What social class am i? :/

[user1499695642]

This is something that really bothers me. I feel like i'm slipping and not following my parents' example.

I wish class didn't but I've been made to feel out of place before. What social class would you guys say I 'fit into'? I know it's shallow to ask, please don't judge me for asking. I'd just like to know what you guys think based on some info.

Age: 23
Ethnicity: Mixed race
Occupation: Graduate officer in local government
Salary: £20K
Live: With parents in (owned) 4 bed detached house in home counties (average price in village - £1.5m)
Parents: Civil Service Director/Housewife - just one went to (Russell Group) Uni
Education: Non-selective, comprehensive academy then Oxbridge (2.1 (2015))
Accent: More standard south-eastern than 'posh' (e.g. Joanna Lumley)
Hobbies: Museums, art galleries, theatre, TV
Social: I only made a couple friends at uni so my social group is very small. I only know 1 or 2 people in influential/ 'elite' professions

Am I middle class or does the following make me working class?:
Non-private/grammar education
Low salary/career sector
Non-house ownership
Social group
Accent

Does my parent's social class affect mine a lot or not so much?

Again, please don't judge me for asking. I'm genuinely just curious to know what others might think.

As someone who is utterly mulched-class in quite a stark way, I would say class really doesn't matter.

(Unless you're a particular type of middle-class, and then you think of nothing else. In which case, fuck you and your silly parochial views).

Tick your choices:

Lavatory or Loo Toilet
Napkin Serviette
Sofa Settee
Midday meal:
Lunch Dinner
Main evening meal:
Dinner Tea
Looking glass Mirror
Scent Perfume
Spectacles Glasses
What? Pardon?
Pudding Sweet

If you chose the words predominantly in the left hand column, you are middle class - right hand column = working class

And at the end of the day, why do you care?

It was interesting that Blairism was all about meritocracy which the Blairites loved, but was difficult to actually achieve as this country was still so hidebound by class. His was nothing more than a middle-class revolution.

I much preferred Thatcher's way of shaking up the established order by giving the 'working-classes' a stake in the country through home-ownership, education and pride.

Of course, the wheel turns and now we have Corbynism, where the former working-class who pulled their families up to the vaunted golden hillsides of the MC are now villified, yet again, by the apparent intelligentsia and told to fuck off back in their boxes.

ILikeyourHairyHands

Without wanting to get too political, i'd find it interesting to know what Thatcher did for the working classes in terms of education and pride?

I thought by making the 'working classes' unemployed (e.g. closing the mines), she reduced pride? I understand the debate around grammar schools is complex, but I thought closing them (as she did) made it harder for some working-class kids (e.g. Dianne Abbot) to excel academically? Also, doesn't the right-to-buy make it harder for the 'working classes' generally with a reduced social housing stock? A few profit (and experience home-owning pride) at the expense of many...

I'm not saying you aren't right (I didn't read politics at uni and am ignorant regarding Thatcherism at large). I'd be interested in hearing your view though. I'd like to be better informed

Also - RortyClankle - Looking Glass, Spectacles and Scent?! No one my age uses these terms! I'm 23, not 83!

I much preferred Thatcher's way of shaking up the established order by giving the 'working-classes' a stake in the country through home-ownership, education and pride.

By getting elected by tapping into worries about unemployment ('Labour Isn't Working') but then promptly driving it sharply up with cutthroat unregulated capitalism, with the effect being felt disproportionately by working-class communities? By her Right to Buy policy directly contributing to a shortage of council housing and homelessness? By her dismantling of nationalised industries? Her utter contempt for the poor?

As the Orgreave miners exactly what kind of an impact Thatcher's policies had on their lives...

I'm middle class but I can't imagine my working class brother has spent more than an instant wondering what class he is.

Now, I don't get this. How are you a different clas to your brother?! Does that simply imply you married well!?

*'...it's just not possible to be a posh Scottish person.'
*
The push Scottish people speak in an upper class English accent not a Scottish accent I think.

Working class I'd say like the best of us :-)

Joanna Lumley is super posh !

