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| Greenham Common, 1980. ‘I love comrades who don’t dominate meetings or movements, or think they have all the answers.’ |
Ihave many middle class friends and comrades whom I adore, this post certainly isn’t directed at everyone. But after years and years of organising, coming up against similar frustrations, and after lots of conversations between working class mates, I want to write about what is draining about working with some middle class activists.
It’s important to flag up that I’m writing this as a white, cis woman in England and I’m aware of the privilege that carries. I’m worried this piece will ignite a backlash, so I’m asking middle class folks that are triggered by this to perhaps talk to other middle class people and not email me about it. For once, please, just listen and reflect.
Also, because I want to be as constructive as possible, at the end of the post I’ve listed some of the character traits of middle class friends and organisers who don’t drive me up the wall.
Anyhow, here goes …
What makes me tired when organising with middle class comrades
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| In 2008 activists set up the Camp for Climate Action near Kingsnorth power station. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images |
Talking about the working class as a homogenous mass makes me tired. Assuming certain cultural stereotypes are working class and certain things aren’t is annoying. Likewise talking about working class people like they’re scum, sheep or brain-washed masses is patronising and elitist. Talking about how you can “reach out” to the working class is also problematic.
Romanticising certain aspects of working class culture is tiring, when growing up with zero money and zero financial stability is the least romantic thing ever. Similarly fetishising poverty, as if it’s a game or adventure, is an insult to folk who have no choice. Feeling judged because I actually want a livelihood so I don’t have to relive the hell of not having any food in the fridge is tiring. Unlike middle class people we don’t have a safety net. We can’t play the romantic poor anarchist for ten years then inherit property. Flirting with poverty as a lifestyle choice is not the same as growing up in poverty.
Talking about working class people like we’re the problem, as if our lifestyle choices are the determinant of various forms of systemic suffering, is totally infuriating. It is politically naive and dangerous.
Perhaps one of the more dehumanising experiences in life is being treated like some kind of subject/object of study for academics. I have left a prison-related conference in tears because of this. Being tokenised or used to further someone’s career is grim. It’s put me off the world of academia forever (there is no entry point for me anyway).
It is alienating and disempowering when middle class people talk about experiences like they are completely universal
You expect me, and other working class folk, to get excited about your projects, campaigns and initiatives when they are not relevant to our lives. We face much bigger barriers to organising, yet we’re somehow meant to do a ton of extra work on top of the challenges of day-to-day survival. We are generally organising on top of being carers, or parents, or supporting mates in prison, or recovering from trauma or alcohol, drug abuse and domestic violence that you may have not experienced. (I’m aware not every middle class person has had a good childhood, I’m just trying to highlight a pattern). Often there are no structures in place to support us to participate such as travel expenses, childcare support and food at meetings
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| FacebookTwitterPinterest 1996: Newbury bypass protesters climb on to a crane in the secure area, despite police efforts to stop them. Photograph: PA |
You often judge our lifestyle choices and take positions of moral superiority. One of my favourite ever scientific studies was the one that showed people living on benefits had a lower carbon footprint than middle class ethical consumers.
It is alienating and disempowering when middle class people talk about experiences like they are completely universal. I spent a whole weekend with folks repeatedly talking about which international trip they were going to take next. Seriously, it feels like we live on different planets. In extension of this, a common pattern I’ve observed over the last 15 years is that middle class folk are way more likely to volunteer abroad or do exciting things, like go on the Sea Shepherd, or go live in a tree-sit protest the other side of the world. Or participate in grim colonial projects like paint school walls in Africa or whatever. There is a consistent failure to participate in any kind of grassroots or community organising in the UK and once again, working class organisers are left holding it all (and then being judged not radical enough).
It’s tiring when middle class people make unsupportive comments on our writing, grammar or language
Middle class people can tend to dominate meetings, especially at public events. There is a sense of entitlement that the whole world needs to hear your opinion and you have all the answers. Ever tried listening? Middle class people can also tend to dominate movements and perpetuate a privileged position of nonviolence. I’ve been at protest camps that have felt like a love-in with the police and power structures that be.
It’s exhausting and frustrating when you dismiss potential comrades because of their language, background or behaviour and fail to remember it takes time to learn/unlearn how we act. If I hadn’t had such solid self esteem, I would have abandoned all these movements years ago. It’s tiring when middle class people make unsupportive comments on our writing, grammar or language. Not everyone has had the same level of education. It’s also really patronising when you talk as if we’re not smart because we might not have a degree. In my early years of organising, so many middle class men would explain things to me assuming I didn’t know what they meant.
