Inequality embedded in our language
Even when we
protest against inequality and support policies designed to decrease it, the
language that we have available ties it down. Words don’t create inequality but
they help to entrench it. This doesn’t mean that the people, including me, who
use this language approve of inequality, merely that we’re forced to attack inequality
sideways instead of head-on. Nor does it mean that changing our language is
going to change the structure. But being aware of its role can help us to spot
more clearly the structural features that it sometimes disguises and that need
to be changed.
1. The chart below is part of a GCSE
course. It informs
the reader: ‘This will give you some extra
information on how advertisers break down social class using ABC1, DE etc.’
Here is the information on it:
Social grade Social status Chief income earner's profession
A Upper middle class Higher managerial, administrative or professional;
doctors and lawyers
B Middle class Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional;
managers and teachers
C1 Lower middle class Non-manual workers; office workers
C2 Skilled working class Skilled manual workers; plumbers and electricians
D Working class Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers
E Unemployed/
receiving benefits Casual workers, pensioners, other claimants
_________________________________________________________________
2. ‘The working class’
The diagram graphically shows that these classes are not
separate but equal; some are up and some are down; some are ‘upper’ and some
are ‘lower’.
‘Anthony Giddens's three class model
is the upper, middle and lower (working) class.’
(www.sociologyguide.com
› Social Startification [sic]) This
prominent sociologist has no qualms about acknowledging the grim fact that the
working class is ‘lower’. The classes don’t represent ‘all walks of life’, like in a
kid’s picture book showing the fireman, the baker, the doctor etc. all smiling
as they go about their business. We talk about a better deal for the working
class, but as long as there is such a class arrangement, its members will be
down.
Someone (I
can’t trace the quote), referring to the wish of working-class parents that
their children would advance out of the working class, said that rather than
individuals advancing out of the working class, we should all advance as the working class. But the only way
the ‘working class’ can progress as such is by ceasing to be the ‘working
class’. Moderate improvements in wages and conditions won’t end the position of
disadvantage or, above all, the feature that underwrites that disadvantage,
namely the view of ourselves as ‘lower’ – however it’s glossed over, although
such improvements can make a difference.
3. The role of schools
Schools
select into the class system, determining who’s ‘lower’ and ‘higher’. The idea
is that a combination of intelligence and application will enable anyone to get
a good job. Of course, if you’re among those sometimes tactfully referred to as
‘less academic’, you can’t expect to get into Social Class A or B, but by doing
your best you might make it into Social Class C1 or C2, or at least into steady
employment in Class D. (The chart seems to assume that there are steady jobs,
but that’s another story.) As the structure only requires so many people in the
upper ranks, the education system’s selection process effectively grades on the
curve, but this is disguised by the myth that your fortunes depend solely on
your own individual performance: ‘You’re only competing with yourself.’ The
very existence of grades mirrors the inequality in the outside world.
This role of
schools means that, in effect, the ‘working class’ are considered to be those
who are – as I once saw it described – the ‘less able members of society’. They
are basically less intelligent, or intelligent but less diligent. The
expression ‘workers by hand and by brain’ unintentionally conveys this idea.
No wonder
there is the much-decried ‘anti-intellectualism’ among working-class voters.
It’s not knowledge, books or culture per se that they object to, but the
privileges accorded those who have succeeded in that sphere of society, and
above all, the assault on their self-esteem that the school-‘intelligence’-‘culture’
ethos commits.
As a
side-effect of the role of the school in selecting for inequality, students
from working-class homes may feel that knowledge, books and culture aren’t for
the likes of them, or may be streamed, on the basis of their accent and
language, into groups that place little emphasis on such things.
