To find this definition of working class offensive?

[popcorndreams]

I work in the creative sector which is not very diverse and I feel has a particular issue with class diversity. I've come across something in application info, saying they are looking for applications from people who are from working class backgrounds and I'm really not sure on their definition.

I'm not sure what I'd say my class background it. My grandad was a miner and grandma a cleaner. One of my parents was in a skilled manual job before training to become a teacher, in the time before you had to have a degree. My mam left school at 16 and has worked her way up in scientific research. So my parents are probably from working class homes and did more middle class jobs but I wouldn't think of them as middle class. Certainly not in terms of anything other than work and that is not derogatory. I would probably have said my background was working class. I was first in my family to go to uni.

Anyway so this description: If you are from a working class or lower socio-economic background, you will most likely have been to state school, might have received free school meals as a child, or had a precarious household income when you were growing up. You might have grown up in the care system, been a young carer, or been the first in your family to go to university. If you are from a working class background you are more likely to face intersecting barriers in society, experiencing racism, ableism and other forms of discrimination.

I find this a bit offensive as I'd say this isn't working class, it's a deprived background. Th majority of working class people do not have children in care. Growing up may people were not on very high incomes but they were still fairly steady does this make you not working class? I know it's not saying all of these things are needed to be from a working class background but I think its not actually a description of a working class background.

I’m from a working class family, that’s not the right definition. That’s a judgement.

I prefer the marxist definitions of class.

Working class means you earn by selling your labour (or receive benefits because you can't). Working class includes blue collar, white collar, grey collar and pink collar workers, so it covers from cleaners and labourers to professionals such as accountants, lawyers, doctors, architects (but excludes partners in these professions). Many think these professionals are middle class, but they are really white collar upper working class.

You are not working class if you earn primarily through the efforts of people you employ and pay. Small business owners who employ others are still working class if they must work in the business to have sufficient income. You are not working class if you earn through ownership of money making assets, or don't earn because you are wealthy enough not to need to.

If your parents are working class or upper class, then you are the same whilst you are dependent on them, but you define your own class when you strike out on your own.

I agree with op in that whilst I was definitely from a traditional working class background growing up, (my parents both worked in manual type jobs despite my mum having trained as a teacher, we didn't go on holiday, in fact I'd never been out of the country until a school exchange at 13) we weren't on free school meals, nor were we ever involved with the care system or anything like that. However, I know that when my parents separated, my mum really struggled to make ends meet. I went to uni and got a full grant, I had no money at all other than that which I earned working weekends and holidays, and that which I got on my overdraft. My mum just didn't have the money to give me.

I now live a very middle class life, both my husband (who I met at uni) and I have professional jobs, we live in a lovely village, in a lovely house and we have friends from a wide range of backgrounds... in fact, having done that bbc online test (upthread) I am apparently now in the elite class... 🙄🙄
Not sure about that, but anyway.

But it's a significant step up from my childhood. I guess what I'm saying is, i was working class when I was younger, I'm probably less so now, but i'll never lose those roots. But I didn't live a deprived childhood, and the suggestion that as later posters have mentioned, it could be equated with the 'underclass' or criminality or neglect, is not something that reflects my upbringing in a traditional working class family in the 1980s.

@Winebottle you are dead right. I've a fairly broad regional accent and some (generally public school educated) people think I'm
Some sort of bumpkin until we actually engage in conversation.

I am not sure I'd say it is offensive but I agree it is an inaccurate description for most working class people.

And children from other socio economic backgrounds have ended up in care. Working class can cover many experiences, some are working class because of their job but may still live a reasonabl y comfortable.life.

There is a need for more working class people to do middle class jobs. Most so called middle class people are working class they just don't want to admit it.

I'm working class. My parents owned their own home and we had a comfortable life. I had music lessons, holidays abroad etc.
I'm still working class and my children have the same lifestyle as I did, broadly speaking. I have never been subject to poverty or disadvantage.

My husband grew up as a young carer, his father's jobs were transient and precarious and his mother incapacitated from her early thirties. Their house was rented and in a disadvantaged area. He never had a holiday, abroad or in the UK. Never had a family car, central heating seldom in use.

We had wildly disparate childhoods. There is as much discrepancy within the WC as there is within the MC.

I find it odd that WC is shorthand for deprivation when only the lower socioeconomic sections are near to the poverty line.

I think lumping two massively different characteristics together (93% state educated vs 15% free school meals) is a sign they are casting too wide a net. There's a whole range of diversity within all the socioeconomic markers they suggested and it's offensive to suggest that people within these categories have lived similar experiences and faced similar limitations. It smacks of being written by someone way outside any of the markers listed and is just trying to tick a diversity box.

It's way too broad a listing basically, it's like they've just started listing 'typical things that happen to poor people that I've read about'.

What has changed?

Deindustrialisation has seen a decline in the tradional work class. At the same time we have seen the rise of "first in my family to uni" types who are largely indistinguishable from middle class people and are trading on their family history if they identify as working class.

There has also been a rise "deprived" class in coastal or former industrial towns.

