To ask how you define 'class'?

[mygrandadsvest]

Someone at work this week described me as "white middle class woman".

I am white and I am a woman but I would never have described myself as middle class. If you'd have asked me Id be working class.

Absolutely not a stealth boast but for context I am in a senior management position married to a lorry driver who earns less than half as much. Both kids in state education, DD1 goes to a local grammar. We own our own home but with a £250k mortgage. I was a teenage mum and got lucky that my mum really helped out with childcare so I could complete a degree whilst working. We both drive 10/11 year old cars and live to our means as things have not always been financially stable. If we didn't work or split up we'd soon be in trouble- that makes us working class right!? I speak 'properly' which I think lulls people into a false perception of my background!

I was almost offended at being described as middle class and not really sure why!

@Againanothername

The way I understand it - Upper = old money with connections. Upper middle = new money with connections. Middle = well off professional, going back a few generations. Lower middle = professional job, but working class roots, or manual/service job, with professional family roots. Working = manual or service jobs, and family history of the same.

You sound like lower middle to me!

You could also argue there is a lot of people who do not fit into any of those categories - people who do not work and have no intention of doing so, and often continues through the generations. This is often referred to as "the underclass".

I’d say your colleague sounds rude and frankly impertinent, and I’d be having a word with them or their line manager.

OP, you sound to be like someone who was working class but has realistically become lower middle class- like the vast majority of the UK population. Most of us have to work else we’d face financial ruin, and if you come from a working class background that context doesn’t leave you. Class is really about background, less so the job you end up with or money you earn.

I’m sick of “white, middle class woman” being used as a stick to beat us women with. It’s just misogyny dressed up as “progressive”. More woke nonsense.

It's not easy to define class because it's indicated by a huge range of markers which not everyone agrees on, and it's unusual for any individual to tick off all of them or not to have some which contradict each other.

Imo it's also pretty naïve to claim that class no longer exists or isn't important. Certainly it shouldn't still be important, but you only need to look at the demographic of people in certain professions to know that it is. It's very difficult not to make assumptions about people based on class, as we've all been brought up surrounded by those cues.

@NachoNachoMan
I left the underclass out because there are lots of unemployed or disabled people or those with mental illness who don’t work but who deserve more than to be seen as ‘underclass’. They would be working class if only they could.

I see underclass as criminals, but then this is a bot problematic because of course you get criminals right the way to the top (cough prince andrew cough).

@Againanothername yes I agree, "underclass" is a very negative term. There's traditionally upper class people with actually very little money, and great big houses that are falling down; some trades people are relatively highly played for what is an essentially working class job - e.g. a plumber may earn more than a teacher for instance; and the nouveau rich, people like footballers who have amassed immense wealth, and are often from working class backgrounds but can have more money that the "social elite".

The class system has definitely had its day.

Paid not played*

[quote mygrandadsvest]@Elsewyre I'm a senior manager in HR- they definitely wouldn't let me in! 🤫🤣

The context was that they intimated I didn't understand racial bias as I'm a white middle class woman.

Not sure why I'm offended- probably because I've worked bloody hard and feel like middle class is a privilege rather than a reward iyswim? [/quote]
Well your offenderd because you've just went on the reciving end of racial bias.

As a middle class white woman that's probbaly a first for you. Maybe you understand it better after this event?

@Elsewyre you can understand something without have experienced it first hand.

I've experienced a violent assault first hand, I wouldn't wish that upon anyone else just so they had a shared experience, I trust that their humanity gives them a degree of empathy and understanding without having gone through it themselves. Anyway, this post wasn't about race.

That’s a tricky one. I’ve always considered myself middle class because: I don’t have loads of money but I’m not scraping by, I went to university, I speak well and use the correct tense, I’m not tight with money to a point of being embarrassing, I dress well and eat well. In comparison my PILs I consider working class because: they have money but are such tight arses it’s awful, they don’t speak proper! “I done this, I done that etc.” they eat poor quality food, aren’t university educated, don’t seem to have any idea about social graces and niceties.