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| FacebookTwitterPinterest 2011: The Occupy London tent protest outside St Paul’s Cathedral. Photograph: Jack MacDonald/Commissioned for The Guardian |
It’s tiring when you leverage your privilege in response to repression, whether by getting character references from people you know in similar positions of privilege, or simply having the financial support in your life which means you can focus on legal work. You don’t think about the repercussions this can have on people that can’t play this card.
And finally, what I’ve observed over and over again is this inherent need for middle class people to censor, control and mediate emotions. There’s a deep fear of conflict, loosing status and control. I’ve been told to be less angry on demos, less emotional at events and more serious. Stop telling me how to feel. When you’ve had a life of teachers, social workers and probation officers telling you how you should act, you don’t need the same mediating middle class behaviour in your collectives.
So what does this have to do with burnout?
Navigating this stuff constantly is exhausting. Never feeling like you fit in is disempowering, isolating and alienating. It is hard to feel supported by people who don’t share your reality. You lose affinity with people, groups and networks and are more likely to burnout and drop out.
Fighting the state is hard enough without navigating a maze of middle class entitlement. And as a result these movements fail to offer me anything that can realistically improve my life or make surviving capitalism easier.
Like I said at the beginning of the post, I do work with some middle class comrades whom I adore. I tried to think about what made them different:
- They totally own up to their privilege. They’re honest about it. They take the piss out of themselves. They don’t try to be something they’re not.
- They’re empathetic but not judgemental or patronising. They don’t pretend to have lived a different life than they have.
- They take risks and do frontline work that threatens their privilege. They don’t expect it to be anyone else’s responsibility. Likewise they do the boring behind the scenes work too.
- They leverage their privilege to support others. That might be lending someone money, or giving them a free place to stay for a while. Or it might be informally mentoring someone to improve their writing.
- They’re aware of their speech and behaviour, how they phrase things so they are not offensive.
- They don’t dominate meetings or movements or think they have all the answers.
- They practically support people to participate by being militant that events are structured to support people to get stuck in (childcare, travel expenses). No one’s input is taken for granted.
I hope people find this constructive, rather than critical.
Nicole Vosper blogs here.
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The comments section shows why it's so darn difficult to continue the erection of Babel
Sorry I got 2 paragraphs in and I just can't go any further
'For once, please, just listen and reflect.' - Take your own advice
'Talking about the working class as a homogenous mass makes me tired. Assuming certain cultural stereotypes are working class and certain things aren’t is annoying.'
Just like you are doing with the 'middle class'. A term that has numerous meanings that cover the majority of the British public.
This definitely wins the title of click bait of the week
- Also you can be middle class and poor. Many professional people are really struggling right now as their jobs are either automated, removed, reduced or made plain unbearable. Yes being articulate and educated helps when you're up against it but the clue is in the word education. Being well educated means you've taken good advantage of the 13 years of free education you can still get in this country - which of course makes us all very privileged.
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It’s important to flag up that I’m writing this as a white, cis woman in England and I’m aware of the privilege that carries. I’m worried this piece will ignite a backlash, so I’m asking middle class folks that are triggered by this to perhaps talk to other middle class people and not email me about it. For once, please, just listen and reflect.
I genuinely can't tell what is genuine and what is satire anymore. This must be a piss take, right?
- Don't. Ask.Well yes, you can. It means heterosexual and the same gender you were born with, I think. Basically sort of straight and boring. When people started using it, I think they had good intentions, trying to get rid of the idea that straight was normal and gay/trans wasn't - it makes straight just another category.Now, it's mainly used as a stick to beat straight women with. "Oh, you're just cis, take your privilege and shut up." To which my answer would be, the Pankhursts didn't struggle for this nonsense, so do one.
- One line stood out for me:"yet we’re somehow meant to do a ton of extra work on top of the challenges of day-to-day survival. We are generally organising on top of being carers, or parents".I am a private-school-and-Oxford-educated solicitor paid much more than I'm worth. I suspect, by any definition, this makes me 'middle class'. But this line exactly describes what life is like for most people including me. It will be a great day (and a very, very bad one for the richest elite) when all us wage slaves finally cotton on that we've got more in common with each other. I am much closer to being a binman than I am to being a multimillionaire landowner, and I can't imagine that's ever gong to change.So maybe that shared cause would be worth concentrating on, rather than grumbling that 'middle class people' don't really understand?
You lost me at 'cis' and 'triggering'.
But to engage with the piece: what you've discovered is that the working class and middle class exist in different worlds and hold different values. The middle class's motivation for social progress is altruistic while the working class's is selfish.
This is obvious; the middle class benefits through growth. Middle class growth reinforces middle class values, salves guilty consciences and reduces the impact of working class problems on the middle class. People would rather live next to a fraudster than a violent gang member.
