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?!?

My own mother thinks I'm a snob because I own a fridge that beeps when the door has been left open - love that one; reminds me of when we were told we had very undesirable "aspirations" above ourselves because we'd ordered windows made to match the 1930s art deco ones we already had.

(See, 1930s art deco, who does she think she is eh?)

Nutcracker apart from my art deco windows, I wasn't aware I'd been fortunate in life?! Envy round here is nothing to do with people having "made it" with a leg up or anything else, its purely to do with people who have books on a bookcase instead of DVDs - where I live that is the very definition of being a posh wanker.

That is probably where the gulf opens up spare. I've yet to meet an expensively educated person who struggles with false modesty. In some milieus self-depreciation causes outright confusion, and yet we continue to pretend it is a 'British characteristic'.

books on a bookcase instead of DVDs - where I live that is the very definition of being a posh wanker.

I think working class is claimed as middle class is often used as an insult - or it retains unpleasant connotations such as ambition and pushiness.

So being middle class is seen as a bad thing.

Well, see I grew up in an Asian country with huge inequalities. Middle class academic parents. Encouraged me to read books. Took me to plays. Classical music concerts. Museums. Not the pushy Tiger Mother but they did all the things their parents had done for them. I grew up with international, liberal, secular values etc. But not a v wealthy background etc- comfortable but not wealthy. I come to the UK, have a child, do the same things, and find myself being sneered at a bit. Colleagues at the University I teach, who are all bloody middle class, tell me, 'oh you are bringing up an overachiever eih? Concerts and plays and all.' I was telling someone that I am sick of the rocket bit at the Science Museum because DS is obsessed with it (he's just under 3) and they said, 'oh you should let him have fun, not force him to go to museums all the time?' EIH??!! And they go on about their own laid back parenting in comparison to mine, implying either that I am trying too hard, or all this is weirdly posh. I have been here and in the US for about 16 years, I thought I had it semi figured out, then I have a kid and all these social norms and etiquette baffles me. (Incidentally all my Indian middle class friends say, 'oh you guys are so lucky. London has so many parks, so many great museums, and plays and stuff just for kids. We rarely have any and they are so expensive in Delhi/Mumbai. You guys have such ready access to this stuff!)

Hexu In Casa Wordfactory we use the term middle class to mean summat daft and a bit poncy. Or terribly earnest .

Great post from Mammuzza.

Why I think the English (possibly British -- not sure how far it extends) class system is particularly intriguing to others is that it actually has nothing to do with money. However much money you make, wherever you choose to educate your children, however many polo ponies you own and courses you serve at dinner, if you were not born upper class you will never, ever be upper class.

So there is absolutely no point in admiring the upper classes because you're never going to get there. In addition, many of them really are revolting -- think of all the 'doors to manual' jokes that Prince William's friends apparently made about Carole Middleton. If anyone thought that I was UC to attempting to seem UC (which would only happen because I am an RP speaker) I would put them right pretty quickly.

Kewrious
possibly you come across as boasting
everyone i know in academia spends their free time being 'cultural' with their kids and we all talk about it, but if it came across the wrong way, i can see people totally denying they do it with their own kids

there is an anti intellectualist streak in the uk, but that is different to class. traditionally our ruling elite have been tim nice but dim types

Oh and the books. I grew up in a household filled with books. When we moved house aged 7 my Dad and I counted that we had over 10,000 books. You can imagine how many we have now. I had tons of kids books. But the children's' books here are so wonderful and I grew up in a pre Amazon era. The best international books we got as kids were Russian ones which were beautifully illustrated but full of grim tales. I look at the books my son has and I am almost jealous! BUT apparently this is all pretentious and posh (in some circles admittedly).

I could definitely see those terms being applied to middle classiness .

I think it why everyone I know is working class.

FriendlyLadybird, that is where it is similar to caste - it is birth that puts you there

Kewrious -- Definitely no one wants to be seen to be trying too hard. Don't think for one moment, though, that those parents aren't doing exactly the same things for their children that you are for yours.

But I'm sure that if I went to India there would be all sorts of subtleties that I would miss. There wouldn't be any anthropologists if it was all too easy.

