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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to be shocked how class prejudice is seen as OK

83 replies

porcamiseria · 29/05/2010 12:16

If anyone posted about a race issue they would be BLASTED, and rightly so

but there seems to be an acceptance (from some, not all) that to be disparaging of the social mores of the white working classes is just fine, no problem!

their eating habits
baby hairbands
pierced earrings
football shirts
the stupid fucking greggs, fruit shoot joke
anyone that posts using text speak/poor grammer
and so on...
posting in a way that mocks the way they speak
a vile thtread from someone I wont name about @chavs@ in her park

I am not tarring everyone with the same brush, but I think its rather sad that its seen as "ok" to disparage a certain group

OP posts:
pagwatch · 29/05/2010 13:18

I don't know

Imarriedafrog · 29/05/2010 13:19

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pagwatch · 29/05/2010 13:21

Oh don't woss out now frog. I think you can take her. Twang her hairband, it will distract her..

Imarriedafrog · 29/05/2010 13:25

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pagwatch · 29/05/2010 13:25
Goldenbear · 29/05/2010 13:31

Snobbery will always exist though as it works both ways, I.e reverse snobbery.

I don't think we live in a class less society as suggested on this thread, you only have to look at the credentials of the new government to realise that. On a personal level this is confirmed to me when I meet with my middleclass friends, at middleclass parks and discuss middleclass concerns.

I have been on the recieving end of reverse snobbery In a work place setting that was predominantly 'working class'. I was essentially bullied for being a student that came from a middleclass background, at one point I got shot at with my other student workmate by an air rifle. The whole factory bullied us, we were fair game because of our percieved 'class' so what you're describing is not only acceptable to one so called 'class' of people IME.

Imarriedafrog · 29/05/2010 13:35

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DinahRod · 29/05/2010 13:51

Middle-class is often used as an insult yet framed as aspirational. Working-class is often a waved as a badge of honour yet derided. If ppl want to get really antsy they speak about an 'underclass'. Greggs, headbands, fruit shoots, orange tans and piercings are MN hardy perennials.

Am always reminded of GB Shaw: "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."

ImSoNotTelling · 29/05/2010 13:57

Your GB shaw quote had me worried there for a min

til I realised that fortunately most of us are women and therefore exempt

BloomingFlowers · 29/05/2010 14:16

Pinkfizzle.

You've missed the point.

You can't keep a child in a bubble.

When they start school, all of their friends will have eaten McDonalds and eulogised.They will also collect/swap the crap toys.

The key is to accept it once in a while; but feed them the really good food at home.

That's the real education.

In reply to the OP and aside from Pinkfizzle's highjack.

I'm extremely judgemental of people that get their babies/toddlers' ears pierced.

It fills me with revulsion and I want to be sick.
I found vaccinations (which I considered to be traumatic, awful, but essential, to be horrific).

To make a hole in a baby/toddler for earrings leads me to the judgement call that I can't stand the Parents. Full stop.
It revolts me and fills me with horror.

foureleven · 29/05/2010 14:22

I havent read all of this so sorry if someone has already made the point that you cant really say that discriminating against someone because of their class is the same as racism...!

shortontime · 29/05/2010 14:45

WOW. I'm not sure I dare say anything here..but I will anyway. To pierce a baby's ears is a form of child abuse and I don't care how much you earn or what 'class' you call yourself it is still a loathsome thing to do.

pinkfizzle · 29/05/2010 14:53

Blooming flowers I agree you can not keep your child in a bubble - but this baby appeared to be very young. I do think that you can keep babies in a bubble of sorts.

hatesponge · 29/05/2010 14:54

ear piercing is certainly not child abuse - and frankly rather an insult to those who are victims of abuse to say what they have been through is on a par with having their ears pierced!

MillyR · 29/05/2010 14:57

OP, I sort of agree with you.

While I do not think that most of the things on your list are particularly working class - there isn't a type of person who goes to Greggs for example, I do think that if there is a thread about football shirts or similar, people on the thread will make negative remarks about the working class and are often not picked up on it.

If there was a thread about football shirts or similar and posters made nasty remarks associating them with black people, those posters would be flamed.

While racism is not equivalent to classism, there are some parallels. The claim earlier on this thread that we should only avoid prejudice if it is about something people can't avoid being (black, a woman, gay) is nonsensical in any contemporary understanding of racism, which is treated no differently from ethnic prejudice in international law. Ethnic prejudice can be mainly or solely based on cultures and customs not physical appearance. An example of mainly would be the Jews in Nazi Germany and an example of solely would be the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda.

Working class people are discriminated against as a class group (but not an ethnic group - it is parallel but not the same experience). Middle class people are not discriminated against. They may be individually victimised, like the poor poster earlier who was shot with an air gun, but this is not the same thing as the level of societal and institutional discrimination against working class people.

porcamiseria · 29/05/2010 15:12

thanks milly you put it alot more eloquantly than me!

