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I could not agree with this article more. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/18/why-professional-middle-class-brits-insist-working-class?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
I'm so tired of thoroughly middle class people going on and on about how they are "really working class".
So a generation or more in the past there were miners in the family. Now you're a city banker or university professor - you are not fecking working class.
So a generation or more in the past there were miners in the family. Now you're a city banker or university professor - you are not fecking working class.
And let me say I consider my background privileged - despite the fact both my parents were on income support or JSA until long after I left home.
Despite the fact I was on free-school meals, despite the fact we had no heating or hot water for years and boiled a couple of saucepans for the shared bath to make the cold water bearable.
Despite we had social workers around incessantly due to neighbours/schools making referrals over neglect. Despite the fact the church sent round a box every Xmas as we were the 'poor of the parish', & all our clothes from jumble sales cos charity shops were too expensive.
And I consider myself privileged because my grandparents were thoroughly middle class, & their parents (my great grandparents) were middle class too (lets ignore the fact my great grandparents were born impoverished to thoroughly working class parents and worked their way up).
And I also consider myself privileged because I got a state handout that fully covered fees to attend a (small, cheap - pmsl) private school after passing the entrance exams. I had a really good secondary school education.
But let me say something else. Being underclass or working class as a kid with hope of a better future is NOTHING FUCKING LIKE being an underclass or working class adult with no prospect of social mobility.
And when middle class people go on about how working class they are because they don't have the same background, contacts, cultural knowledge as their peers as adults in posh jobs they arent middle class.
Newsflash - being the poor kid on a state-handout at a private school comes with disadvantages too: lack of contacts - all your classmates going to posh parents jobs for work experience while you have to beg your old primary school to let you come in as a temp receptionist...
Or attending every own clothes day in school uniform cos it's less embarrassing than stained ill-fitting jumble sale clothes, being excluded from every educational initiative that helps poor people cos you 'go to a private school', excluded from school trips cos cant afford them,
Excluded from mutual exchanges because your home is too overcrowded and in too much disrepair to host an exchange student, watching you classmates get intensive private tuition on top of their private education while you go home to care for younger siblings while depressed..
..burntout parents lie in bed, struggling socially because you can't afford any of the nights out with classmates - plus you're an embarrassment with your clothes - and not being able to have any friends back to your home cos of the state of it.
I could go on and on but none of it makes me think going to a private school wasn't a thoroughly middle class education that privileged me. I'm not going to claim going to a private school didn't give me a middle class background just because some of my peers had more advantages.
And being in the actual real underclass as an adult I get sick of people in thoroughly middle class jobs claiming they are working class because some grandparent was a shop assistant or they went to a state school.