Kewrious I grew up in a German working class family and my parents (my father was a metalworker for 45 years) had a season ticket to the theater in town for their entire married life, my mother at 81 still does. I don't remember anybody ever being anything else than positive about that. But today, here in Scotland, in the morning when I packed a few quail eggs (from our very own quails not bought at Waitrose) for ds' packed lunch I was wondering if he'll get some comments about that.

I think 'middle classness' is a distraction. There are the proletariat and the land owners. You can eat all the olives and listen to all the radio 4 you want...but if the difference between you having a roof over your head and a secure future versus repossession and benefits is just a few payslips, you are working class.

BTW, we live in a country where our Prime Minister, an Eton educated multi-millionaire married to an aristocrat calls himself 'typically middle class'. You don't blame people at the other end for having prejudices against their 'betters'.

That said, I don't mind inverse snobbery about wealth and privilege. I can't abide inverse intellectual snobbery. The pride about being ignorant and not liking reading, learning, curiosity, art, music is something that goes across all social groups in my opinion. In fact, I find it more common in middle class environments. My father, a builders labourer, painted, played piano, read voraciously and had an extensive vocabulary despite leaving school at 15. Whereas if I use a 4 syllable word in board meetings I get an "oooooh, get her".

Maybe I do. See I know all my colleagues do the same with their kids. I know it. But except for a few (mostly women who are happy to admit it, and a few who will say, 'oh take him to xyz he will like it), my male colleagues in the main tend to be a bit weird about it. So I have learned to shut up. Which has been my great motherhood lesson in the UK. Say nothing about your kids except in vague generalities for fear of being misconstrued.

dont forget our long proud tradition of education for the working classes by the working classes

wea classes for example still run today

the trades union movements were very strong on this

the rambling movement (ok not education) was the working classes asserting the right of access to land owned by the ruling classes (a thousand years of ownership, plus the enclosures act to land grab more)

then I have a kid and all these social norms and etiquette baffles me

^^Oh yeah. That. It's a bugger and half.

Without a doubt the worst period I ever had was when I thought I'd found my feet. And then had a kid. A whole new layer of differences that I had been oblivious to. It was like starting all over again, but with extra added sleep deprivation and insecurity becuase .... "new mum" plus the distinct impression I could please nobody.

The Italians around me all sucked their teeth cos I was "doing it wrong" when I did things the way that my lot back home considered normal. And the Italian-style stuff that I sort of absorbed by osmosis had the lot back home up in arms and tutting at me.

Fucking nightmare.

I was so relieved when he got bigger and most of the Two Nation vocal public interest in my parenting faded away. Apart from Education-Gate, which is ongoing even at 14 years old.

Interesting thread. DH and I definitely fall into the category that define ourselves as, "Working class with middle class jobs". And yes, in my case, I do have the stereotypical ex miner Dad and Grandad who I am rather proud of.

I don't know, I like to think we are more clued in than a lot of people, have a bit more understanding, through our families, of why a lot of people live like they live, (the whole 40" TV while on benefits thing) and we try to pass that onto our children.

Equally, we have both been to University with horribly entitled "bred to rule" public school types, and we aware there is a tranche of people utterly without conscience who have no qualms about cheating anyone out of anything, as if it were simply their right to have the best.

What I'm trying to say, is that we're actually quite proud of where we fit in. We would never put anyone down for seeking to broaden their cultural horizons though.

Yes, OP it's quite overt and really rather nasty, isn't it?!

I am what some people would describe as posh - there, I said it ....... But I think I am an ok person. I couldn't give a stuff, really, where people come from or what they have or haven't got. If someone is nice then I like them and if someone is horrible then I don't. Not really any different from other human beings I think! And yet hearing my accent seems to give people licence to hate me and make the most massive assumptions! I can't help who I was born to be what they were able to give me.

I have often thought that it is the last prejudice that is truly acceptable in this country. You can't be mean to someone on the basis of their colour, age, size, sexual orientation (thank goodness) but you can be really vile if you feel that someone is posh. Pretty unpleasant.

You mention miners in your OP and I think awsomer is quite right to point out that there is a cultural heritage which goes with communities like that which, coupled with centuries of deep social injustice, tends to form a large part of people's cultural identity and which they don't want to turn their back on even if their present life is much more privileged. I don't see anything wrong with that at all, for example we wouldn't think it odd if someone felt their identity defined by first nations heritage even if they were now living a professional life.