4. Racism and xenophobia
These, too,
are embedded in our language through terms such as ‘migrant’, ‘foreign’, and
worst of all ‘alien’ as distinct from ‘native’: legal conditions derived from
national borders. A person who moves from London to Edinburgh isn’t called a
‘migrant’; only someone who moves from Warsaw or Aleppo to Edinburgh is
(although the term ‘incomer’ to regions within nations is a milder form of the
same phenomenon). The language is forced on anti-racists as well as employed by
racists. If you carry a sign saying ‘Migrants welcome here’, you’re unavoidably
identifying yourself as a ‘native’, someone who belongs here yourself and have
the right to decide whether or not someone else is welcome.
So when
someone, with an air of wide-eyed innocence, says ‘Why should I be called a
racist just because I’m concerned about levels of immigration in my area?’ the
very word ‘immigration’ strengthens his position, putting the anti-racist, not
to mention the migrant, on the defensive. And as you see, the language has
forced me into the trap also, when I distinguish between the (presumptively
‘native’) ’anti-racist’ and the ‘migrant’.
It’s true
that ‘native’ sometimes refers sympathetically to indigenous colonized people.
And there the European ‘migrants’ – known properly as ‘colonizers’ – are the
bad guys. But there’s a clear distinction between that situation and the
background to British and other European xenophobia. People who come to Britain
to flee from war or persecution, or to find jobs, aren’t killing the ‘natives’
or driving them out of their homes; they don’t see Britain as terra nullius. They’re just trying to
survive.
Just as
‘migrants’ exist because of border controls, so ‘races’ (albeit often
euphemized as ‘ethnic minorities’) exist because of racism. No-one would bother
about whether people’s skin colour or facial configuration constituted a
scientifically established, separate ‘race’ if certain ‘races’ hadn’t been
persecuted by others. No-one would even argue that it wasn’t scientifically established. Such questions wouldn’t arise.
If you’re
white and wear a ‘Stand Up To Racism’ badge, you’re inevitably – because of the
context – speaking of white-on-black/brown/yellow racism, from the standpoint
of a prospective perpetrator rather than victim, the latter seen as a member of
an ‘ethnic minority’.
A friend
reading my draft of this section on Facebook said, ‘You mean I shouldn’t wear
my Stand Up To Racism badge?’ I explained that I was just analyzing language
and the concepts underlying it. However, it occurred to me that the day before,
when I had gone into the corner shop wearing the badge, I was worried that the
Asian man on the till might think it was patronizing: as though I were saying
‘I’m a nice white person.’ And I
recalled an old cartoon of one white man saying to another, ‘I’m always rude to
black bus conductors so they won’t think I’m a patronizing white liberal.’ In
one way or another, racism makes racists of us all.
5. ‘The poor, the deprived, the disadvantaged,
the vulnerable’
Orwell observed that in Victorian literature
‘the poor’ meant ‘the working class’; today it means substantially people on
benefits, encompassing the unemployed, the disabled, the precariat, the low-paid,
and council tenants living in crap neighbourhoods and assumed to be on benefits
as well. In other words, Social Class E in the diagram above. Even if not on
benefits, they’re ‘the poor’ by virtue of living in ‘social’ housing, which is
means-tested in terms of need rather than income alone. And they – more
accurately, we, as I’m in Social Class E – are an ‘other’ to the ‘real’ people,
the people who have what is nowadays the far from universal privilege of
‘earning their own living’ without having to claim any benefits. Thus Aaron
Sorkin writes ‘Our family is fairly insulated from the effects of a
Trump presidency so we fight for the families that aren’t.’ (http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/11/aaron-sorkin-donald-trump-president-letter-daughter) Although this
is nice of him, we are still ‘other’ to and lower than him. The idea of
‘helping those less fortunate than ourselves’ sets inequality in stone.
When
leftists rightly bemoan government policies that ‘attack the poorest and most
vulnerable members of our society’, they’re still tacitly accepting the
existence of ‘the poor’ – only saying that ‘the poor’ should get a better deal and
become somewhat less poor. When they bemoan inequality, they usually mean the
1% vs the 99%, not recognizing the much more severe and qualitative differences
in the lower ranks, which reflect not just capitalist greed and workers’ poor
bargaining position, but the different valuation of people: a much more serious
matter, and one not usually (if ever) touched on by articles about poverty.
