To find the British "inverse snobbery"… weird?!?

[MillieV]

OK - first things first… I'm not a Brit, but have been here for over a dozen years. As an "international", I seem to not belong to any particular class. Hence, I'm not defined by the class system here, and I find it really weird how so many people think.

I mean… in all seriousness... I sometimes feel this place is some alternate universe ripe to be portrayed in the next dystopian novel, where one is meant to stay in their own class bubble, never moving anywhere else. In movies, it's always "snobbery" that's portrayed - rich people looking down on the poor. So I'm so surprised to have found that "inverse snobbery" exists. To be honest, this is the FIRST country I've ever encountered that in (and I've lived in many), below are just some of the symptoms:

• People not wanting to see other people better themselves (shock horror, how dare they?) - this one truly p*sses me off

• People saying things like they 'are a working class family with professional jobs'. Jeeez… what does that even mean?!? So what… your great-grandfather was a miner or something… and hence, you still define yourself as working class? Oh. My. God. How far back do you go? Middle Ages? Or back when the Neanderthal was still around?

• People never wanting to hear about a sport that's perceived as posh (and turn their noses up at any mention of them).

… and yes, don't even mention private schooling.

Can someone please tell a 'Non-Brit' why this is? What's this obsession about?!?

Awkward silence. But inside I was laughing.

But you're not a snob in any way...

My dd, granddaughter of a metalworker, was called posh at school once because she had olives in her packed lunch, she was quite amused by it.

OP , it is jealousy pure and simple.

In this country it seems to be socially and politically encouraged to define yourself as belonging to the 'downtrodden masses' and rally against the 'toffs'. Anyone who dares pop their head above the parapet and admit they earn a lot, had a private education, live in a big house etc. is immediately told they're a 'posh nob' or a 'rich so and so who doesn't know what it's like to live in the real world'.
I've had it my whole life - I am told by some that I talk 'a bit posh' whereas I think I simply talk properly in that I actually pronounce my words correctly and have some idea of proper grammar.
My family are landowners and we employ people so I am automatically some out of touch rich so and so who lives in an ivory tower, where in fact I work bloody long days on my farm as well as balancing the books and all the rest of it. There are very few idle rich these days.
I went to a private school , so what! I had a great time there, got into a good university, studied hard and came back and took up the reigns of the family businesses - what's wrong with that? I'm pretty sure most of the people who enjoy telling me I'm not as good as them because I haven't had to struggle would swap places with me in a heartbeat!

Jealously OP, simple as that.

Am also from another European country, where everyone is middle class. Or at least that's what they generally say. I get the impression people are judged more on their behaviour and taste than what school they went to or what their great great grandfather did and what hardships they endured.

This must surely be an upbringing thing - it must be common for some people to say to their children when they are growing up that other people have greater advantages than them, for example, because of their class. And then it becomes self-perpetuating, because the children grow up thinking they are disadvantaged, or different. Or maybe because the parents use it as an excuse for their lack of success in life?

But I really mean what I say about judging people on behaviour, not class - I have an acquaintance, someone I thought was a friend, who started one day making comments about me being posh and a snob. I am nothing of the sort, but she just took a dislike to me out of the blue. Her comments started getting abusive and critical, and I tried to reason her out of it, but in the end, dropped her because I wasn't going to put up with someone speaking to me like that. She will no doubt say that was because of snobbishness on my part - you can't win with some people, but using inverse snobbery as an excuse for rudeness isn't on.

it matters to people because it matters to other people iyswim

it can genuinely have an impact on what jobs you get, how well you progress in your career, how easy it is to access support or resources you need. not for everyone, not for all paths in life, but for many if not most

i'm not saying it's ok to make assumptions about people, or to be unpleasant about people and their background or likes/dislikes, because it's really not, but if you have been brought up in a particular society you will often see the underlying structure and understand how that works in your favour and how that works against you. so you will try to counter that or work with it according to your means

manina

I have come across successful professionals and wealthy businesspeople etc, by the dozen who have trenchantly refused to adopt terms such as 'supper', 'grandma' etc, passionately prefering to stick with argot of their childhood/background. Many of these people would be aghast if their own children took up polo, for example. Some would explain this as having their feet on the ground, some in terms of not developing pretensions, I think.