I think focussing on class deflects away from the real issues because companies will hire the first type of "working class" ie middle class people with an accent or whose Dad had a manual job or who went to a state school. It doesn't help people who are genuniely disadvantaged.

If you grow up in a coastal town, neither of your parents work and you finish school at 16, you have next to no chance of entering the creative sector. I went to school with people like this, I have dozens in my family and none have entered professional occupations.

It doesn't matter how inclusive the employer is because the problem isn't class prejustice, its the social and economic conditions which mean people don't have the aspiration, qualifications or experience to ever be in the position to apply for such a job.

There has always been a ‘deprived’ class. The ‘traditional’ stable working class has always been a subsection of the broader ‘working class’ excluded from propertied wealth. Those working class people are still largely employed in the services sector (replacing domestic service with retail, hospitality, leisure, logistics), and remain (for the most part) excluded from the ability to accumulate capital for investment.

Not much has changed.

You see @Winebottle I grew up in a coastal town, and we had an awful lot of state school kids who went on to sixth form college snd then various unis including a decent proportion to oxbridge and what are now known as Russell group unis... but I'm old now (early 40s) so I accept that might not be the case now.

Totally agree OP. They’re conflating working class with ‘underclass’ poverty, and instability too. You don’t need to be in abject poverty to be working class, and instability can occur at all levels of society. Both my parents are from very working class, quite poor, but very stable homes. It just sounds like a load of cliches strung together by someone with no clue at all. I find it pretty offensive in its ignorance.

I agree with you. Without doubt my family and my upbringing was working class, but only one of those descriptors is true for me (first to go to university- although my dad has a degree but he studied it through the OU in his 40s for work, so don’t think that counts). Undoubtedly most of those descriptors are not working class- they’re deprived.

Strikes me as a very fair description of the working class. I was the son of a postman and an assistant in Debenhams. I think OP you are thinking more of the lower middle class than the working class.

@ethelredonagoodday I'm not saying all coastal towns are deprived but there will be plenty of estates that have never sent anyone to Oxbridge.

I won’t say it’s offensive unless you think there is something offensive of being in some of that description but it doesn’t describe working class. It seems to mostly explain underclass.

[quote Winebottle]@ethelredonagoodday I'm not saying all coastal towns are deprived but there will be plenty of estates that have never sent anyone to Oxbridge.[/quote]
Yep I accept that.

I can understand your feelings, OP. Are we experiencing some sort of gentrification in the so called lower classes, attempting to create an underclass. I know people who I'd consider working class through and through, but they call themselves middle class. There's nothing wrong with being working class and I'm proud to call myself that.

Very definitely working class and I don't feel that describes my family or those who I grew up with. I did go to university (only one of 5 siblings to do so) but very few of my school friends and none of my cousins went. I could only go because I got maximum grant plus travel expenses. My father always worked so income was never unstable, just not a lot to go around. My mother worked variously as school cleaner, school dinner lady, factory cleaner, warehouse picker and packer. Guess we would have qualified for free school meals but either went home for lunch or had packed lunches. Always lived in council houses, but so did just about everyone I knew. Only toffs lived in "bought houses". I didn't know private schools existed outside of Mallory Towers and St Clairs until I went to university.

So if I was deprived, I didn't know it. Everyone else I knew lived in very similar circumstances. Don't think they would recognise that description either.

Does it matter if the description has working class in it?

Getting back to the application criteria, its part of the widening participation criteria educational institutions and workplaces use to diversity their intake.

I have benefitted from schemes like this and if there wasn't available opportunities I wouldn't be in a position where I could have a better life for myself.

I wouldn't say I am any class because I don't want to be labelled into a category. I'm just glad that there are opportunities for people like me.

I agree that it’s inaccurate. I grew up working-class in the 80s and 90s and was the first in my family to go to university. While money was tight, we still had caravan holidays in Wales or Devon, we always had new clothes (courtesy of my mum or grandma and their knitting skills) and I never went hungry, as my grandfather grew an extraordinary amount of fruit and vegetables.

I worked in creative jobs in London after university and was definitely in the minority in terms of originating from this sort of background.

I think it’s really patronising and daft. I am from a single parent family, brought up in a council estate. My family are all degree educated.

I distinctly recall fellow students laughing and making jokes about the way I spoke when I was at university, they definitely cared about where I came from and assumed I would be a bit dense as a result.

And that type of shit still happens now. I recently read about a "posh lads" chat at Durham uni holding a contest to fuck the poorest lass they could to win. One male student had his offer withdrawn but he won't be the only one behaving like the poor are beneath them.

I grew up in a working class family and it was nothing Like this description.

Both parents worked so we looked after ourselves until tea time. But there was always food on the table and money for school uniforms, after school clubs and school dinners. We went on good holidays and were a two car family. My sister and I went to grammar school And university. We had private tutors for big exams.

Yes we didn’t have the fancy clothes that our friends had, and we didn’t go on the school trips (which were cruises and skiing holidays), but we had everything we needed.

The language used is outdated. They are trying to target poverty - the working poor and the underclass in old terminology.

Laudable intent - badly executed.