Naturally, this can cause a tension, since middle class progressives' motivations are implicitly critical of working class lives and values. The middle class doesn't aspire to be more like the working class; it assumes the reverse. One can see how the working class progressive might take that as a patronising and arrogant slight. But doesn't it rather reveal the tension within working class progressiveness?
You want a better life. Nice house. Safety. Fulfilling work. Luxuries. Middle class things. But you're faced with two routes to achieve it. Constructive improvement of society and economy. Or burning it down and remodelling. The latter implicitly sets you against your middle class progressive comrades, who want a better life for you - but not at significant cost to themselves. The former means accepting, at heart, that your working class identity must be abandoned if your progressive ambitions are realised, which feels like hurtful self-rejection.
A bit of introspection might find you your answers?
- A very insightful comment.I often think people are far too obsessed with class, and being 'proud' of it. As if it's some sort of medal to wave around.Someone hugely proud of their upper class roots would be termed a snob, and rightly. What of someone proud of their working class roots?
Tell you what's problematic.
1) Using the same definition errors against the 'middle class' that you condemn using against the 'working class.'
2) Making a censorious and terribly self-conscious list of instructions for a given group of individuals to follow.
3) Publishing said list.
We all have bias and nobody's perfect. But snobbery in rags and patches is still snobbery.
As someone who grew up in proper grinding poverty, has been long term homeless, in and out of prison, etc, the *last* thing we need is neurotic identity politics stuff like this infecting the workers' movement. I don't care what kind of 'folks' feel sad today, and whether they 'listen and reflect' on their 'privilege' -- none of that will threaten capitalism. The author needs to stop playing oppression olympics and start worrying about how we're going to organise strikes and direct action.
"I’ve been told to be less angry on demos, less emotional at events and more serious." If you are trying to persuade people, that is generally helpful advice.
If you spazz out on rage A) no one listens to you, B) the only option is violence.
You sound like you are advocating violence. If so we are simply back to the jungle of might is right.
Brought up w/c...never hungry,dad worked hard,mum worked partime,saved rather than spent...make do and mend, home baking,recycle...no car,no foreign hols,no posh telly etc...instead books,public library,education deemed important...of course those who experience drinkers,drug users, gamblers, out of work parents have a different experience of what it is/was to be w/c...not one working class life but many different ones.
Sorry, but I really dont think this is constructive. So there are some middle class twats. Who knew? Here's a news flash: there are some working class twats too. (Not to mention one or two upper class ones...!)
Everyone has to deal with such people, in all walks of life - in our jobs, down the pub, here on CiF....
Please, class is not the issue here. Just twattery - deal with it.
Aside from that - good on you. Keep fighting. And fuck HLS, and all who work(ed) for it.
Everyone has to deal with such people, in all walks of life - in our jobs, down the pub, here on CiF....
Please, class is not the issue here. Just twattery - deal with it.
Aside from that - good on you. Keep fighting. And fuck HLS, and all who work(ed) for it.
Having "favourite ever scientific studies " suggests that you hold on to the studies that give the outcome you're looking for and disregard the rest. I'd suggest that if you're going to have a favourite study it should be one that shows something interesting, possibly unexpected and above all, useful,. This one doesn't score highly I'd suggest.
"It’s important to flag up that I’m writing this as a white, cis woman in England and I’m aware of the privilege that carries. I’m worried this piece will ignite a backlash, so I’m asking middle class folks that are triggered by this to perhaps talk to other middle class people and not email me about it. For once, please, just listen and reflect."
Peak.
- I read that and raised my eyebrows too. I almost stopped reading. However, I did find the rest of the piece interesting - and as a former working class kid that is now arguably middle class recognised a lot of it. It would have been better if this was left out, IMHO. The "hierarchy of victim status" is just so wearing.
A friendly suggestion about this: "...I’m aware of the privilege carries. I’m worried this piece will ignite a backlash, so I’m asking middle class folks that are triggered by this..."
I'm broadly sympathetic to your cause (I think) but I find some of this language alienating, just as much as you might if I started going on about the comprador bourgeoisie. Lots of people you want to win over are likely to be strongly put off by both.
This sort of language might be helpful in the world of activism, but outside it can sound at best like jargon and at worst like a secret language that you display to show your membership of a club of the enlightened. I know this is not most people's intention, but if people want to change others' minds via activism isn't it wise to use as accessible a vocabulary as possible?
It’s important to flag up that I’m writing this as a white, cis woman in England and I’m aware of the privilege that carries. I’m worried this piece will ignite a backlash, so I’m asking middle class folks that are triggered by this to perhaps talk to other middle class people
Stopped reading after this utter nonsense.
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