Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

It's based on flawed logic - he admits it to students at Vanderbilt, who he assumes none of which are from working class backgrounds, so that high school kids in blue collar areas can be told it'll be ok. There's no thread there at all.

Did you read the last paragraph?

Yes, that's why I referred to it.if that's his goal then telling non-working class students (his own assumption) in 'very selective tertiary education' (to borrow Suzy's phrase) doesn't go any way to achieving it.

Alternatively, if publicity in general is an aim, what's the Guardian's standing in the sort of communities that only have a "tiny, rural high school, where there was no college counselor, no one to expose the children of sharecroppers to options after graduation beyond working on a farm or in a factory"?

It's a start. He himself went to Vanderbilt before getting hired there, so clearly not all of their students come from privileged backgrounds. Some of them could indeed contribute towards that long-term goal back home if exposed to this kind of discourse. Not ambitious enough? Perhaps. But that's a different matter.

The article is uber simplistic. Maybe it grates because who needs another white working class article. Ugh.

The more articles about the working class, the better. Though I do agree that the tendency to reserve this term to white people in the US is infuriating.

And how is he that banal, dry of a writer for teaching creative writing?

xpost I though this was written by a brit at first and was interested.

I just looked up the college profile data for Vanderbilt from 1999-2000. ~40% of the predominately white undergrad class received need based financial aid. The article was a missed opportunity.

Again: are any posters (who aren’t me) sharing their opinions on this guy the former recipients of full financial aid (tuition and accommodation) at a US college/uni of the calibre and expense of a Vanderbilt?

I went to UVa so that was public. And my mom was a chinese restaurant waitress and dad in navy, I didn't qualify for need based financial aid.

xpost I though this was written by a brit at first and was interested.

Like that would happen, amirite uptheworkers etc

Yeah, I kind of wanted to know if britain has the same fetishization of the (white) working class. I am approximately the same age as this guy and I always assumed a large enough amount of people attending universities all over the US came from a working class background, especially based upon the age/generation of parents "Coming out" as working class as a thing to overcome seems counterproductive to changing what makes most of america (education, healthcare, fresh food, housing) unaffordable for the majority. I could've and wanted to attend several elite private universities but thought it was an unnecessary, bad financial decision when I had cheaper options.

surprise: it does

my bootstraps are having a coming out party.

How are the issues of education, healthcare, fresh food and housing unrelated to the working class condition? If you're not middle class or above, you're part of the working class, no matter your race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. Those concerns aren't erased as a result; it's just an additional category to consider. Or am I failing to grasp the finer semantic hues?

I think I missed a punctuation (.) after "generation of parents". Trying to figure out where I was jumbly. Like, coming out as working class has been this weird humblebrag in the US forever; it's something to overcome instead of changing the system that preserves it. Did that address it?

I should probably have put low-income instead of working class there in the part about the systemic preservation of it.

Ah, I see what you mean. That sounds like a very US-specific (and frankly depressing) take on the working class. Not that other countries don't have this problem, it's just less prevalent. Such is my impression, at least.

As ogmor said there is a similar fetishization of the working class in the UK, not least amongst working class people ourselves. It coexists alongside the prejudices and discrimination that working class people experience everywhere in the world.

I was trying to find the exact definitions of working class, blue collar, low-income etc. Because a lot of blue collar jobs pay really, really well. I almost became a union electrician in my 20s.

see also political candidates talking about how they come from a long line of ranchers or steel mill workers but leave out that their ranch land has oil rigs on it or their daddy owned all the steel mills.

One of the fun complications of most class structures is it's not just about money. I think that partly accounts for the frequent exclusion of people of colour from some notions of working classness. Wrong notions, obv.

loads of middle class kids go into apprenticeships the electrical/plumbing trades in this era, huff up a bit of asbestos, get some tribal tats, earn some good money, act like they talk like idiot yobs in front of their parents!

That man of the people thing that scumbag politicians and clueless poshoes do is kind of multivalent and class fluid depending on their audience I think.

Just because venal right-wing politicians are apt at manipulating the working class by stoking its sense of pride, doesn't mean the sociological category is itself meaningless and unredeemable. If anything, this kind of thinking may further strengthen the conmen's position.

I used to to work with this young guttermouth Whose dad "worked in a prison". Lol he didn't mention he was an actual professor and taught degree courses in maths!

I don't think anybody here is saying it doesn't have value as a category? If nothing else, in the UK at least, it feels bred into you on a deep social and cultural level.

I think most cultures have some version of this fetischization of the working class: honest, hard working folks who form the backbone of Our Great Nation. It's an easy way for the powerful to keep people in their place.

karl marx 2 thraed

Yeah, I just don't know why coming out as "working class" is something to write about as he has; it's a bootstraps story by a relatively attractive, able bodied , white, american man who acknowledges one can't readily determine his sexuality and that he overlooked that his classmates/friends were also working class (ok, you dick). A better take would've been the complete diversity of the university experience going against the current tale that all professors are coastal elites trying to indoctrinate the children with its liberalist gay frog agenda. Between frat parties and MBA resume drops.

I think most cultures have some version of this fetischization of the working class: honest, hard working folks who form the backbone of Our Great Nation. It's an easy way for the powerful to keep people in their place.

For sure, it's just that when you augment it with the frontier cowboy, hyper-individualist credo of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, its worst aspects are exacerbated, since you piss all over the Marxist aim of emancipation from systemic oppression. This isn't unique to the US, of course, it's just more common there. Or so it seems to me.

I totally did not follow that. Are you saying mocking the bootstraps trope that some people use sincerely (like the guy in the essay) makes things worse?

No, I'm saying that the US more readily fuses the (individualist) bootstraps trope with the (originally antagonistic, i.e. collectivist and Marxist) notion of 'working class', thus cancelling out any hope for systemic liberation via this particular term.

xp most industrialised cultures. the honest hard-working thing is a flash in the pan historically

xpost ah, yes. My problem with the essay.

there's plenty of classical era shit abt the value of work but obv agriculture is the original industry, the two go hand in hand

Not unrelated (from NZ rather than the US, however):

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/40666668_1860613067392597_8932870211413999616_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&_nc_ht=scontent-lhr3-1.xx&oh=c0601cc253b0fe11317b79633b5ad41a&oe=5C7A5D4D

This is great if you want to give yourself an aneurism:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2018/nov/21/how-populist-are-you-quiz

excited to announce that I've been given five articles by The Guardian to explain this political chart! pic.twitter.com/qFfgdrlwEP

— ʙʀᴇxɪᴛ (@Eff__Jay) November 21, 2018

What's wrong with being populary?

This year there has been no avoiding the superstar psychologist from Canada Jordan B Peterson, and if you want to know what he thinks about lobsters and hierarchy you’ll probably have to read his multimillion-selling 12 Rules for Life (Allen Lane). It is both less evil and more eccentric than widely described: those hoping to hate-read it as an “alt-right” screed (or to hate-gift it to someone they don’t like) will be disappointed to find that, far from being some kind of crypto-fascist, Peterson is really a conservative existentialist, a bit like a more sciencey Roger Scruton.

Guardian best books of 2018.

Can't believe there's some pig-thick nazi apologists writing in the Graun

my book is the best book of 2018 so yes the guardian is getting worse

Scruton did the full English Breakfast of not very cryptofascist at all complaints on radio 4 last night: PC gone mad, offence archaeology, the invention of islamophobia, Witchunts etc... Probably not the best comparison to make when trying to make JP sound more respectable to libs!

A less scrutony Roger Science.

... sorry, more. LOL Jordan Peterson + science.

tbh it's Jung I feel sorry for