For example, my 'heritage' is mainly in mining communities from the North East. I'm close to my grandparents and have grown up with their family stories of families being thrown out of their home and on to the moor during strikes, children dying in poverty, men killed in terrible accidents leaving their families destitute etc. My grandparents were born in the early 1920s and they lived with their grandparents who were born in the 1850s so much of this is first or second hand memory. I went through newspaper archives and have found reports that back up many of the stories they've told. I'm now incredibly fortunate to have a professional life, kids in private school etc but the fact that these are really recent privileges and the fragility of that privilege is something that I am very aware of.

Also I think we've tended to downplay the exploitation of the working class and the struggle for democracy in this country. So we teach bits of it e.g. child labour but we don't tend to teach it in a systematic way e.g. Peterloo, tolpuddle martyrs and the struggle to unionise, the Great Reform Act and the fact that working class men have had the vote for less than 100 years etc. We tend to teach about colonial exploitation of others but not the expatiation of our own. Perhaps that makes us more susceptible to be exploited now.

I don't think any of that means that you shouldn't be ambitious - my grandparents are thrilled that their grandchildren and great grandchildren have such opportunity and it has been the catalyst to me to take advantage of those opportunities - but it does mean that people feel connected to something greater than them.

In this country (as well as others I dare say) people have this notion that adopting the accent, mannerisms and activities of the better off (financially or socially) means you have improved your life. Some things are viewed as refined while others are dross for the masses. If you enjoy unrefined or things considered lower class, it's because you don't know any better.

Also we have a tendency to assume anyone who doesn't use standard English is uneducated. Rather than accept that standard English is a version of English. Dialects from around there UK are just as legitimate and yet are viewed as 'less than' and most often a figure of fun. People lose their accents or at least tone them down in order to get ahead. That kind of prejudice shouldn't exist. People shouldn't have to lose their accents.

I think we can pretty much all agree that the press reaction to Kate Middleton would have been different if she had carried out her first interview with a broad Liverpudlian, Geordie or Brummie accent.

We have lived in a very rigid class system for a very long time. Where everything associate with upper class was desirable and everything else was something do be avoided. Where people were reminded daily that they mustn't argue with their 'betters'. That everyone just better know their place.

These things don't leave the collective consciousness overnight.

The push back comes from accepting where your family has come from and your roots are something to be proud of not ashamed. Whatever anyone might think we do not live in a meritocracy. How you speak, socialise and the family you were born into etc has an affect on your life. Symbols of upper class identity like accent, private schooling, specific activities or even education (rather stupidly in this regard because it's almost like admitting that people like yourself can't be educated) are then the focus of bitterness.

Then take all of that and maybe it is more understandable why people get defensive if it seems someone is trying to'better' themselves. Better doesn't mean improvement it means moving social class. It means I'm more important than you. Even though people don't outwardly say it anymore, that is still implied.

I think until prejudice against lower class indicators disappears, prejudice against upper class indicators will remain.

I think some areas of the country are far worse than others. I live in west Cornwall and socially hang around with both landowners (though minor it must be said :o ) and fishermen. I'm not exaggerating - I really do. Obviously the kind of conversations which occur with each group are different, but even though we are firmly between the two, never once have either set made us feel uncomfortable.

I think this is far more of a thing further east.

i agree, Tess, that it is not taught and rather whitewashed how exploited 99% of us have been by the 1% (and still are, although things are better and the 1% is changing to a more global elite)

i agree infinity8, people take notice because it matters to the world around them and for many people has tangible impact on their lives

it's not ok to be unpleasant to people because of their background or likes/dislikes and how different they are from your own, but these things do have an impact

accent is still quite a big thing, though less so these days i hope. when i was at university i worked in a (small) call centre with people who were local to the area, for a company that provided a service locally. but i was always given the "difficult" customers to deal with because i have an RP southern accent. we were in the north and it was felt (by the managers, who were local themselves) that those with a local accent would be less likely to argue back with someone with my accent and the assumptions that came with it. horrible really, using my perceived "posh" accent to try to intimidate people who were trying to complain about a service (i wasn't saying anything different to my colleagues, it was just the accent). you'll be relieved to hear it didn't always work, but sometimes i think it did