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

[fucthest8]

Do you put your crisps in a bowl

Do you know what to do with an avocado

 

[ska invita]

Also something else. Something like an internalized, conditioned sense of social worthlessness. Best expressed as low expectations. So whatever social capital you may otherwise have (looks, brains, skill etc) you may not be in a position to capitalize (pun intended) on it, because your expectations just aren't high enough.

...i relate to that ...having expectations at all even

another shocking thing i found from watching the seven up series was the seven year old upper class kids knowing what precise schools they will go on to, what university they would go to, and possible even with ideas about what work they would do after - certainly they thought about post-university careers by 14. Expectations discussed and planned from such a young age

other working class kids in the show didnt know the word university, or for example didnt think grammar schools were for them.
on a personal level even as i was getting to finish a levels no one from family or school talked to me about university or aspirations , and if id been asked i wouldnt have an opinion as never thought about it. meanwhile at eton they're teaching 11 year old kids how to supress a riot by calling on the army. Obvious point but its two different worlds in terms of expectations. I guess family plays a big part here, but schools do nothing to get involved IME, apart from a pointless careers advice session for half an hour as you're about to leave.

 

[Raheem]

Do you know what to do with an avocado

Hide it under your flat cap if the neighbour peers through your grimy windows.

 

[discokermit]

i, a working class child, has had my expectations raised by some kind knowledgable patriarch. "you can do anything! be anything!" i think to myself. so, how do i become an admiral in the british navy?

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

They do it to fit in. Around all those people with actual real chips on their shoulder.
because they are the enablers of opression, and they are worried about found out.

 

[Steel Icarus]

ive gone the other way. im trying to raise an army to take arundel castle.

Never occurred to me as a kid but naming the streets of our council estate after the "great" houses of England was a rancid choice. Arundel, Sandringham, Chatsworth Drives, etc. I was in Goodwood Close.

 

[brogdale]

I think if you remove the terms performative and deflect from that question - because, simply, it's a very leading question with some pretty crass judgements within it - and think about context and formative, childhood experience and influences - then it can be interesting discussion.

Having it on some fairly cretinous Student Grant meets Citizen Smith level however means it won't be interesting or informative.

So, for me, I am absolutely middle class: nice upbringing, decent state school with assumptions of university blah blah, but my parents didn't start out as middle class, and my grandparents - who were a big part of my childhood - certainly weren't. That's not an argument for inherited Class through DNA, but a solid belief that I am a product of the 'village' that brought me up, and a good slice of that village was WC, with WC attitudes and experiences that were related to me.

So, as an example, when I was a kid my grandad, who I spent pretty much every weekend with, took me to a village in Dorset where his family had lived from about 1600 to 1900. They were all agricultural labourers and domestic servants with grim life expectancy and all the normal indicators of poverty - 80 years after they left/died out, and despite living there for 300 years (and probably a lot longer), not one of the houses they'd lived in still stood, and not a single one of the several hundred members of that family who'd lived there had a grave marker of any type. They had, along with pretty much every other person of their class, been completely airbrushed out of existence by a system that believed they had only the temporary value of the sweat on their backs.

When I was 22 my parents had a little family party for me when I commissioned, and my Nan gave a little speech - and she said how proud she was of me, but she said that my mum and dad should take great credit for being the first generation since we'd come down from the trees who's children had never gone to bed hungry because there was no money for food. That 'family memory' of some pretty grim experiences was never far from my childhood - it was certainly used to show us the privilege we had, but also to show how quickly situations can change, and that we weren't far from dire poverty and exploitation.

So, middle class with working class roots - but we never watched blind date. Does the wrestling count?

Good post.
The wording was, of course, lifted directly and deliberately from the paper linked to in the OP.
Thinking about what you said regarding the ag.lab./service background of your family reminded me of when i did a bit of my own family history stuff and, like most folk here I suspect, there was a mass of ag.lab./service job definitions on all of the census returns going back to 1831 or whatever it was.