It’s nearly always a matter of pity – these
poor people have to do without so much; they’re suffering so much; rather
than – these people are unjustly told by the system that they are worthless and
deserve nothing.
Poverty
is always relative, not in the sense meant by right-wingers, that people who
complain about poverty are just whingeing about lack of expensive consumer
goods, but in the sense that even severe, absolute poverty – Foodbank,
sleeping-rough poverty – is a function of people’s position at the foot of the
ladder, thereby deemed insignificant and undeserving. The idea that you could
have ‘the poor’ who are really quite comfortably off is a delusion.
The word ‘deprived’ also merits a look. Sympathetic
in intent, it nevertheless conjures up ignorant, dull-eyed, inarticulate
slum-dwellers. Or the same people may be called, again sympathetically, the
‘marginalized’, as distinct from the people forming the core of society, who
want to help the ‘marginalized’ other.
Altogether, the ‘deprived’ can only be defined as
people in material and social circumstances that shouldn’t exist.
As
for vulnerability, as Black Triangle says, ‘Sick and/or disabled people
are not “Vulnerable” of themselves – we have been rendered so by the
disgraceful, despicable treatment meted out by the hands of these political
élites who have abdicated their civic duties and responsibilities to disabled
people, and by so doing have abandoned many of us to a life of ever-increasing
hardship, penury and neglect.‘ (blacktrianglecampaign.org)
When
you speak of someone as ‘vulnerable’, you’re assigning to him or her the role
of moral patient: someone to be ‘treated’ a certain way by those who have
agency. We’re told: ‘Moves to create a new Scottish benefits system that treats
people “with dignity, fairness and respect” will see 2,000 welfare recipients
recruited as advisors to help shape the system’ (Stephen Naysmith, Herald Scotland. 29 Oct. 2016,
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14831052.New_Scottish_benefits_system_will_be_shaped_by_recipients/?ref=fbshr). Certainly the recruitment of welfare
recipients themselves is a step forward – but their role is to tell the
government how they want to be ‘treated’ by the apparatus for keeping otherwise
helpless people alive.
No-one calls for accountants, teachers,
lawyers, doctors and bureaucrats to be treated with dignity and respect: it’s
assumed that they will be. And while respect for claimants would be an
improvement, the fact that it has to be specially asked for, because of the
person’s position in the social structure, makes it a bit of a lost cause.
It’s no use
talking about ‘respect’ when people are in an objective position of dependency
while others have jobs, and well-enough-paid jobs at that, not to have to claim
anything means-tested. We shouldn’t just reject the lack of dignity and respect
that results from such a structure; we should reject the structure itself.
6. The big ‘social mobility’ lie
A politician
pretty much sums up what’s wrong with ‘social mobility’, and why it has nothing
to do with equality – but he sums it up with approval. ‘We fight for the First Amendment and we fight mostly for equality – not
for a guarantee of equal outcomes but for equal opportunities’ (Aaron Sorkin,
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2016/11/aaron-sorkin-donald-trump-president-letter-daughter)
It’s as
though there would be something positively immoral about equal outcomes. The
doctrine of meritocracy – somehow considered relatively egalitarian because not
based on birth – confirms inequality and damns the losers in the system, deemed
less meritorious than the winners.
The only
fault ever found with meritocracy is that there may not be ‘fair’ access to
prosperity. Thus, the Scottish Government is very concerned with getting
children of ‘poor’ families to university.
‘The issue of improving fair access
is a key priority for Ms Sturgeon, but recent figures have shown progress
towards national targets has been slow.
‘Although numbers of access students
have improved in recent years just 1,335 school-leavers from the poorest 20 per
cent of households went to university in Scotland in 2013/14 compared to 5,520
from the richest 20 per cent of communities.
