What makes you working class?

[Greenbluestar]

I noticed the thread on what makes you middle class. So how about what makes you working class? I’ll go first..

• achievement achieved through merit and seldom by privilege
• keen to work and hard working

Any more?

Live for the moment
Want it - get it
Go for the sensation whether colour, taste IE food etc
No ummms and ahhs decision/ action/ opinion.

Working class always makes me think of my sociology textbook - Kevin and Sally Webster - a typical working class couple (from Corrie)

It's all getting mushed up now isn't it. But weird assumptions prevail - some senators I'm the most privileged in the room and some I'm the least!

My extended family is trad working class values (salad cream, trifle etc). My own family middle class (brioche, reading/theatre and I let my kid go to school in unironed clothes). But I still class myself as working class because I have to work and there's no inherited generational wealth.

I also enjoy the weird northern prejudice where people think you live in the wastelands. I know the SE is much more richly resourced (and I'm a frequent visitor) but also proximity to London/£££s has created an interesting (to me) offshoot of working class (I'd describe as Essex-y) which is very different to my experience of working class culturally.

Maybe 40 years ago northern/SE working classness was more similar but now it's very different. (Whereas middle class seems more homogenus over those years)? Something I think about on train journeys...

What do you think about the Midlands, @nodogz, when you pass through on long train journeys?

Many people seem to forget about the second most populous and ethnically diverse region of the UK, separating the country into ‘the North’ and ‘the South’.

Crushed velvet explosion when you walk in the home

@MadameHeisenberg - showing my privilege and chips on the shoulder going for the north v south divide and missing the midlands (and other places)

So if you're interested, I only really know Brum so can't speak for all of the midlands. But I think the vibe it most resonates with for me is metro-northern.

You're not London or SE but it's deffo more diverse and metropolitan. My kid says Birmingham is the best city in the world - and I quite like it too but hate driving there! I think the white working class of the midlands would be broadly similar to my northern experience and middle classness very similar too

@nodogz thanks - I’d agree with that analysis myself!

I was a bit puzzled by someone upthread saying the WC wouldn’t typically eat ‘world foods’, but in B’ham there’s a plethora of them and I’ve eaten them since a I was a kid. In fact, my best friend at primary school was Malaysian Indian and her Mum taught my Mum to cook an authentic curry, so we ate it often!

I think a lot of these things are assumptions on the part of some MC people; they assume because the WC have less cash for travel and food, that everyone eats chicken nuggets.

I learned to drive under spaghetti junction and on the city centre queensways! Dense traffic doesn’t phase me but I’m a shite parallel parker! DH, who grew up in Provence, is the exact opposite!

What makes you working class?

Working.

Being part of the workforce.

Earning an income.

Going to work.

What makes you working class?

Working. Being part of the workforce. Earning an income. Going to work.

That's really not what working class means though. Everybody knows that. Boris Johnson works (to an extent). Would you describe him as working class? The Old Etonians and other very posh, wealthy public schoolboys I knew at university now work quite long hours and earn shedloads of money as merchant bankers, hedge fund managers etc. Are they working class?

@MadameHeisenberg I think it's deffo w/c to eat the foods you grow up around. So if you're in Brum stands to reason that you're going to eat curry because you'll try your friends food or see others buying it. Or smelling what someone is having for tea as you walk past (and deciding to go round)

Same for lots of kids my way getting in to polish foods (the baked goods and the cherry flavoured stuff are big hits in my family).

It's far more m/c to feed your kids pesto pasta four times a week! It's laziness to say chicken and chips/bland palates and falling in to underclass stereotypes.

Working class condiments are top tier - salad cream, brown sauce, cucumbers and onions in vinegar, pickled red cabbage / yum!

Oooh cucumbers and onions in vinegar - I’d forgotten about that! What about piccalilli? The neon stuff? Loved that too. Pickled onions, pickled eggs from the chip shop. Pickled stuff rules.

