Class, does it matter?

[minimathsmouse]

We hear a lot about class but do we really unpack it and analyse it? We hear lots of terms such as the political class, working class, sex class, upper class, are we happy when we can categorise people, do we make assumptions and hold prejudices about people and class, do we feel more secure when we know where we are in the social pecking order?

Do we have allegiances to class, are we really attached to the idea because we are sentimental and class lines move but our perceptions haven't. Or is that the other way around, we think they have moved but in fact the same prejudice and antagonism is still bubbling below the surface?

Is it the last frontier in discrimination. Could we even tell if class discrimination actually does effect people in similar ways such as women's oppression or racism or other forms of discrimination.

Do we live in a meritocracy where class is no longer an issue?

What would society be like without class?

i am an inbetweener. my parents were born in the North WC but entrepreneurial. i sound fairly posh but like people who are eccentric and find some MC people too conventional for me. i am a bit rough around the edges and tent to shock/scare people who are too straight and narrow .

the WC part of my family call me 'The Whizz Kid', like i am something different, but the only difference i can see is a better quality education and self belief.

I've been reading a lot of tosh that the upper class are really nice and the middle class are judgmental.

The upper class still rule the banks, own the land, control politics and basically get whatever they want. They cherry-pick - would make me nice, no axe to grind at all if life opened those doors for me. However, try sharing their power? Won't happen. Unless you become an honourary outsider

"The middle classes are bastards, they judge others insulting people based on accents and what they wear etc " Well, that just about sums up how it isn't only the middle classes who can be judgmental - unless the definition of a middle class person is someone of any background, degree of wealth or line of work who happens to be nasty and rude about huge swathes of people they have never met.

"I've been reading a lot of tosh that the upper class are really nice" people

I think individuals and groups are very different things. How individuals behave can be different to how that class behaves or indeed just as unaware or even happy about the privilege they have gained over centuries.

The ruling class, the upper class or bourgeois whatever term we use, do have privilege and power and they have many advantages over the rest of us but as individuals we can no more blame them for their position in life as we can blame person from the working classes for their position at birth.

Dear Mouse,
My point is, it is easy to be nice if life has not given you many kicks but silver spoon privilege. Individuals with less grief have more of a chance to be considerate.

En masse, happy powerful people become blood thirsty when they may be toppled from their assumed superiority.

'Individuals with less grief have more of a chance to be considerate.'

I don't think that is right. People who have suffered are usually more considerate and understanding and can empathise with others' suffering and weaknesses.

Upper class people suffer tragedies and have weaknesses just like everyone else.

'The middle classes are bastards'

That sounds like the type of thing that one or two New Labour types might say. The sort of people who look down on Middle England, the middle classes and the Daily Mail.

"I don't think that is right. People who have suffered are usually more considerate and understanding and can empathise with others' suffering and weaknesses." Sometimes this is true but poverty does not usually bring out the best in people. The opposite can also be true - there is a story that Hitler was humiliated with corporal punishment by his mixed race, half jewish father. Alice Miller's (psychologist) theory. Not everyone learns through suffering , they want sub-conscious revenge instead! Getting a bit deep now!

All classes of people can be nice but it is easier to have compassion and gentility when you have less strife. Most upper class youths were not rioting in the summer and it became front page news when a wealthy, middle class girl was involved.

One of the things I have pondered recently is how has social mobility impacted upon working class communities. During the baby boomer revolution :) it would seem that through the grammar schools many kid's got a better education than their parents. Many working class kids for the first time went into higher education and many moved away from their communities. This must have devastated the communities? what I am trying to get at, is did this help their communities or did this start to break them apart?

Several old black and white films from my childhood and having interviewed some elderly people (don't ask?) make me think that working class communities where generations of the same family lived in the same street, where people knew their neighbours and all the kids played together, were safer and happier than what we seem to have now.

How did that face get in there?

Yes, some people who suffer can be like that.
I don't think that Hitler's father was half Jewish.

But, usually those who have everything on a plate cannot identify with those who don't. They are "out of touch", because they are not "in it together" with the rest. It can lead to arrogance and hubris and is why Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Social mobility has declined since grammar schools were scrapped, and now we see the cabinet and shadow cabinet full of more public school boys and girls than was the case 40 years ago.

The class thing is to keep people in their place, to let them be happier in their two up, two downs in poor neighbourhoods. To hold people back and stop them challenging the elite.

Most European countries and Asian countries and America do not have teh rigid class stratification that we have, where many working class people think that the middle clases are "bastards" and that they wish to remain in teh working class. Most dynamic societies that are real meritocracies and that provide social mobility put no limits on working class children, don't brainwash them about limitations, but offer them good education and a way out of poverty.

That is why we have the phenomenon of Tiger Mums who are not prepared to accept second best and wish to achieve social mobility through hard work and education.

The holding back of the working class is done subtly, where the worling class culture teaches the young that it is not cool to learn and be smart, that it is being a geek or a swot. You see this type of culture where footballers are mocked if they read the Guardian, because the rest don't read papers like that. It is a subtle groupthink that limits the horizons of the working class and sells them the lie that they are not meant for higher things, that they should be happy with what they have.

And even though people say that they want to change things, you still find that large numbers of BBC staff, or Guardian staff or MPs went to Oxford or Cambridge.