‘By 2030, the Government wants to see
a 20 per cent rise in the number of students from the poorest households
attending university.’ (Andrew Denholm, http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14845553.Progress_on_fair_university_access__quot_stalling_quot__as_key_post_remains_unfilled/?ref=ebln)
A similar key priority – identified as a Scottish
Government ‘flagship’ program – is ‘closing the attainment gap’ between
children from poor and well-off homes respectively, through improvements in the
education system.
Do they really think that social equality will be
promoted by getting some lower-class children into university and better jobs?
Such mobility is just the redistribution of poverty and low status. Indeed,
given the unequal structure and the ethos that insists on it, even if all
children got university degrees, the system would simply assign crap jobs,
poverty and low status to the same proportion of people on a new basis, with
first degrees becoming the equivalent of secondary school certificates, much as
they are in America, and people with only secondary school certificates
counting as totally uneducated and doomed to the totally unskilled work that somebody
has to do.
The government goes on about improving the
prospects of children from ‘deprived’ areas or households – why don’t they get
rid of the deprivation and let the educational prospects take care of
themselves? It’s almost as though these politicians who pay lip service to
equality have given up on the idea, believing that there will always be
underlying deprivation that nothing can be done about. I suspect that this
determinism stems from an unspoken belief that ‘Let’s face it (sigh)’, the "deprived" are inferior and don’t – in meritocratic terms – deserve anything
better.'
You’ll never
get rid of poverty until you get rid of the idea that some people deserve more
than others. The poor are those at the bottom of the ladder. Get rid of the ladder.
7. A classless society
What, then? Are
we to pay cleaners as much as doctors, a frequently offered example?
(I don’t know why the people who keep us clean, whether paid cleaners, binmen,
the vanishing breed of housewives, etc., are so despised.) Well, dare I say it
– why not? Because the doctor studied hard for her qualifications? But while
she was studying hard, the cleaner was working hard. Would the doctor rather be
a cleaner, but for the incentives of higher pay and status? Are doctors really
so greedy?
Rawls said
that inequality was justified only if the winner contributed enough to the
well-being of the loser to justify the gap. In the doctor vs. cleaner case, the
health and life expectancy gap between classes has become a truism. Rawls also
pointed out that intelligence and other career-enhancing personal qualities are
just as much inherent advantages as inherited wealth. So if Lord Highborn,
according to meritocratic ethics, doesn’t ‘deserve’ his privileges, why does Dr
Clever ‘deserve’ his? Deservingness isn’t an objectively ascertainable quality,
but a policy decision.
However, isn’t anyone to be given credit for valuable achievements? Yes, in the
following way. Consider a good parent with children of varying abilities and,
perhaps, varying behaviour. She loves them equally and unconditionally, gives
each one whatever credit is due, never disparages or compares, and gives them
equal material, developmental, and recreational goods. This is the basis of unconditional
self-acceptance in the child and the future adult, a condition which some
psychologists nowadays argue is a more secure basis for mental health than
self-esteem based on achievements, while still being consistent with the
latter. An equal society would be the political equivalent of this healthy
personal self-acceptance.
I don’t know
what legal and financial mechanisms can destroy the fundamental inequality of
our society. I can only suggest that, when we use terms like ‘working-class’,
‘the poor’, ‘the deprived’, ‘migrants’, ‘race’, ‘under/over-achievers’
‘upwardly/downwardly mobile’ , we should be aware that they represent a
structure that can’t be satisfactorily reformed by tinkering round the edges,
but that needs to be abolished altogether. And we must get rid of the idea, and
be alert to the language reinforcing it, that equality would be ‘unfair’,
because some ‘deserve’ more than others and that no-one is ‘entitled’ to
anything.
The chart,
as mentioned, is part of a GCSE course. It’s
what young people are being taught about the society they’re being prepared to
live and work in.
Let’s work towards a world in which,
some day, a young person will ask: ‘Working
class? What’s that, Grandma?’
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