Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class?

[Serge Forward]

Tldr but if the authors didn't make reference to the urban proletariat and their peasant allies, then they can fuck right off.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Generally people like being liked. They also like thinking of themselves as being nice people. Can you be a truly nice person if you exploit others? Hmmmn. Maybe not. If you are middle class and are better off than others around you, can you still enjoy your undeserved bounty? Aha! Yes, of course you can. If you come from a working class background! (No more uncomfortable guilt. No more worries about street credibility)

 

[The Pale King]

I remember Grace Dent saying as a kid she was working class by saying we didn't have any books

I remember Robert Webb saying as a kid he was working class because his parents watched Blind Date

 

[seventh bullet]

Generally people like being liked. They also like thinking of themselves as being nice people. Can you be a truly nice person if you exploit others? Hmmmn. Maybe not. If you are middle class and are better off than others around you, can you still enjoy your undeserved bounty? Aha! Yes, of course you can. If you come from a working class background! (No more uncomfortable guilt. No more worries about street credibility)

I think I'd then dislike them even more tbh.

 

[kebabking]

I wonder if the 'are you working class?' answers are squewed by the person being questioned knowing that they only people who would ask such a question are tedious Class Warriors - probably with BO and spittle - who will harangue them if they reply 'no, probably not....'.

Much like the pub bore, these are people to be avoided if possible, and given the brush off if necessary....

Class is complex.

Class self-identity is another layer of complexity.

Reporting to others your Class identity is yet another complex layer on top of that.

 

[Raheem]

I remember Robert Webb saying as a kid he was working class because his parents watched Blind Date

I was about to chime in and say that I had an unambiguously working-class upringing and Blind Date was even beneath us. But, on reflection, we used to watch it every week and it's probably just that I felt it was beneath me.

 

[bimble]

All these little cultural signifiers (blind date, sovereign rings, sofa / settee, time you have your tea/supper/dinner), i feel like I’ll never fully get it and i think it’s because of being born into an immigrant family, who were totally clueless about the rules. The serious stuff, means of production and all that, is much easier to learn.

 

[andysays]

All these little cultural signifiers (blind date, sovereign rings, sofa / settee, time you have your tea/supper/dinner), i feel like I’ll never fully get it and i think it’s because of being born into an immigrant family, who were totally clueless about the rules. The serious stuff, means of production and all that, is much easier to learn.

Yeah, I think sometimes the importance of the "cultural capital" thing can be overstated.

You can have all the cultural capital you want, but if you have to get up every morning and go to work in a precarious low paid job over which you have more or less zero control, you're working class.

Even if your job isn't that precarious or low paid, even if you even have at little bit of control over it, you're still working class, however you pronounce the word "bath" and whatever you call or what time of day you eat your main meal of the day.

 

[Winot]

Cultural signifiers can be learned and faked really easily if you want to present as other.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Cultural signifiers can be learned and faked really easily if you want to present as other.

And is quite widespread according to the reports findings about class tourism/performative practise

 

[planetgeli]

I don't even know my relationship to the means of production.

^There's probably a test online somewhere.

If you feel the need to identify with being working class, you're probably not working class. It's not a feeling ffs.

 

[andysays]

But presenting as other or engaging in class tourism/performative practice doesn't actually change your relationship with the means of production, which is why I think the significance of "cultural capital" can be overstated

 

[Brainaddict]

Yeah, I think sometimes the importance of the "cultural capital" thing can be overstated.

You can have all the cultural capital you want, but if you have to get up every morning and go to work in a precarious low paid job over which you have more or less zero control, you're working class.

Even if your job isn't that precarious or low paid, even if you even have at little bit of control over it, you're still working class, however you pronounce the word "bath" and whatever you call or what time of day you eat your main meal of the day.

Yes but I don't think it's just about your salary. What often gets underplayed in this conversation is asset ownership. If you own your house in a non-precarious way it does change your class position because of your increased stability and the potential access to cash on a rainy day. Thatcher knew what she was doing. If you own assets beyond your own house that give you some income (even if only a few thousand a year) then you are again in another class position. You can own some quite big assets but be on a fairly low income and dependent on that income - it's not an unusual position. It's a very different position from someone on low income and no assets.