We were really working class when I was little. My parents were teens when they had us. Then they split up, got ok jobs, bought houses and were suddenly middle class as I was leaving home at 18. They starting having children again so I have a sibling brought up in poverty like me and middle class siblings.

Differences in our upbringing that could either be change in class or the fact we were brought up 20 years apart and with a different dad:

W/c - if friends were at the house at meal times, food was spread to feed us all (I.e a loaf of bread and butter put in the middle of the table)
M/c- friends never just pop over. It all has to be pre-planned. I’ve even witnessed them being told “it’s dinner time now. Time for you to go home” 😱

W/c - parents smoked all day in the house, including cannabis
M/c - children have no knowledge their parents ever smoked

W/c- had to walk everywhere ourselves or get public transport
M/c- chauffeur driven everywhere. Even to school and back (less than a mile away)

W/c - no after school activities. Brother started taking himself to football but could never pay his subs (manager let him off)
M/c - expensive activities most days after school and weekends

W/c - parents discuss what a PITA their kids are
M/C - parents discuss how great their kids are

That's really not what working class means though. Everybody knows that. Boris Johnson works (to an extent). Would you describe him as working class? The Old Etonians and other very posh, wealthy public schoolboys I knew at university now work quite long hours and earn shedloads of money as merchant bankers, hedge fund managers etc. Are they working class?

You missed the sarcasm.
From my post: In other words, who cares?

The obsession with class is nauseating and the stupid blanket statements about people from x,y,z class is laughable.

What makes me working class . my postcode says it all.

@Snog

Brioche is not a regular purchase on your weekly shop.

I'm probably lower than working class (single parent, universal credit, low paid, had my first at 19 etc) and I buy brioche it's from Aldi mind you or occasionally I get it in Iceland

Openly discussing how much things cost or your earnings.

When I first started mixing with middle class people I couldn’t get over the coyness around discussing money.

My upbringing was: if you mention your new dress/house/holiday almost the first question was ‘how much did that set you back?’

Massive over generalisation here, but generally I think

If you are too rich to care what class you are, you are upper class.
If you are too poor to care what class you are, you are lower working class.
If you worry about class and especially if you alter your behaviour to be more class than another, then you are some shade of middle class, or the affluent working classes.

@Pikaso

Calling the toilet “the bog”

I was brought up working class. Financially I’m now middle class but I still feel very much working class and always will

Oh no! I'm quite posh and all my family including some with titles call it the bog!

The original meaning of working class was anyone who had to work I.e. did not have inherited capital like aristos etc... In that sense of course I'm working class. I am a professional and own my own house in a reasonable area, but I'm afraid I have to work or else the bills won't get paid! I'm more working class than some family members of mine who haven't ever worked a day in their lives and just sit with their hands out. Any worker is working class. If you don't work, then you're not!

You missed the sarcasm. From my post: In other words, who cares?

Answer: lots of people care. And as long as lots of people care, it still matters. Because as long as people care, it still affects how you are perceived and your chances in life.

Seems like I hit a nerve there. It's fine if you and lots of people care. Lots don't. Each to their own.

@ComeOnSpringtime

Seems like I hit a nerve there. It's fine if you and lots of people care. Lots don't. Each to their own.

It’s not a matter of whether you ‘care’ or not, it’s that social class still is a determining factor in significant things, like educational attainment, opportunities, likely career, life expectancy.

Phew! Feels like I'm being preached at, at this point. 😳

It's that serious to some people I guess.

@ComeOnSpringtime

Phew! Feels like I'm being preached at, at this point. 😳

It's that serious to some people I guess.

What’s not ‘serious’ about the fact that, in 2017-19, men from the least-deprived areas of England lived a decade longer than those in the most-deprived areas, and women eight years? And that the gap in healthy life expectancy (the number of years you can expect to live in good health) between the two cohorts is almost 20 years?