Ha Haworthy Labour most certainly wasn't working in 1979, the country was a mess.

Thatcher didn't have contempt for the poor, she certainly had contempt for those that wanted to keep the status quo and protect their best interests at the expense of every other fucker. For those that would have quite happily dragged the country down on the alter of ideology.

I certainly do remember the miners, I'm from South Yorkshire.

What I've noticed as I get older is that as soon as many working-class upstarts begin to get ideas, the intellectual elite lurch sharply to the left (but generally only leftist policies that would benefit them directly), because right-wing politics are about self-determination and if applied sensibly, do actually allow the most number of people to benefit.

But the left hate that (they really do, despite What they say), so they then go in the offensive and batter down those who have dared to stick their head above the parapet as 'stupid' and 'uncaring', despite the fact these are the very people that have been socially elevated by progressive politics.

And thus the wheel continues to turn.

Yes, right wing politics works so well that inequality in society is more stark than ever. And this is after 7 years of Tory rule.

So much nonsense, hairyhands

People seem baffled that siblings, me and my brother, can end up in different classes.

It's pretty straightforward. I view my class as the world I inhabit and am most comfortable in as a university educated professional surrounded by the trappings of a middle class life, doing middle class activities, living in a nice house in a very nice part of the Home Counties where I came to enjoy the prosperity my education and training have given me access to.

My brother living in one of the most deprived parts of the country working in a working class job so bona fide it could appear in a Monty Python sketch with no education lives in a different world to me. If he saw how I lived and acted in its true poncy glory he would probably be laughing for a week.

But I haven't tried to change. I'm not putting on an act. I'm just following my tastes according to the opportunities that have become available.

I would view it as pretentious in the extreme to claim I was still working class while sipping my Earl Grey tea with Radio 3 on in the background planning my next trip out to a literary festival and feeling pleased that I can afford to stay in a boutique B&B very close by.

It's actually five years of coallition and two years of Tory Harry, much of which has been consumed by Brexit.

I have to say, anyone claiming that the Tories are the natural party of government and how the country, and the economic wellbeing of its inhabitants, is safe in their hands, having seen 2010 to 2017, deserves mocking scorn.

And before anyone says "who crashed the economy?" it doesn't change the past 7 years. Cameron and his effortless leadership, my arse.

So it's the Lib Dems fault the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, hairyhands?

Righto.

And before anyone says "who crashed the economy?" it doesn't change the past 7 years. Cameron and his effortless leadership, my arse.

Tell me there are not Tories out there who actually believe Labour crashed the economy? Jesus wept.

Oh goodness, I've started a political debate!

Hairyhands, you didn't really answer my question.

I'd genuinely like to know what you meant in your original statement. What policies gave the 'working-classes' a stake in the country through home-ownership, education and pride?

I understand what you mean nauticant. I believe what you said makes total sense. I like your reference to the world one inhabits - I think that is a good way to look at class.

Obviously it makes sense to me. And by inhabits I don't just mean where one is situated but also mean what one is a part of in day to day life.

(Whenever I go "home" and am saying a sentence that's inevitably heading towards using "one" as a pronoun I feel my personality start to split in two.)

OP, can I ask why you are interested in other's views of your class status? Apologies if you have previously answered this.

Sorry Jas, what Thatcher realised when it came to Grammars was that it just became selective education for the middle class, so yet again, the middle class ended up being the only people profiting from an apparently progressive policy. So she disbanded it and introduced autonomy for schools. Which is a progressive policy.

The right to buy actually empowered many of the WC to own homes, which is a powerful tool when it comes to self-determination. Once we have a stake, a physical stake in the land in which we live, we are no longer at the auspices of any overlord who happens to be in power. The individual had ownership, the individual has interest, the individual has power.

This is why Marxism and all leftist tennets have personal property as theft or illegitimate, because personal property gives a person a little bit of the earth to fight for, the political becomes the personal, and that is powerful.

OP you are, to me, totally middle class.