OP posts:
BelleDameSansMerci · 29/05/2010 15:12

MillyR could you give some examples of the working classes being discriminated against? I had a very working class upbringing in that we had no money/latch-key kid and all that although my parents had very middle class values re education. I'm not aware of having been discriminated against for being working class but I am quite old (nearly 45) and things have changed somewhat.

I'd probably be considered middle class now, btw, although I don't do Boden

foureleven · 29/05/2010 15:21

I dont think class discrimination is as hurtful as racism because there isnt the history there. I dont think there was ever a time in history where chavs were shipped across the atlantic in appauling conditions with no food or water and forced in to slarery by the middle and upper classes...

Its just a few generalisations that are made i.e. working class people pierce their kids ears and play darts.. Its not disgrimination on a paralell with racism IMHO.

petisa · 29/05/2010 15:34

I didn't notice much in the way of middle-class superiority or sneering at working class people on the baby headbands thread. IMO it was just a light-hearted thread where people were saying how minging they thought they were. It's not just working class people who use them anyway.

I'm not making a value judgement based on class when I say big pink headbands with enormous bows on them are minging. I don't care if Sofia the Queen of Spain herself chooses to buy them for her granddaughters, imo they are horrible.

I think the same about McDonalds, HATE football, don't care if both were the latest high-class thing to watch/eat!

I had my dd's ears pierced when she was 10 months old, for cultural reasons, rather than aesthetic ones. yet I don't get offended any more when people go on about how disgusting and abusive it is. Becaue we all have opinions, likes and dislikes, which are not based necessarily on class. Probably the poster here who said piercing a baby's ears is abuse would still think so even if it was a very upper/middle-class thing to do in her culture, rather than something English people regard as something "chavs" do in Claire's. Or maybe not, I don't know.

KorkiiEffenkrakers · 29/05/2010 15:39

I don't like common folk, also find that yummy mummies are annoying too
spends a lot of time on her own...

petisa · 29/05/2010 15:40

Oh and I missed Blooming Flowers' post - she feels very strongly about piercing a baby's ears also. Doesn't it seem that she would still feel that way even if it was the norm in her culture for upper and middle class people to get their babies' ears pierced (as it is where I live)? I.e. it is a question of likes and dislikes, rather than class. Or would she be more accepting of it? What do you think BF?

BTW I'd be scared to meet you in real life with my dd and her pierced ears - you'd think I was a monster, not a mum, by the sounds of it! Me and every other parent here in this area of Spain!

HerBeatitude · 29/05/2010 16:01

"I dont think class discrimination is as hurtful as racism because there isnt the history there."

Um, yes, there is, only we're not taught the history.

Serfdom existed for hundreds of years in Europe, only the black plague really put paid to it as it led to a depopulation and therefore labour shortages, which meant that the rigid class distinctions couldn't be enforced anymore.

In the middle ages and right up to the industrial revolution, what colours, fabrics and style of garments you were allowed to wear, was dictated by your class.

There were regular forced migrations - eg the crofters in Scotland. Under Elizabethan poor laws, you could be transported to Virginia or sent to the galleys, if you were found to be a mendicant once too often. (And yes, the galleys were pretty much the same conditions that the transatlantic slaves endured. The difference was that technically, the sentence wasn't forever, but if you survived you were unusual.)

Working class people who rebelled, as in the Cornish rebellions under Henry VIII, were hanged en masse. Those who fought for the vote, were the subject of state brutality, eg the Peterloo massacre.

The industrial and agrarian revolutions meant working class rural communities being destroyed and moved to the cities where the average life expectancy was at one time, 27 years old for an urban man. Between 1914 and 1918, millions of working class men were simply butchered in the first world war as their lives meant absolutely nothing to those in charge.

That's just off the top of my head. No history? Really?

Tortington · 29/05/2010 16:05

herbieattitude - i think i'm in love with you

MillyR · 29/05/2010 16:10

Belle, sorry I am not ignoring you. I am work so should not be on MN.

I think examples of discrimination would be:

  1. Material. An example would be that now there is a shortage of NHS dentists, working class people are more likely to be unable to get access to a dentist. So they are materially discriminated against by a policy set up by Government institutions.
  1. Social. An example would be that there is discrimation in some institutions against people with regional accents. Working class people are more likely to have a regional accent.

I think it is obviously untrue that there is not a long history of discrimination against working class people - enclosure of common land, conditions in factories during the industrial revolution, no voting rights, trade unionists shipped to Australia, clearances of the Scottish Highlands and Northumbrian reiver areas, workhouses, Victorian child prostitution, Orgreave and so on.

Of course it is not the same thing as racism, and the Atlantic Slave trade is a unique event in the same way that the Holocaust is a unique event.

But people fighting for social justice often care about all forms of social justice and share campaigning methods and common goals. It is great if some people have no experience of discrimination. I experience very little sexism at work, but I know my experience is sadly not shared by every woman.

MillyR · 29/05/2010 16:10

Sorry HB, crossposts.

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