And I would include having a good pension beyond the state pension to be significant asset ownership.

 

[mojo pixy]

Certainly if you're earning minimum wage or close to it, doing a low-status job where you could be replaced tomorrow, you're Working Class however you 'identify'. I know people I've worked with who have denied they're WC because they think it's something not to admit to (not to mention family members...) Personally I used to think anyone who loudly self-identified as WC probably wasn't, mainly because I thought it was a crap thing to be so why would anyone want to draw attention to it? But I recognize there is a cachet in being able to demonstrate an authentic 'WC background' to MC strivers (especially in an academic or business context).

I was told years ago by some random that if you have a degree that automatically makes you MC, and then because I've always been able to talk well i've always been called posh when I'm really, really not. It is a good disguise though. Appropriating social capital one has never earned or owned. I'm amused when I notice people doing this 'downward' as if there really is social capital in being WC, outside of MC fantasy.

Anyway just wanted to chime in. Graduates doing minimum wage work .. self-employed during the night but minimum wage during the day .. bastard classes proliferate, no wonder there's little agreement on class.

 

[discokermit]

Cultural signifiers can be learned and faked really easily if you want to present as other.

no they cant. or rather they can if you want to present to other middle class people who are more clueless than you. but not to working class people.
for a start, if you are middle class, how do you know what the cultural signifiers are to working class people?

 

[seventh bullet]

I wonder if the 'are you working class?' answers are squewed by the person being questioned knowing that they only people who would ask such a question are tedious Class Warriors - probably with BO and spittle - who will harangue them if they reply 'no, probably not....'.

Much like the pub bore, these are people to be avoided if possible, and given the brush off if necessary....

Class is complex.

Class self-identity is another layer of complexity.

Reporting to others your Class identity is yet another complex layer on top of that.

Nah, 'Class Warrior' is a crap insult. It's as if the person using it to dismiss someone is wanting to avoid something about themselves.

 

[cloudyday]

thinking about cultural capital, is it not just reformist currency for the academics, that siloed lot cut off from the substrate? old fashioned prejudices dressed up in modern parlance.

 

[bimble]

Cultural signifiers can be learned and faked really easily if you want to present as other.

They can also be just gotten wrong, out of ignorance. My dad, high level & relatively well paid classical musician, loved his fat sovereign ring & kept the plastic sheeting on the new leather sofa for ages but those were neither fake nor meaningful symbols i don’t think, because he (immigrant from then-communist country) had no reference points for those things in English culture, same with linguistic nuances (napkin / serviette??) they don’t work so well as markers when it’s your 2nd or 3rd language.
When I was about 8 I came home from school and asked him what class we were and he said middle middle (double middle). I think he was trying to help me integrate.

 

[chilango]

But presenting as other or engaging in class tourism/performative practice doesn't actually change your relationship with the means of production, which is why I think the significance of "cultural capital" can be overstated

Also you can spot a faker a mile off.

Cultural capital isn't dress up.

 

[chilango]

thinking about cultural capital, is it not just reformist currency for the academics, that siloed lot cut off from the substrate? old fashioned prejudices dressed up in modern parlance.

No.

 

[mojo pixy]

Cultural capital isn't dress up.

This is so fucking important, because class (and I think what we're calling here 'cultural capital') is much about assumptions and attitudes towards yourself and your relationship with society. Do you assume you will be listened to if you speak, or do expect to be ignored - or sanctioned? Do you feel things you try to do will be supported and encouraged, or do you expect to be told not to bother? Do you expect to 'get ahead' in your job, do you expect progression because you feel you deserve it, or do you expect to just slog along because it's what your mum, dad, granny, grandad did? Do you expect to struggle from one month to the next, or do you expect a regular, livable income so that when hard times strike you find it easy to promote yourself and your skills? Do you have a range of marketable skills, or have you had no time / support to develop more than the one or two skills you live from?

etc.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

no they cant. or rather they can if you want to present to other middle class people who are more clueless than you. but not to working class people.
for a start, if you are middle class, how do you know what the cultural signifiers are to working class people?

