In a recent article, the Guardian columnist Zoe Williams claims the phrase “white working class” is a fiction – one that is “so widely deployed and so misleading”. However, her entire argument seems to be based on a misunderstanding of how the phrase is used (something you would have assumed would be quite obvious).
“Of course there are white people who are working class,” Williams writes, “but the class as a whole is the most diverse of any group.” Later she repeats that “the working class is diverse” – in fact, “the most diverse of all social classes”.
Err, nobody disputes there are working-class people of all ethnicities. Williams seems to believe that when people refer to the “white working class”, they mean “the working class, which is white”, rather than “the subset of working class people who are white”.
So why do people use the phrase “white working class” – why would they want to refer to the subset of working class people who are white? There are several reasons.
One is that the white working class might systematically differ from both the white middle class and the non-white working class. Take voting in the 2020 U.S. election. Two thirds of whites without a college degree voted for Trump, compared to less than half of whites with a college degree, and only a quarter of non-whites without a college degree (see below). These divergent voting patterns may reflect different interests.
A second reason why people use the use the phrase “white working class” is to push back against the notion of “white privilege”, which has become so popular in recent years – particularly in the Guardian. Consider the chart below, taken from the recent report by David Rozado and Matthew Goodwin. It shows that between 2010 and 2020, mentions of ‘white privilege’ in British newspapers increased by more than twenty thousand percent.
Indeed, the notion of “white privilege” is so absurd precisely because there’s such a thing as the white working class, whose members do not possess any kind of “privilege” insofar as that term was traditionally understood.
A third reason why people use the phrase “white working class” is because they feel that, in certain respects, white working class people have been ignored by the political establishment. The most obvious examples of this are the grooming gang scandals, where authorities failed to intervene and stop abuse of white working class girls. As the independent inquiry into Rotherham notes:
Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so
In other words, abuse of white working class girls was allowed to continue because it would have been “racist” to identify the perpetrators.
The phrase “white working class” is certainly not a “fiction”. In fact, there are several valid reasons why one might use it.
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They fuck you up, these men are mad.
That is incredibly sad.
The Hull Daily Mail (Mirror Group) is obsessed with Covid above all else. Numerous very poor quality click bait articles appear each day, especially the online version, and gather many public comments (but very hit and miss which articles allow comments at all and comments are frequently removed as the editorial style is very pro-woke).
For a city with a reputation as being exceptionally down to earth and anti-authority, there are unfortunately a large number of Covid cult members who want lockdown and all the accompanying nonsense to continue indefinitely to protect them from their irrational and increasingly rabid fears (particularly of children and young adults).
That lockdowns could trigger suicides goes against the beliefs of the cult and simply closing the well used walkways/cycle paths at either side of the Humber Bridge has been generally welcomed as being a proportionate anti-suicide measure despite the huge inconvenience to other bridge users.
I live in a relatively small Scottish city and have lost 4 friends in the last 9 months to suicide. As noted, figures are not widely publicised in general for various reasons. However, there seems to be much reticence in any discussion of increases in suicide and attempted suicide in the mainstream media during the current ‘crisis’ regardless of the undeniable rise in self-harm being reported by many frontline services including the London Ambulance Service across the UK. Mention of the loss of the will to live seems to be neglected when listing the myriad of spurious symptoms attributed to covid.
so sad, I am so sorry for you, and for them. Sending love
Throughout Lockdown 1. Local Live (mirror group news) Online would usually publish one, two or even three articles daily along the lines of ‘womans body found at base of cliffs’, ‘man found dead in car on bridge’, or ‘well known publican found dead in house’.
Few details other than location would be given but the reports generally ended with ‘police say there are no suspicious circumstances but the coroner has been informed’.
The words ‘lockdown’ or ‘suicide’ were never used but to help the hard of understanding such items were often accompanied by an advert from The Samaritans.
‘Quarter of deaths may not have been due to Covid’ “new figures reveal” fucking Telegraph man, well the whole rotten corrupt system. We have been pissing into the wind for a year now sounding the bleedin obvious to anyone that cared to look. What a farce our country, and frankly species has become.
People literally jumping off buildings in record numbers, makes me sick.
I’m off to YouTube to look at orangutans. Good night all.
the worst thing is that this whole thing is mainly self imposed. Whenever I am online with people such as yourselves I feel like we are a majority, but then when I try to approach friends and colleagues with these views I find they are all utterly brainwashed.WAKE UP I say WAKE UP
Frankly I’m not sure how much longer I want to live amongst these stupid people
Even my closest friends who are otherwise sceptical and cynical told me they will vote Con on the 6th.
One is concerned that if she misses her ‘chance’ to have the jab when called that she won’t be able to go abroad for a hen do NEXT May! “If I don’t take it now will they punish me and say I missed my turn?”.
It’s terrifying.
I’ve always had a very low overall view of humans, yeah we can create great things but ultimately we are greedy, self serving, grubby little things. Try putting a single toy in a room with 2 toddlers and you will see human nature, we spend the next 15 years training them to share. It’s not in our DNA, nor would you expect it to be or our ancestors wouldn’t have survived, we form groups when it serves our interests.
I was raised to work hard, tell the truth and be honest in my dealings. Seems as much as I respect those views, very few people who end up in positions of power share them. More and more I’m thinking, why follow the ‘rules’ if it’ll leave me poor and powerless.
‘Miss her chance’? Fat chance! They’ll lock onto her like a guided missile until she succumbs.
I have of late, but
wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging
firmament, this majestical roof, fretted
with golden fire—why, it appeareth nothing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving
how express and admirable; in action how like
an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and
yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man
delights not me, no, nor women neither
Suicides can only be declared as a verdict by coroners court. There is a lag in figures, no doubt made worse by both Covid restrictions and increased volume of work through more suicides.
As a meaningful proxy, London Ambulance service tweeted in Nov they were responding to 37 suicides per day.
That’s an annualised amount of 13,500 in their catchment of 8m people.
If you extrapolate the rate of 13,500 for 8m out to 67m population it gives a figure of 113,000 deaths by suicide for the U.K. I believe it is likely that this figure may well be higher than the number of people who died FROM Covid.
Or to put that in Daily Mail headline speak:
“Suicide epidemic killed more people than Covid-19”
I think that figure was a rise from an average of around 24 a day in Greater London before the pandemic. A HUGE increase. Of course, thankfully not all of those attempts are successful – but as you point out – that is an awful lot of lost souls.
Did I hear somewhere that the Samaritans have been pointing out that the suicide rate has not increased during LD? I find it hard to believe, if so. Why would they parrot the narrative? Have they been given a large donation or something? I’d hate to denigrate a worthwhile organisation but I’m not sure they have come out of this smelling of roses.
Funnily enough, I was chatting yesterday to a friend who’s a fireman. He said that he’s never attended so many suicide calls in his time in the service. They’re coming at a rate of almost one for every four-day shift. When asked about claims that this is nothing to do with lockdown, his response was “bollocks”.
Unfortunately one of those suicides last month was my cousins daughter, 41, left husband and two kids. Depressed because of lockdown….