I have friends from very different backgrounds and I can see their lives and attitudes are very different especially in relation to family and place.

One friend, a working class single mother (victim of DV) was offered the opportunity to move away to prevent the ex from finding her. He is dangerous and she asked me what I would do. I said move, to Wales if need be but move. She said she wanted to stay where she knew people and she felt safe despite the fact she was if anything very unsafe. She then had to attend a meeting in london. "can you come with me" I asked her why, it's less than 60 miles away! "I have never been to London, I wouldn't know how to get there."

It seems to me that working class people often choose to stay in their communities and lack the confidence to do otherwise. Even when a whole area is decimated and laid to waste when a large factory closes meaning few employment opportunities and a decline in the whole area. People say they want to stay where their support networks are.

Yes, that is understandable, but it is also indicative of a culture of a lack of opportunity with few role models in their families that moved. It is an education system that limited horizons rather than broadening them and showing people the opportunities available.

Contrast the lack of ambition with the ambition of working class Tiger Mums.

However, there are lots of working class people who do move and go to college and are ambitious. But on teh other hand there is also a cultural element that sees teh middle classes as bastards and that sees people as them and us.

mini - grammar schools didn't break working class communities apart because very, very few working class children got into grammar schools. They were a way out for only a handful. Even if you did pass the 11+, often families couldn't afford the uniform, or couldn't afford to have a child staying on at school instead of going out and earning at 15 or 16.

We need to ensure every child has the chance of a decent education, not create a system that works for the sharp-elbowed middle classes and picks up a few odd working class kids along the way.

I agree with edam - I should know I work in one!

I also agree with Claig - I am a rare success story coming from a v. working class family, now feeling very middle class and no I did not go to a grammar school. I personally enjoy what I feel middle class life styles are about. My cousins, all way richer than me still enjoy a very working class life style. It is not just money - it is about culture.

I don't think Grammar schools broke working class communities apart, I am just batting ideas about

Another thing I have been dwelling on, is this soundbite from Ian Duncan Smith "Get on your bike"

It seems that areas with few employment opportunities are likely to remain that way through a redrawing of the social and geographical map of the uk. So Maggie broke the unions and decimated working class communities, this government now point the finger and partition blame on those people. The factories, steel works and mines close and the whole area goes into a downward spiral having effected not just a whole generation but subsequent generations too.

So are Tories inclined to think that working class people are responsible for lack of their own opportunities for advancement or employment?

We have social cleansing in some areas where land prices are high (house prices are just relative to land prices) with unemployed or poorly paid workers having to move to cheaper areas. This is happening through a variety of means and due to more than just policy over housing benefit.

We have a government witch is redrawing the physical landscape along class lines. Lower pay for civil servants in cheaper parts of the country, eroding national pay bargaining and union power. Again, just as before under a conservative government. Surely this will not lead to social mobility.

which obv not witch

I'm not sure the Tiger mums we have been seeing and reading about in the media are really working class so I dont think the comparison holds water

They may have more working class jobs here in this country because their qualifications and degrees might not necessarily be recognised in this country but educating a child in S.E. Asia is extremely expensive and is undertaken predominatly by the middle classes of these countries.

The Chinese have always used education as a means of escaping the fields but most Chinese people i've met are very class consicous. On meeting lots of my DH's chinese family and family friends they would interrogate me on my background, what my father did for a living and how much he earned, did we live in a house, drive a car etc, etc and after travelling lots in S.E Asia I see less of a meritocratic system than we have here.

The Tories look down on the working classes, because in their view anyone who wants to get a job rather than run their own business and be the employer is clearly inadequate in some way.

Good points, baking addict.
I don't know enough about Asian societies. But I think that in America or Germany there is more belief that social mobility and meritocracy can be achieved.

In America I saw extreme poverty. In Germany I saw extreme racism. Societies do seem to try and freeze people out.

Less divisions in wealth seems to be where these divisions do not matter so much - be it class, wealth or cultural identity.

I think that should read fewer divisions - but you get my gist!

the group of people who are most socially mobile in the UK today are those of Asian or Chinese descent. They may have no money but they are ambitious, set high expectations and understand the value of education.

Cogito, they are not socially mobile, they are nominal money mobile. They already arrived as middle class (developing country edition). In the countries with poor population you need to be already well above the middle to afford teaching your child a) English b) profession to get to the UK. Even refugees were some form of middle class in their countries of origin, since they had resources to flee.
Generally, emigration moves you a couple of steps down on social ladder. The mobility you observe is just a recovering of external signs of their position to the level of inner feeling of entitlement.

Bakingaddict, comparison of countries is a tricky thing, and we need to make sure that we compare like with like.

First, it should not be an abstract "Asian country" or "African country" or "European country", there is no such thing. Singapore is not quite similar to Vietnam, and Thailand is not the same thing as Laos.
Second, we can not compare UK with countries were aristocracy was physically exterminated during various social disasters. Yes, that opened doors of power for talented people of different backgrounds and taught society that you do not need a pompous ancestry to succeed. But no country can pay such price for meritocracy.
Third, social mobility is not a homogeneous thing either. There is social mobility for the poor (bottom -> middle) and for the not so poor (middle -> upper). And it can be amazingly different for different countries. Say, in the US the very top becomes cemented (there is less social mobility that in the UK's top), while at the bottom the US is still quite a country of opportunities.