They can. We know it’s shit, that’s definitely true. But it’s not us who the performance is for.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Great post mojo pixy

 

[Steel Icarus]

^There's probably a test online somewhere.

If you feel the need to identify with being working class, you're probably not working class. It's not a feeling ffs.

It was a joke. Why are you getting irate?
To me it IS a feeling. Where you belong and where you fit. I went to my oldest mates wedding a few years ago and felt like everyone there knew how to behave, what to do, how to talk pleasantries and platitudes. Like a code I hadn't found out about.

 

[mojo pixy]

Great post mojo pixy

It was mentioned on another thread that WC kids don't as a rule tend to form bands, and that crystallized for me a thought that's been growing for years, about what it really means to be working class as a musician. That world is closed to you, there will always be someone with more money for gear, more and better words from articulate, educated parents, more expensive equipment or a course at theatre school, a better book or record collection, more time to practise .. and always someone else who expects to be listened to, expects the gig, expects the attention. So why bother?

Just get a job.

There's no 'social capital' there, not as i understand the term.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

I'm on £12.35 an hour working an unskilled job in a supermarket, lol.



No. Not in my anecdotal experience in how responsibility is distributed and the status and reward given, anyway. Such roles are so much part of the routine workforce now it appears to be inaccurate to describe such people as 'proper managers,' at least in my line of work and our relationship with people on the shop floor. It is often collaborative, and the cultural aspects of shared class experience and backgrounds does help in that. For potential organisation they aren't the definite 'enemy,'

They have little in the way of significant power over people who are, in my eyes, only lower down the pecking order because the 'team leader' is standing on their tiptoes. I have noticed the gradual downgrading and dilution of management positions over the years with lower pay. I have noticed this happening simultaneously with the well-paid, higher status management roles that remain being fewer as well as being harder to access via the shop-floor route. It's more 'professionalised' now.

Also a great post. You’ve definitely identified two significant class signifier shifts.

The lower echelons of management - in manufacturing and services - have definitely suffered a significant loss of pay, status and most critically a loss of the ability to manage (normally mediated with the union steward where there is one) the pace and organisation of work.

At the same time the route from the shopfloor- via the lower management rung - into the intermediate and higher ranks has been choked off, as you put it professionalised. Those recruited into those ranks are normally recruited from outside the organisation.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

It was mentioned on another thread that WC kids don't as a rule tend to form bands, and that crystallized for me a thought that's been growing for years, about what it really means to be working class as a musician. That world is closed to you, there will always be someone with more money for gear, more and better words from articulate, educated parents, more expensive equipment or a course at theatre school, a better book or record collection, more time to practise .. and always someone else who expects to be listened to, expects the gig, expects the attention. So why bother?

That’s true, but also also a relatively recent development.

When you think back, as Raymond Williams once wrote, ‘culture is ordinary’.... The decomposition of working class communities as centres of cultural production needs to be understood in the context of the decline of independent working class politics, communal mass organisations and a class capable of placing demands upon capital and winning them.

The aim once wasn’t to break into middle class culture. It as to replace it with one more rich and more dynamic. When was the last working class band that achieved sucesss on those terms?? The Manics maybe?

 

[planetgeli]

It was a joke. Why are you getting irate?
To me it IS a feeling. Where you belong and where you fit. I went to my oldest mates wedding a few years ago and felt like everyone there knew how to behave, what to do, how to talk pleasantries and platitudes. Like a code I hadn't found out about.

I wasn't irate Si. Only the first sentence was a reply to you. It was a joke back. It's why I used the ^ on that line.

 

[Serge Forward]

Q: Do you identify as working class?
A: 'Identify? Identify?!?!' Class is not a fucking identity, you prick. It's a social and economic relationship.

 

[weltweit]

I lived in Germany for 6 months, I didn't learn enough to pick up class signals from people there. Here there would be no point in my trying to be anything I am not, from a social perspective I am middle class.