But even though I won't write an essay, I've made some notes about the pages I marked while reading. Also, most of the social commentary applies in some way to the dialogue going on in America around class, but of course there are important differences... someone should write a book about that. (Or a college-style essay!)
Racism bad, Sexism bad, Classism funny!
"Chav" is a derogatory term in the UK for working-class people. The closest thing I can relate it to in US terms is "white trash" - though of course one of the things that struck me while reading this book is that there is no derogatory term for poor people in the US that isn't also about race. (So we have that going for us?) The chav stereotype is of an uneducated young street thug wearing "Burberry" or other bling; laziness, drunkenness, violence, teenage pregnancies, racism, etc. are all traits associated with chavs. Literally the term comes from the Romany word for child, 'chavi', though people often associate the term with acronyms like 'Council Housed And Violent'. Another US analogy is needed here: council housing can be considered a nicer, British version of the projects... plus without the guns.
Jones opens the book with an anecdote: he was at a dinner party with educated, middle-class, liberal friends, and yet someone cracked a joke about chavs and everyone laughed. Why has it become okay to make fun of poor people? Why are there TV shows in the UK devoted to this very thing? I think this all hinges on the popular notion that class is a choice, or a result of your choices, as opposed to things like your race or your gender, which you are born with. This is a ridiculous and upside-down idea in the face of all the data about upward mobility (i.e. the lack thereof). But if being poor is your own fault, then it's okay to make fun of you for it, and not feel guilty. Game on!
There are probably other psychological things going on though that explain why people would rather believe people are poor entirely because of their choices than that education, race, gender, parental income, the structure of society, etc. have a huge impact on your life. Part of the story is perhaps that believing that the disadvantaged deserve what they get makes it easier for the wealthy to think they are entirely responsible for their own wealth ("I BUILT IT!!!!"), rather than accepting that they were dealt a good hand and used it well.
What is the working class?
"Interestingly, more people in Britain call themselves working class now than did in 1950," despite Tony Blair's insistence that "we're all middle class now." Stock-brokers "ask with faux puzzlement: 'I work, don't I? So why aren't I working class?'" A childhood friend which Jones considered indisputably working class "felt that being working class meant being poor, while being middle class meant being educated." (p. 141)
I think the last quote is why I marked this page. Also, after reading the entire book, I'm still not entirely certain what is meant by working-class. Maybe it just sounds better than "lower-class" (after all, we have "middle" and "upper").
The lack of upward class mobility scapegoated by the lack of aspiration
A common criticism of the working-class (I might just start calling it "victim-blaming") is that they have no aspiration - that they could make their lives better but they just don't care enough to try. Jones interviews Liam, who came from a working-class background: "I literally didn't know what university was, aged sixteen. University, to be honest, was kind of where posh people go!... It's just not what we do, it's just not on the radar... You can only ever really aspire to something if you know it and understand it." (p. 174-175)
I thought the last bit was incredibly profound. How can we expect poor people to work really hard (and spend a lot of money that they don't have... at least that's how it works in America) to get a University education when they have no frame of reference for such an aspiration? Especially now when a college degree is often a ticket to live with your parents in your early 20s rather than a ticket to a good job? In poor communities in the US, the most that kids have to aspire to is to work at McDonald's and not get shot. These are the kinds of things they can point to as attainable goals. These are the jobs they are trained for with what our education system is providing them.
The "get a job" argument, i.e. "try harder," i.e. "it's your fault you're poor"
Perhaps this is just a variant of the above "victim-blaming" excuse, both of which stem from the assumption that people have complete and total control over their own lives no matter what... But as it turns out, in the UK "the majority of people living in poverty actually have a job." New Labour (close enough to Democrats) attempted to tackle this problem, but they did it by "allowing the market to run amok," according to Jones. A Labour MP (Congressperson) describes this as introducing tax credits and redistributing wealth by forcing people into the lowest paid jobs: "In that way, you become the guilty person if you can't afford to dig yourself out of poverty. There's a Victorian, patronizing attitude towards working people." All the while, the minimum wage has been allowed to become less and less meaningful. (p. 201-202)
If there were one word to describe the 'chav' stereotype, patronizing would be it.
Chavs are all racist idiots who blame immigrants for their problems
If Children of Men taught me anything, it's that the British hate immigrants. The British National Party (one of those minor Nth parties that other democracies have) represents those sentiments. Hackney (a town? a part of London? something like that...) got a lot of votes in the 70s for the National party, but more recently they got virtually none, which a former London mayor thinks is because "you tend to get a problem of racism in an area undergoing transition." Very insightful! Jones goes on: "Hackney is one of the most mixed areas in the country, and as a result the far right has died out there." (The U.S. analogy is major cities, which are the most diverse and the most Democratic.) "But it [far right/BNP] flourishes in areas... where mass immigration is a new phenomenon... or, conversely, where there is very little immigration but a tremendous fear of it." Additionally "liberal multiculturalism has understood inequality purely through the prism of race, disregarding that of class." This is also what we often do in the U.S. but with good reason; however, in the UK, the white majority is a real 90% majority (which I learned from this book). (p. 224-225)
If you are middle-class and don't exactly have swimming pools filled with gold, you are probably worried about sending your kids to college and saving for retirement. It may seem unfair that some people are getting help from the government. You might have some reasonable things to say about that. BUT, it may seem even more unfair if those people getting help don't look like you. (I'm saying this simply as a statement of human nature and not a moral judgment.) "Why do they get handouts just because they are minorities?" is unfortunately something that real people say. It doesn't help that "affirmative action" policies in the UK are called "positive discrimination" (!!), but I will have to leave that discussion to future work.
A new sense of aspiration
"The new aspiration must be about improving people's communities and bettering the conditions of the working class as a whole, rather than simply lifting able individuals up the ladder." (p. 258)
Word.
