection very passionate people thats our culture roman catholic by birth thats white culture strength intelligence and entrepernuerialship
Anyway, the girl persuaded me to look into it and two weeks later I was an undergraduate. Otherwise I might have worked my way up to floor manager by now.
Puffy, see this is hard to apply to Indians… because by defualt when you’re ten you know you’re going to do a degree. No, I’m not joking. When I was ten I remember thinking what university life would be like. It was inevitable.
The white working class have a culture (or used to have) if we consider culture to be a complex of shared symbols, ideas, customs, rituals and activities distinct from other groups.
Their culture includes:
Distrust of outsiders, indeed society itself
Complex, Masonic Trades unions and divisions of labour (quite different from working classes in other countries)
Distinct shared activities (sports, brass bands, pigeons)
Autistic, regressive values
High gender differentiation
Cynicism and pessimism
Hatred of religion, and attempts at middle class cultural coercion
Cultural and social insularity
I mean, there’s a culture right there. What the hell is it if it isn’t a culture?