It is a an issue of cultural identity. Jealousy doesn't come ito that.

Agree re cultural identity. People always talk about 'Englishness' not existing, there isn't a national identity, there is a class identity instead.

I can't talk any more about it really because it is so ingrained in me and I wish it wasn't. It has genuinely caused some problems being in relationships with men with different class identities in the past. Nuts.

its a caste system not a class system, essentially.
take a look at other countries with caste systems and it should help you understand the mentality better
some western european countries are luckier. some had revolutions to get rid if their elite. others had it forced upon them after losing wars.
we have been ruled for a thousand years by the same elite. it scars the psyche.

its a caste system not a class system

What utter nonsense.

TBH, the only place I've really encountered rabid inverse snobbery is on Mumsnet.

I recognise reverse snobbery.

I've been called a snob for even looking at a better secondary school outside my immediate local area. Also, because I said I liked politics and Radio4

Every country in the world has some form of class system or hierarchy. It's what humans do- look out for 'other' and then configure a method of defining what that other is. Then like chickens, we all start pecking at it.

From the Almanac de Gotha to the caste system, it is entrenched.

Hi OP. I'm English and I'm completely with you.
I'm from a historically working class family (mostly Domestic Servants, Labourers etc).
However, I'm incredibly glad that I would now be considered middle class and am able to offer my children a better life than any generation in my family before them.
I don't get the "oh my family are working class through and through and I'm bloody proud of it! Stuff the posh people and their money!"
It's very wrong when someone is considered a snob because they choose to better themselves and don't go around bleating about their working class roots!

if, as a foreigner, you think of it more as caste not class, it is more understandable.

it was essentially caste until the industrial revolution, when rich industrialists were allowed to marry in. even today, most of britain is owned by the same families who have owned it for the last thousand years. just the fact that most of britain is owned by a tiny percentage of people (poor poor scotland in particular) should be a bit of a clue to the social stratification. then look at wealth in general: three quarters of the population living off a tiny slice of total wealth

then look at jobs. top jobs = top private schools

western europe had dissolution of nobility and landed estates, either through war or revolution. we didnt

ArsenicFaceCream
I'm not talking about the silly little things such as which words you choose to use for grandparents.
I am talking about people thinking it is okay to refer to me as a 'posh git' as one of DW's work colleagues did the once. Sorry but it was the first time she had met me, you do NOT call someone any kind of 'git' the first time you meet them. Apparently because I talk a little bit posh it was okay to do so!
If I called someone who looked a little dowdy 'a bit of a scrubber' then I'm sure I would be rounded on immediately and told I was looking down on them - so why is the reverse okay?

RE: being aghast that a child is taking up polo?? WTF... Why is taking up polo something to be aghast about? It's just inverse snobbery. A parent not wanting their child to play polo is simply someone with a chip on their shoulder who doesn't want their child to 'get all posh', usually because they have a problem with posh people.
How does what sport you choose to play mean you don't have your 'feet on the ground'?

I hear you harry. My own mother thinks I'm a snob because I own a fridge that beeps when the door has been left open...

I don't see it in my circle of friends at all, but they are very international.

I did wonder why after so long you were still relying so heavily on national sterotypes. With undeniably a fair old whack of self praise involved. Seeing yourself as so much more ... evolved maybe... in comparision with the National Character.

I think before asking "the natives" to explain themselves, the best first step is to get out of the expat bubble if you can. Becuase unless you do you aren't likely to have your generalisations challenged, and until they are challenged it's really hard to gain a naunced enough impression of what you are taking issue with. Which is something of an impediment if you genuinely want to understand it. Humans notice patterns. But they are pretty crap at it and tend to give an awful lot of wieght to the examples that support their noted pattern, and wholesale ignore all the numerous examples that contradict it.

The more you are removed via friendship boundaries, the more susepctable you become to getting a pretty fixed, and not necessarily accurate, vision of a nation full of people.

The good news is that by and large a lot of "incomprehensible" differences melt away when they are no longer crude, wholesale sterotypes. And then you get annoyed less often. Mostly . But utterly stumped when somebody asks you to describe an entire nation of people. Cos how do you sum up a huge complicated mess of very individual persons, all irritatingly being different from one another and defying the rules that would allow you to neatly box them in a tidy paragraph or two ?

