But now, I worry that we’ve too eagerly accepted the far right’s agenda of decent hard-working white British people being besieged by immigrants. A 2014 report from market research company Ipsos MORI found that British people thought the foreign-born population of the country was 31 per cent, as opposed to the actual number of 13 per cent.10 The same report found that the higher your income, the more likely you are to think that immigrants are a drain on public services. Things have switched from berating working-class people for daring to exist, to extending a hand of help to them as long as it’s in opposition to those grasping ethnic minorities. Sticking ‘white’ in front of the phrase working class is used to make assumptions about race, work and poverty that compounds the currency-like power of whiteness.
When it comes to talking about race, diversity, or even the faintest liberally minded hint of inclusion, self-interested white middle-class people seem to find a renewed interest in the advancement of their white working-class counterparts. In the hands of the have-it-alls, the class and race of the have-nots are pitted against each other. This myth of grabby immigrants angling themselves to snatch opportunities from white working-class people couldn’t be further from the truth. A report from The Economist, combing through data from the Office of National Statistics, found that some of the richest in Britain benefit from services like public transport and the NHS at a significant advantage than their poorer counterparts,11 proving that those with wealth already do a very good job of hogging resources. The myth of grabby immigrants does, however, work to serve a particular agenda. These are the interests of those who are invested in preserving the current order of things.
This is a classic (and very successful) case of divide and rule. It feels like a cliché to say, but if anyone feeling resentful about their immigrant neighbours took the time to talk to them and find out a bit about their lives, they would almost certainly find that these people do not have everything handed to them on a plate, but instead are living in poor, cramped conditions, likely having left even worse conditions from wherever they’ve moved from.
Years before this country had a significant black and immigrant presence, there was an entrenched class hierarchy. The people who maintain these class divisions didn’t care about those on the bottom rung then, and they don’t care now. But immigration blamers encourage you to point to your neighbour and convince yourself that they are the problem, rather than question where wealth is concentrated in this country, and exactly why resources are so scarce. And the people who push this rhetoric couldn’t care less either way, just as long as you’re not pointing the finger at them. It isn’t right to suggest that every win for race equality results in a loss for white working-class people. When socially mobile black people manage to penetrate white-dominated spheres, they often try to put provisions in place (like diversity schemes) to bring others up with them. And they’re just more visible than white people. I see class-based outcry about efforts to boost black representation from people who are in the position to bring up their working-class counterparts if they wanted to. For some reason, they choose not to, yet are quick to block other kinds of progress.
So although class and race are inextricably connected, for people of colour, moving or changing class can be a tantalising prospect. Children of immigrants are often assured by well-meaning parents that educational access to the middle classes can absolve them from racism. We are told to work hard, go to a good university, and get a good job.
We can’t berate our parents for wanting us to have a better life and better chances than they did. But after I graduated, I quickly realised that social mobility was not going to save me. My suspicions were backed up by the statistics. When the Trades Union Congress looked at data from the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey, they found that black employees were dealing with a growing pay gap in comparison to their white counterparts, and that this pay gap actually widened with higher qualifications. Black people with education up to GSCE level were paid 11 per cent less. Black people with A-levels saw an average of 14 per cent less pay, and university-educated black graduates saw a gap of, on average, 23 per cent less pay than their white peers.12 A cap, gown and degree scroll does nothing to shield black graduates from discrimination.
The children of immigrants have quietly assimilated to demands of colour-blindness, doing away with any evidence of our culture and heritage in an effort to fit in. We’ve listened to our socially conservative parents, and educated ourselves up to our eyeballs. We’ve kept our gripes to ourselves, and changed our appearance, names, accents and dress in order to fit the status quo. We have bitten our tongues, exercised safe judgement, and tiptoed around white feelings in an effort to not rock the boat. We’ve been tolerant up to the point of not even mentioning race, lest we’re accused of playing the race card. Forget politician-speak about Britain being a tolerant country. Being constantly looked at like an alien in the country you were born in requires true tolerance.
I don’t think that any amount of class privilege, money or education can shield you from racism. And although I don’t begrudge kids from poor backgrounds getting the education or training they desire and following their dreams (in fact, I actively encourage it), I want them to know that this alone is not going to end racism, because the onus isn’t on them to change people’s minds with sharp suits, slick hair and FTSE100 companies.
Moving class requires a modicum of success, and if you’re not white, success is a double-edged sword. Even if you work really hard and find yourself at the top of your game, there will be a debate about whether this has happened because of your race, or despite it. When a woman who wasn’t white – poet Sarah Howe – won the ￡20,000 TS Eliot Prize for poetry, satirical magazine Private Eye questioned her success, writing: ‘as a successful and very “presentable” young woman with a dual Anglo–Chinese heritage, Howe can be seen as a more acceptable ambassador for poetry than the distinguished grumpy old men she saw off.’13 The suggestion couldn’t be clearer: it was an implication that her success was no more than a box-ticking exercise. There is a suspicion laid at the feet of people who aren’t white who succeed outside of their designated fields (for black people, those fields are singing and sport). And if you are a young woman, some will think that you have only become successful because an imagined male superior is interested in having sex with you. The reason why you have made it is never assumed to be a result of your hard work, will or determination. There’s nothing more threatening to some than the redistribution of cultural capital.
Complicating the idea that race and class are distinctly separate rather than intertwined will be hard work. It involves piercing a million thought bubbles currently dominating conversations about class in this country. It means irritating politicians and commentators, and it means calling their story of a white working class besieged by selfish and ungrateful immigrants exactly what they are – hate-mongering nonsense. Divide and rule serves no useful purpose in the politics of class solidarity, neither does it work particularly well in lifting people out of poverty. We know that targeted policies aimed at eradicating class inequalities will also go some way in challenging race inequalities, because so many black households are low income. But we can’t be naive enough to believe that those in power are in any way interested in piercing their power for the sake of a fairer society. And although working-class white and BME people have lots in common, we need to remember that although the experiences are very similar, they are also very different.
Although some deal with class prejudice, others deal with racialised class prejudice. It’s that complexity that needs to be navigated successfully if we ever want an accurate understanding of what it means to be working class in Britain today.
7
THERE’S NO JUSTICE, THERE’S JUST US
‘When do you think we’ll get to an end point?’
I’m at a sixth-form college in south London, talking to a large group of teenagers about racism in Britain. The question is put to me by a seventeen-year-old girl. She’s echoed on this point by her teacher. They’re both white.