I’m the first person in my family to finish school. I’m a doctor with four degrees. I describe myself as ‘from a working class background’ as I recognise my earning power etc now is totally different to my family of miners, steel workers and factory workers.

I am white and don’t make the mistake of thinking I fully grasp the effects of racism.

I also don’t make the mistake of thinking all of my success is down to hard work. I find that very insightless.

I think you can’t change your class but your circumstance change can mean your children are born to a different class to you.

You are clearly middle class. However middle class is a subsection of working class. If you lose your job you're fucked. That's the general rule of how to tell IMO

@Elsewyre

I am in a senior management position

Middle class then.

Cant be white collar working class

I'm not sure that's true anymore? There's loads of working class people who are in white collar jobs- Telesales and recruitment and IT support

Being called white middle class woman is an insult and not at all related to your class or lack of.
It’s an expression, similar to being called a WASP a few decades ago.

Put it this way are you alowed in your workers union

There are unions that are for professionals, civil servants, even doctors (the British Medical Association is a trade union for doctors). They aren't all for factory workers.

Anyway, there's so much overlap and inconsistency, that it's meaningless.

Being called white middle class woman is an insult and not at all related to your class or lack of.

Really? Sounds like a pretty factual description as long as it's applied to someone who actually is a white, middle class woman (like me).

I might fall in to the bracket of MC as in management (only on an Slightly above average wage though - NHS) and ds attends private school (I do not and absolutely could not afford the fees) and I speak with a RP accent so not a south London accent

But my background is WC and those who are from a MC background know as I know those from a WC background we find each at school drinks/playground/parents evening as we feel comfortable we each other we know we don’t quite fit in

How is being called a white middle class woman an insult

Being middle class is aspirational being working class isn’t

Being middle class is aspirational being working class isn’t

Putting yourself into any class is ridiculous. It also means you judge others by what class you think they are instead of the person they actually are.

There is nothing aspirational about being "middle class" and there's noting wro g with being "working class"

Yes you are middle class. Why should it be a bad thing though?

This illustrates why the old ways of looking at class are so outdated, doesn't it? What do I go by, what I was born into? If so, my parents were definitely born w/c but their jobs mean I was born m/c. How can I be a different social class from my parents? Or did theirs change because they got certain jobs? Even though their politics, accents, identities, pastimes, etc didn't change?

What social class is David Beckham? If the royals were done away with and lost all the money and you saw Louise Windsor working at Aldi, would she be w/c? Am I a different class from my husband? My job puts me in social grade B, his in C2, so what are our children?

It's more about cultural background now, rather than class, it's just we are still using the word "class" to describe it.
Human brains are very good at picking up on subtle clues to identify whether a person is part of their group.
And even now that we don't live in tribes, we are still constantly making assumptions about others, and othering them, and fitting them into boxes - I think this is what is called unconscious bias.

And there are lots of things about the way people present themselves - consciously or unconsciously- that cause others - consciously or unconsciously to classify them.

I bet if you asked people to pick out someone of a similar cultural background to them from a group of strangers, they'd be confident of being able to do it, and would have specific reasons for their choice. That doesn't mean they'd get it "right".
But they wouldn't be going "I've no idea" and picking at random.

People judge others by outward appearance all the time, every single day

@Bwlch

I’m not from here, but after living here 10 years it seems to me to go like this: In the UK apparently you can be as rich as you like, but still be working class if that’s what you grow up as?

Pretty much, although obsession with class seems to be peculiar to a minority on MN and not something real people are concerned about.

Money does not denote or bestow class.

I have not said there is anything wrong with being working class I’m proud to be working class.

But people don’t aspire to be working class they do to be middle class as life offers you more choices it’s as simple as that

It’s all very well and good saying that placing people in a class or defining yourself as a particular is ridiculous but it’s a fundamental core of British (maybe more so English)

Live in a country where class isn’t so defined where it isn’t so core to the culture and you soon realise here how defined we are by class (as a society) from names we give our children to how we dress

Money does not denote or bestow class.

Not in the UK traditionally, no, but in many other parts of the world it very much does.