I actually think there is quite a lot of overlap between being an immigrant rolling their eyeballs at "the natives" and being overly concerned with plopping people neatly into a class system so you can judge everybody not in your slot lesser in some way or another. It all boils down to a human trait of being really keen on working out your status in relation to others, while finding them a tad lacking in comparision with yourself. A kind of "find my tribe" thingie taken a bit too far.

Before you jump down my throat, reframe your OP as though it were written by say... a Brit in Spain, rolling his eyeballs at an "incomprehensible and stupid" Spanish, sterotype based national charateristic. All while maintaining a social set that generally excludes the very people being judged as lacking in some area.

Even though mainland Europe had dissolution of nobility, if you come from one of the lines, you are still far more privileged than Joe Blow.

Change your drinking spot.

Can't think you'd hear that anywhere but a pub.

I'm also not English but living here and I've noticed the same thing. But the loathing for "posh" is also often coupled with a keen interest in what "posh" people do (otherwise the DM wouldn't exist, would it?). Perfectly normal, left-leaning, educated people around here get quite giddy when somebody appears who fits into the mysterious English class system on (what they perceive as) a higher rung, even though they would be very quick to criticise poshness in any other context. It's something we just don't have in Ireland, and I can't understand it any more than I understand the caste system.

However, the begrudgery is RIFE in Ireland, and it's vile. The whole "'Hmph, 'tis far from XYZ she was raised" is a very common phrase, cracked out whenever anybody DARES to do better than the previous generation. My grandmother made my father miserable for his entire life with that carryon. Basically, if you do better in life, you are saying that the your background wasn't good enough, even if, well, it quite obviously WASN'T (poverty etc.).

manina I think it's great that you have the life you have and have done well... but imo it is important for people to acknowledge when they have had a lucky start in life and that the job they do, the house they live in is not all down to their hard work and intelligence [although some of it undoubtedly] but also because of the opportunities that they have had, i.e.private schooling, family wealth, opportunity to enter the family business, etc.

I am sure you do acknowledge all of this as you have spoken of it openly here and so are aware that you have been fortunate as well as hard working.

But what really gets my goat is when I meet someone who feels the rich are rich because they are just somehow more deserving, more industrious, more intelligent than the poor. However when you look at a lot of wealthy people's backgrounds [not all admittedly but in this country quite a lot of politicians, famous actors, business people] you can see that they have come from money, the best education that money can buy, powerful and influential parents and connections....

So sometimes I think people feel frustrated and envious, particularly when it is not acknowledged that a good proportion of those who have 'made it' in the UK have had an almighty big leg up along the way.

manina

The fact that you consider them 'silly little things' demonstrates that you don't understand the phenomenon. Cultural identity is, of course, always made up of many 'little things'.

Calling someone names is just rudeness and not really about any brand of snobbery at all.

You can't imagine what it is about polo that might appear problematic? Even I can see that what that aversion might be about Although I'd be perfectly happy for my children to take up any hobby they fancied (and could finance ).

I am British and live in France. My French parents in law spend their time moaning about "the bourgeois". My children, when they took up tennis, were accused of playing a bourgeois sport. It is the only country I know which has "an intellectual class" and where it is acceptable to refer to "the elite". I don't think class divisions or inverted snobbery are confined to Britain.

yes, mignonette i agree (the french tried quite hard to get rid of their nobility at the time though!)

We have tall poppy syndrome in the UK. The Australians have it as well.

So we are probably conditioned from an early age, and through media and school attitudes and all the other things that influence us to not be that tall poppy. So a culture of inverse snobbery and modesty about achievements develops and perpetuates over time.

It is probably all started with the churches, years ago...

People not wanting to see other people better themselves (shock horror, how dare they?) - this one truly psses me off*

Seen that it is depressing.

Terry Pratchett referred to it as the in the crab pot - when idea came up in Unseen Academicals.

Reverse snobbery isn't always bad - DH refused Oxbridge on those grounds, he had the grades, so eventually met me at another top University where he had a great time all three years and met people with a huge variety of back grounds.

The one person I know who did go to Oxford felt she never fitted in - I'm sure others with her background might have fair better but she felt she'd have fitted better else where.

So DH reverse snobbery possibly saved him from some unhappy years.