Why I find it so hard to talk about class

I’ve been trying to write a piece on what it means to be working class and my experiences with it for a very long time. I’ve sent Nadeen several drafts, none of which I was happy with. Class is really hard to write about, because it confronts people with ideas that challenge their worldviews and priors, in a way that race or sexuality don’t always do. 

The problem tends to lie in the fact that, being working class, I observe a lot of things. I have a lot of anecdotes, read up on social mobility and try to work out my part in this weird world we live in. If I talk about some of my own upbringing, it shuts the conversation down, and sometimes students apologise, as if the mere thought of growing up poor is taboo. If I have to hear about your life in private school, your holidays in the south of France, or how inheritance tax will personally affect you, I think you should also be open to hearing about how the kids I grew up with got groomed into being drug dealers and what it was like having police officers in schools because of knife crime. 

Neither of us can live in a bubble, surrounded only by people from the same social class. What sense of a world would we have without that perspective? 

Some students are blissfully unaware of how most people in the United Kingdom live because they’ve been fortunate enough to grow up with affluent parents. I find these kinds of students very interesting to talk to. I learn a lot from them, not just about the kinds of worries one has as a high earner, but also about the type of events, upbringings, and differences there are in education. I find it fascinating to hear about the different kinds of independent and fee-paying schools available in the world, and how the difference in curricula can impact a child’s education. Sure, they will say out-of-touch things sometimes, but it is done out of ignorance, which is a lot easier to forgive. 

Other students come to me to absolve themselves of the guilt they carry. By my validation – and I have noticed it is me in particular, probably because I am happy to talk about this, and have a very regional accent – I think they believe that they have purged themselves of any personal guilt they may have about being privileged. Sometimes they want a weird form of recognition. Some students really want to say they have it as hard as the less well-off and are solipsistic in the sense that they want to believe the world’s misfortune is solely upon them, and that they have had to work the hardest. 

It is odd, both being fetishised as a victim, but also used as a pillar. This brings me back to understanding why class makes people so uncomfortable. In a university like Imperial, where we study subjects with causal relationships very often, and we try to make sense of why certain things occur, it can be hard to understand why, for many people, the outcomes of their actions may not always work. Luck is not a scientific idea, and I believe this idea, that if one has worked hard, then they can achieve anything they want, chafes against how the world has worked in many students’ favour as of yet. The idea of an external limitation or constraint is also foreign to a plurality of people’s experiences here, which I personally think is beautiful to have in your life, and I’m happy for those students. I don’t feel resentment. This isn’t the politics of envy; I just don’t want to be made out to be the bad guy for talking about my life. 

I’m quite grateful for the opportunity to study at Imperial, and even if I have had a very rocky road, I appreciate both the personal and professional development I have had. It’s really opened my eyes to how the world truly functions. However, I do wish more students were open to hearing about how the rest of the non-professional world lives, and more comfortable hearing and learning about experiences that challenge their own priors, and considering that there is a world of viewpoints beyond the ones they have lived in, that inform how the world operates today.