Class analysis...

[BertrandRussell]

Why do people find it so difficult? Am I being too simplistic and missing something?
White people as a class have more power than black people as a class.. Men as a class are more violent than women as a class. Is there anything controversial there?

I wonder if it's because it can feel uncomfortable to realise you are in a more powerful class. People do anything to avoid unpleasant feelings.

Some people can't think abstractly also

People don't like being "slagged off" and if you are criticising (don't know if that's the right word) the "class" that they belong to they get defensive. I don't think that's too difficult to understand.

Feminists as a class talk down to and belittle women who don't agree with them.

Because classes are made of people, and often class analysis is used as a thinly veiled cover to attack the individual.

Some people have never really spent time thinking about things in this way (lack of education)

Some people genuinely don't get it (lack of intelligence)

Some people don't want to accept what you're saying is true as it doesn't suit them and don't actually care that much about what's true - what they believe is more important (thinking, for example, of people who have convinced themselves transwomen are the most oppressed group. Their political beliefs are more important to them than observable truth).

What changeypants said

Part of it may be egocentricity. If someone says something negative about a class I belong to, I suspect I may sometimes be liable to take it personally emotionally before I start to think about it dispassionately.

Because we're in the middle of a neoliberal takeover and nothing exists outside self reverence, so there are no classes to analyse?

I am a teensy bit freaked out that we are still on the first page and someone has already demonstrated that they do not know how "class" is defined.

I think you have to define class analysis and class, BertrandRussell, because the education system has been letting people down for at least two generations.

I wouldn’t define a socio-economic class of people by the colour of their skin.

I think grouping people as ‘black’ or ‘white’ and plotting them on a scale of power relations is an inadequate explanation for the gap between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’

But I do get that being black and of low socio- economic status is tougher than being white.

I've been wondering if it would be productive to use a known symbol - brackets - to denote a class.

I only really understand class as a result of history and sociology reading and a lot of that was Marxist analysis. Which seems to unfashionable these days

Because current identity politics is simple - you put everyone in a little box and rank them on a totem pole of worthiness and victimhood.

Class analysis requires looking at more than just the class, but also at how that interacts with society at large and other classes. Was it you on the other thread who made the analogy with poor white boys performing badly at school in Sunderland? They have white privilege but they are also poor, and disadvantaged by social class (the other type of class) and that white advantage isn’t big enough in that specific context to overcome the disadvantages of the class of poverty.

In short, identity politics is much easier, requires no critical thought and allows an instant warm glow of victimhood and being right.

Also good luck trying to get some of the men on here to acknowledge that men as a class are violent. You’ve more chance of winning the lotto.

Because not everyone is interested or has the aptitude for social science.

Here is the paper on Intersectionality. It is US centric because that was the circumstance of the discrimination against the woman she was faced with at the time.
www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mapping-margins.pdf

The fact is that racial tribalism is not unique to the US, so it is an useful analysis elsewhere. There is only the one human race but the tribalism intersects with socioeconomic class everywhere.

Because not everyone is interested or has the aptitude for social science

I’m a science (molecules and whatnot) scientist so while I’m interested I’m aware this is not my field at all and that my understanding is limited.

I am interested though, because the more I read about the issues that affect women in general the more I want to understand about the politics, sociology etc. I think it’s inportant.,

Identity politics does provide a warm virtuous glow for any student who wants to set working class people right on where they are on the totem pole of victimhood.

I feel we are forgetting the history of the working class people of the British isles. How they fought for pay, for suffrage, how they suffered and starved and how the industrial revolution was forged on the backs of working class men, women and children.

And even that may well be considered a right wing point of view these days

"White people as a class have more power than black people as a class."

Judge people as individuals not as members of their group identity. Your statement isn't true for every white person at an individual level.

So do I Bowlofbabelfish - but a lot of people don't.

Judge people as individuals not as members of their group identity. Your statement isn't true for every white person at an individual level.

This is class analysis, not pomo everyone is an individual and so there can be no class analysis.
You can look up the term outlier, fms, if you want to understand what we are talking about.

Your statement isn't true for every white person at an individual level.

Class analysis doesn’t say it is. At all. That’s why the phrase ‘as a class’ is used and why #namalt makes people roll their eyes. You’re missing the point. Even I know that, and my level of sociology is pretty basic.

Judge people as individuals not as members of their group identity.

How can you possibly do an analysis of society, trends, patterns, predictions, likelihoods, etc, etc, if you only look at myriad individuals?

But there are vast post industrial areas in the uk where the population is overwhelmingly white - and people are impoverished, there are no jobs, grass grows between the paving slabs in the high street.

What does identity politics have for them?

What does identity politics have for them?

Someone to blame.