Got me thinking that maybe the growth in popularity of family ancestry stuff might in some way have contributed to some of the MC construction of ‘intergenerational self’ contributing to 'misidentification'.

btw, not saying you did that above.

 

[kebabking]

brogdale I'm not sure the ancestry.com stuff plays a role, after all the intergenerational ideas of class isn't a new thing - but wouldn't be surprised if safe distance and rose-tinted glasses played a role.

My grandparents very cold house and pretty limited tastes are now a very long way away, perhaps it's now safe to identify with them?

Of course fashion plays a role in this - in the 18th century the most minor gentry would deny till they were blue in the face that they might be the grandson of a farmer, yet now the opposite it true. Perhaps it may swing back....

Personally - of course - I don't see it as a fetishisation of WC origins/influences (though I certainly wouldn't deny that it exists), rather with simply being comfortable with a wider part of our origins.

I would imagine that one of the problems with identity is that it's an intensely personal construct, with two people of fairly similar backgrounds 'choosing' radically different identities because they pick X circumstance of Y circumstance - one is reminded here of Americans, who identify themselves as 'whatever-Americans' because their Great, Great, Great Grandparent was 'watever', while ignoring the 47others of that generations of that ancestor who wasn't of that identity/background....

 

[chilango]

i, a working class child, has had my expectations raised by some kind knowledgable patriarch. "you can do anything! be anything!" i think to myself. so, how do i become an admiral in the british navy?

This is what happens in schools with "growth mindset" pushing by teachers.

 

[andysays]

This is an interesting vid which popped up in my youtube suggestions recently

 

[ddraig]

“one of the small private schools, quite cheap”

Someone on first dates last night said almost exactly this

 

[8ball]

brogdale
Of course fashion plays a role in this - in the 18th century the most minor gentry would deny till they were blue in the face that they might be the grandson of a farmer, yet now the opposite it true. Perhaps it may swing back....
[/QUOTE]

A friend of mine who went to a "quite small, quite cheap" private school gets enraged when anyone mentions that her curiously-spelled surname is down to an illiterate ancestor spelling a name wrong on a form (or perhaps a clerk mishearing it), so the pendulum is still a bit mid-swing.

 

[krink]

Someone on first dates last night said almost exactly this

Ah man, I was going to post that haha!! Apparently she was Scottish too, although I failed to hear it.

 

[kebabking]

brogdale
Of course fashion plays a role in this - in the 18th century the most minor gentry would deny till they were blue in the face that they might be the grandson of a farmer, yet now the opposite it true. Perhaps it may swing back....

A friend of mine who went to a "quite small, quite cheap" private school gets enraged when anyone mentions that her curiously-spelled surname is down to an illiterate ancestor spelling a name wrong on a form (or perhaps a clerk mishearing it), so the pendulum is still a bit mid-swing.
[/QUOTE]

My family's surname in that village in Dorset is spelt three different - and quite impressively different -ways in less than a century...

 

[brogdale]

A friend of mine who went to a "quite small, quite cheap" private school gets enraged when anyone mentions that her curiously-spelled surname is down to an illiterate ancestor spelling a name wrong on a form (or perhaps a clerk mishearing it), so the pendulum is still a bit mid-swing.

My family's surname in that village in Dorset is spelt three different - and quite impressively different -ways in less than a century...
[/QUOTE]
One of the joys of looking back at old census returns is the variety of spellings, both names and locations (of birth). I assume that some were errors derived from partial literacy and others from the answers written down by census officials interpreting the answers given by illiterate forebears.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Ah man, I was going to post that haha!! Apparently she was Scottish too, although I failed to hear it.

Posh Scottish people speak with the same accent as posh English people on the whole - I'm not sure a distinct posh Scottish accent exists.