I'm born and brought up working class. But somewhere along the line I became middle - I own a home, earn good money, work in the media ffs. Children and husband say "gar-aje" rather than garige. All things being well my kids will get a nice little nest egg to help buy a home when they have left uni and I will retire to France, write and drink wine. This is down to a mixture of real hard graft and much luck. I'm under no illusion that things could be very different.

My life is so far removed from anything I could have ever have imagined as I grew up living on a sink estate with dirt poor parents. Until I was in my early twenties I didn't know a single person who owned their own home. It never bothered me.

I'm the only person out of my work colleagues without a degree and who went to a rough as you get London comp. So wrong. The media needs more people like me. I still have an accent, which could be considered common by some.

I'm staunch Labour, love Corbyn and despair at the inequality in this country. I hate the way poorer people are encouraged to be scapegoated and despised by the wealthy today. I'm horrified that social housing has become a byword for slum dwellings and anti-social behaviour in certain circles. I recently watched "Dispossession" and cried angry tears. And then wept furiously when, during the Q&A afterwards, my sister told of her life using food banks and living in a privately rented shit hole. She never told anyone, she was too embarrassed.

I want a more equal country where health, education, water and transport are never for profit. I may appear middle class but more and more I feel working class in my blood.

Bit ranty that. Sorry. The world is currently making me VERY ranty. Perhaps that shows my class. Good.

You live with your parents, you're in a low paid job... I say you're cultured working class. Give it a few years though, if you are able to get on the housing ladder and make your degree work for you a bit more you'll be middle class no sweat.

Your parents sound middle class as fuck.

I lived in a big 4 bed detached house in the south growing up, I used to consider myself middle class. Now I own myself a small 3bed terraced house and I earn just below the national average, working class it is for me... Not that it counts for much these days.

HarryElephante

It's hard to pinpoint a specific reason. It's not something I think about too seriously.

I mentioned that I had been made to feel 'out of place' by others . I suppose, sometimes I feel - when I meet people from a similar or more privileged background - that I may occupy a social class "beneath" them or that set by my parents. Similarly, people at work (and on here!) seem surprised with my career choice. It didn't seem that odd a choice to me but it appears so for others.

This is, of course, boils down to comparing myself with others and giving other peoples' opinions too much thought.

I'm a total hybrid...

Father from very WC background, but very intelligent and he got into grammar school. Mother from lower MC background, and met my father at grammar school.

Until I was about 10, we didn't have much money, but my Mum provided a veneer of class/culture.

Then my father secured a huge promotion, became an executive and suddenly we were very nouveau riche. Moved to big, detached house on a naice estate and I got sent to private school. Shiny new cars on the drive and foreign holidays galore.

At school my new friends were mainly from vair MC backgrounds...my new BF's father was a local vicar, another friend's mother was a surgeon etc, etc. So there were weekends when I could find myself having supper with a consultant surgeon...then the very next day having tea at my (very WC) grandparents.

So, I was a very adept social chameleon I don't speak with RP, but I am more articulate than most.

Fast forward 25 years and I would say that DH and I have achieved a pseudo middle-class-dom, as we have degrees + large period home in naice village + social circle comprised of graduate professionals (my BF's parents own a largish chunk of Derbyshire)...but our WC roots are only a breath away.

Whereas our DDs are properly middle class...all girls' grammar school + tennis club membership + theatre visits + speak with RP + all their friends have professional parents + they take ski-ing breaks and holidays in Tuscany for granted...and DD1 wants to do Fine Art at university and DD2 wants to do medicine.

I can't believe people thing that
earning £20k as a graduate local government officer equates to being working class! Yes it's a below average salary but it's not low pay, it's above the (real) Living Wage, it's a pretty decent salary for someone aged just 23, and part of the deal is getting high quality training that will no doubt lead directly to a better paid job. Graduate schemes in local government are like gold dust these days and OP has done very well
for themselves by getting on it. Everything about you screams middle class to me OP but I'm not sure why you care. I wonder if you felt like a fish out of water at uni with lots of UMC/UC people around and it's still bothering you a bit?