Dickson Igwe. Photo: VINO

Lynsey Hanley writing in the UK Guardian of September 28, 2016 titled his article: “Why class won’t go away?” Class separation and class division, according to Hanley, can be damaging and even dangerous. Class division in Britain today threatens the social and political stability of the United Kingdom.

In the UK, more than in any other Western European country, if you are born poor the chances are that you will remain poor for the rest of your life. On the other hand, if you are born with the proverbial golden spoon in the mouth, you will stay wealthy and privileged all your life, and so will your children.

In Britain, the social classes stick together. Class in Britain is a product of history. Britain is an evolutionary society. The UK evolved from the time of the Norman Invasion of 1066, without a ‘”French or Bolshevik Revolution” that violently disrupted the process.

Social class in Britain is based on a system driven by the transformation from absolute to constitutional monarch that took place over hundreds of years probably beginning with Magna Carta. Social Class has the Queen in Parliament at the top of the pyramid. At the bottom of the pyramid are the lower and working classes who have never been “rebellious” like their French counterparts in the late 1700s. The British working classes have been customarily deferential and placid in their relations with the upper classes. 

The middle and upper classes stick with their own set. They live in the same communities. They attend similar schools, colleges, and universities. They work in similar jobs and organisations. They travel to the cities by train. They go to the same pubs and clubs. They go on specific types of holiday to similar places. They earn much higher wages. They share social nuances. They save a greater percentage of what they earn. Their jobs are linked to technology, capital, and governance. They are healthier. They are business owners and professionals. They marry each other. Their children inherit their properties and businesses, and carry on the success of the class.

There is denial by the political intelligentsia that this unforgiving social division exists.

However, the collusion of the middle and upper classes is a very subtle dance. Hanley states in his story that people are made into the image of the social class they exist within. People remake and reproduce what they experience in their own social class profile.

Social class causes people to believe that they are due a “specific return,” in terms of educational attainment, social standing, wages and earnings, and political power. Social class contains and stereotypes those who exist within its invisible borders, unrelentingly. These stereotypes are further reinforced by the type of social culture attached to the social class subset, whether it is the street culture of the working class, middle class aspiration, or upper class snobbery and nuance.

Social boundaries are remade and reinforced through where people live, where they work, and what they can, and cannot do.

The experts argue that in order to change the non aspirations of the working classes for the more aspirational, and the pursuit of the “finer things of life,” working class children need to be removed from the negative influences of their working class families and the damaging social sub sets and cultures of the working class demographic. Then these working class children should be educated into middle class norms and values. But, is that not an insult? Is that not a demeaning assumption? Does it not place an undue burden on the poor and disadvantaged?

The symbols of class are encoded into the mindset. Persons in the same social class possess similar norms and values. In terms of clothing, hand gestures, eating habits, and leisure preferences, social class dictates. Members of either the working or middle class remain locked into their class boundaries by abstraction, and vocabulary. They share similar sets of assumptions. They share similar understandings of the world that they inhabit.

However, the middle classes possess a broader set of desires. The middle classes understand better what is required in order for themselves and their offspring to progress and be successful. The middle classes are better able to reproduce themselves in the mould of success: what it takes to remain middle class. The middle class family is more focused on success and social advancement than the working and lower class counterpart. Middle class values such as the pursuit of higher education and an appropriate social set, consolidates the success of the middle classes as a whole. It also fosters a tension between the middle class and the working class.

There is a belief that the poor and working classes in Britain have been trapped into their condition by the wider society.  This is an intangible trap. The barrier of separation from the higher social classes is invisible. It is a psychological barrier. However, it is as real a barrier as any physical wall. Entry into the middle class by the working class is blocked by nuance, norm and mindset.

The lower class teenager finds himself in a place that tells him that a higher education, better housing, and a better more pleasurable life where he can read, learn, visit the opera and museum, go to the theater, and do things such as travel widely, and play golf, rugby, and polo, is “no go area.” In the UK especially, the working class child or teen tells himself that certain things are not for his type. This is a mental trap.

In the working and lower class world casual violence is normal. Racism is open. Cynicism is pervasive. There is a lack of opportunity to move up the social ladder by a social infrastructure that reinforces failure.

Globalisation has made matters worse. Outsourcing has shut down factories that once employed the working classes. This has increased hopelessness in working class areas. Globalisation for the British working classes has exacerbated social and economic inequality. It has driven a social and wealth wedge between the south east of Britain and the rest of the country, and between major cities and outlying towns.  There is a geography to social inequality.   

The clear lesson for these Virgin Islands is that social inequality clearly matters. Social inequality impacts different subsets of the population differently. Poverty impacts children. It lessens their options and opportunities. Poverty tells the child what he can and cannot do. Poverty tells him or her where she can go and where she can’t. Poverty impacts self esteem. It lessens educational opportunity and leads to social decline.

The answer is to place those aspirational middle class norms and values, of success and achievement, into the minds of the poor and underprivileged. The one place this can be done is in the education system and through the education process. But that may be a tough task if poverty tells the child and teen that higher education is not for him or her.

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