 

[kebabking]

One of the joys of looking back at old census returns is the variety of spellings, both names and locations (of birth). I assume that some were errors derived from partial literacy and others from the answers written down by census officials interpreting the answers given by illiterate forebears.

Absolutely, I love seeing the way new and old first names weave in and out of the family tree - we went through a couple of generations during the 18th century where all the girls had quite Germanic names like Thurzia and what have you - and then 'poof' - all that disappeared and they went back to be John's and Mary's, and we have no idea why...

 

[8ball]

Posh Scottish people speak with the same accent as posh English people on the whole - I'm not sure a distinct posh Scottish accent exists.

I thought maybe Victor Meldrew would be a posh Scottish accent. Doesn't sound like a posh English one.

 

[krink]

This is an interesting vid which popped up in my youtube suggestions recently

Quite enjoyed that, brought a few things to mind. During the anti cuts campaigns 2010 onwards we had to deal with this insufferable, wrecking, control freak (and grass) who wanted to be in charge of everything. In an attempt to attack my character he tried to say it was absurd that an anarchist could work at the council (I was a basic admin assistant). So I turned it on him and said what kind of Marxist could be a petite bourgeoisie, council house thief (he was self employed and bought his council house) and it really got to him which was great fun
Now I do actually have a point/question. I still work and have a boss but they don't make profit, as I work for the local council on behalf of the dwp. So my bosses with the power to fire me are still employees themselves and the whole 'business' isn't really a business. I'm not sure what my question is but how (as that video seems to suggests) are my interests the same as the ceo of the council?

Be gentle if you answer, I'm not a brainiac haha!

 

[mauvais]

i, a working class child, has had my expectations raised by some kind knowledgable patriarch. "you can do anything! be anything!" i think to myself. so, how do i become an admiral in the british navy?

Kill an existing admiral in the Royal Navy and take his hat. It's much the same as with Popes.

 

[krink]

Posh Scottish people speak with the same accent as posh English people on the whole - I'm not sure a distinct posh Scottish accent exists.

I had my honeymoon in Edinburgh stayed in a lovely b&b and we asked the owners why there was so many posh English people in the area and they explained that they were actually all rich Scots.

 

[hitmouse]

It might need a snappier title than Have you used an intergenerational understanding of family class origin in a performative manner to deflect attention away from the structural privileges you enjoy? though .

KULAKS: INCRIMINATE YOURSELVES HERE?

 

[cyril_smear]

What if they identify as working class?

 

[andysays]

What if they identify as working class?

Class is a social relationship, not a matter of identity

 

[danny la rouge]

I thought maybe Victor Meldrew would be a posh Scottish accent. Doesn't sound like a posh English one.

Depends what you mean by posh. Richard Wilson has a grammar school West of Scotland accent (he’d have been educated in pre-comprehensive 11 plus times).

But, yeah, Scottish landed gentry pretty much all went to English public schools and sound like they did.

 

[cyril_smear]

Class is a social relationship, not a matter of identity

And as such you can’t escape it?

 

[Steel Icarus]

Class is a social relationship, not a matter of identity

Can it not be both?

 

[kebabking]

And as such you can’t escape it?

I suppose on the strict economic basis that if you have any economic relationship with anyone else then you have a class, then it's entirely true.

 

[Raheem]

I suppose on the strict economic basis that if you have any economic relationship with anyone else then you have a class, then it's entirely true.

Your relationship surely has to be with a society, surely. If my only economic relationship were with my dentist, the fact that I'm the one paying would not make me an aristocrat.

 

[andysays]

And as such you can’t escape it?

No, you can't "escape" it.

I suppose a tiny number of people manage to acquire a sufficient amount of property to stop being working class/proletarian and become members of the capitalist class, but I'm not sure that's really what we're talking about.

Can it not be both?

I suppose it can be an identity as well, but your class position (in the Marxist sense, what is sense I'm talking about in) isn't altered by how you identify, not in any meaningful way.