Class: the search for “authenticity”
How muddled are contemporary attitudes to the working classes, said Kenan Malik in The Observer. On one hand, many people pay scant regard to the grim realities of working-class life; on the other, they fetishise its “authenticity” and seek to appropriate it. According to a British Social Attitudes report, 47% of people in professional and managerial jobs describe themselves as working class, including 24% of those whose parents also did middle-class jobs. A study published last week examined this phenomenon. Researchers interviewed 175 actors, architects and other professionals, 36 of whom were from middleclass backgrounds but identified as working class, and found that these “misidentifications” are based on “origin stories” that people reach for when asked about their backgrounds; they ignore their own upbringing, and focus on those of their grandparents.
This trend represents a “fascinating social transformation”, said James Marriott in The Times. Not so long ago, middle-class Britons were more likely to pretend to be posh.
Nouveau riche industrialists acquired coats of arms “in order to cultivate the impression that their status had nothing to do with hard work”. Now, kudos comes from boasting about how far you have travelled against the odds, and your fierce work ethic.
I admit it, said Pravina Rudra in The Daily Telegraph: I’m one of the “wannabe-working-class Lefties”. Over the years, I’ve played up to the image of a “small-town kid made good”, ignoring the fact that I grew up in a comfortable cul-de-sac and that my parents would no doubt have sent me to a private school had I failed to get into my local grammar. It’s a subconscious thing, prompted partly by the fact that – “laughably” – people like me feel working class compared to the rarefied types who inhabit the creative industries. There’s also an element of guilt about our privilege – a desire to make the facts better fit our dream of social mobility. We shy away from the middle-class label because we know, deep down, that “if the world were truly as equal as we demand”, we would not be in our jobs. Others would have beaten us to it, had they had the opportunities.