The fixation with the ‘white working class’ as a disadvantaged and underrepresented section of British society by politicians and the media is more pronounced than ever before in the wake of Brexit and the rise of Trump. You’ll find article after article across mainstream media outlets on the importance of prioritising the needs of this ‘left behind’ group. This media focus which affixes ‘white’ onto ‘working class’ is problematic for a number of reasons, not least because it paints an inaccurate picture of who makes up the British working class.
While we tend to think of white men when we think about working class Britain, the reality is, this socioeconomic group is not racially homogeneous and the most vulnerable within the working class are not white. Statistics show that black and minority ethnic (BAME) women are twice as likely to be affected by austerity as white men, meanwhile research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that BAME people are also much more likely to be living in income poverty than white people. Some 20% of white Britons are living in income poverty in the UK compared to 30% of black Caribbeans, 45% of black Africans, 55% of Pakistanis and 65% of Bangladeshis. We no longer have an industrial working class but a service sector working class with well over one million people working in call centres, the same amount that worked down the mines during the height of the mining industry. We need to rethink our outdated ideas of what constitutes a working class person in the UK away from nostalgic images of flat cap-wearing factory workers, bus conductors and coal miners to reflect reality and include BAME communities.
This is not to say that white people don’t suffer from economic inequality or that their needs are unimportant. But we must question what makes the white working class distinct from the working class in general. By defining this group by their race, it suggests that it is their whiteness holding them back rather than class prejudice. This feeds into dangerous far-right rhetoric based on the myth that hard-working white people are losing out to immigrants who are coming in and stealing opportunities and hogging scarce resources. I’m pretty sure that even if we all ‘go back where we came from’, the same deep-rooted class structures and inequalities would still exist.
Focusing on a fixed cultural identity rather than economic status also plays a big role in the narrative. As author of The Ministry of Nostalgia, Owen Hatherley, says, the working class is, “treated as a sort of nationality, based on accent, culture and a particular set of views” rather than more salient economic factors. Breaking up the working class into distinct racial groups is a clever form of divide and rule imposed by the ruling elite to maintain the current system. In reality, the white working class and BAME working class have a great deal in common. They are faced with the same economic problems including low wages, high unemployment rates and poor housing. They are not on opposing teams; they should be on the same side in the fight against economic inequality.
Statistics show that globally, wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few, very wealthy individuals. This is what we should really be fighting against when we talk about the struggles faced by the poor in Britain. Oxfam’s Annual Wealth Check revealed that the world’s 26 richest people own as much as the poorest 50%. In the UK, shockingly, the poorest 10% of Brits are paying a higher effective tax rate than the richest 10% once taxes on consumptions such as VAT are taken into account. Instead of holding the elite to account and challenging these injustices, we’re constantly blaming each other.
Racialising the working class as white is also questionable because if policy makers genuinely wanted to lift the most vulnerable sections of British society out of poverty, committing to help the working class in general, without focusing on whiteness, would be more useful. Focusing on white people alone actively denies impoverished people of colour their working class identity. We rarely hear references to the black working class. Are they not as worthy of help as their white counterparts?
Ultimately, the white working class narrative serves no useful purpose other than to maintain the current unequal system and keep both the BAME working class and the white working class out in the cold. We need to reframe the relationship between race and class in order to build a fairer society created in the interests of working people rather than a few wealthy individuals. We must stop seeing it as a zero-sum game. One step forward for racial equality doesn’t mean one step back for the working class. The two issues are not mutually exclusive, they are inextricably linked. Let’s do away with the term ‘white working class’ and strive to help the working class, period.