#theoretically i have healthcare but none of these fucking doctor’s are open

[wormtoxin]

so so so so so fucking scary having health problems and no doctor and no way to get to the doctor

[emmatrustsno-one]

A response to questions about my essay on class

I prefer to respond to comments with full posts rather than in comments as my autism makes me quite systematic and I struggle to follow multiple threads of conversation at once!

Class and race

Firstly, regarding the rather blurred lines between class and race that come out of Foucault’s ideas about racism, i.e. that racism is not simply socio-political, ideological discrimination but rather a form of government that is designed to manage a population:

The fact that membership of the upper-class is defined almost exclusively by blood does absolutely create a link between the abstract concept of class and the scientific fact of biology. Automatically, the majority of people are excluded from the upper-class due to having the wrong biology, i.e. the wrong blood. In that sense, the upper-class (though not the middle-class) constitutes a biopower in Britain. Since this all started so long ago in history when there were few coloured people in Britain, this automatically means that the blood which determines upper-class status belongs to white people. It also means that the concept of class, at least for the upper-class, includes a notion of being a race apart from the rest of us; biologically separate.

However, firstly, that race apart doesn’t have its foundations in skin colour. The upper-class didn’t envisage themselves as biologically separate in order to manage a population of coloured people; they did it to manage the masses of Britain (and to a lesser and less clear extent, Europe) and managing the masses is still the reason for having that class structure today. This means that, whilst it is racist in the sense that it excludes coloured people by default, it isn’t racist in the sense that excludes them because of ideological discrimination against skin colour or other racial features related to biology, such as eye shape. In a way, if you imagine the upper-class to be a separate race from the lower classes, that in itself turns the lower classes into a race, meaning that, in class terms, everyone is the same race no matter what biological features they have.

Secondly, if you remember, I said that it’s almost impossible to become upper-class, except by marriage and, to lesser degree to become a Lord. Those options are technically open to anybody. Race doesn’t theoretically stop you doing that. I have linked to an article about a Nigerian woman marrying some arsehole-sounding toff! She is the first, but nevertheless shows that it’s possible. Please note that the article is from a right-wing newspaper and comes across as very patronising. It also calls the woman black when she isn’t. She is coloured but not black. Saying black here isn’t racist but there is a problematic tendency for some people to conflate ‘black’ and ‘not white’, which lumps everybody who isn’t white into one big group as washes away their individual stories, which is obviously terrible. I have only included the article to show that the upper-class is open to people of different races, in the same limited ways it is open to others. I don’t read that paper – it just pops up on google often if you are looking for class related things because it’s a middle-class sort of paper and, as I said before, the middle-classes are kind of obsessed with class!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2302258/Emma-McQuiston-How-I-beat-snobs-Britains-black-marchioness.html

Thirdly, although the upper-class is formed via blood, the others aren’t, so your sense of class perception comes from all those other things I mentioned in the original essay. There is nothing biological or official which could mark a person as working or middle-class. Class for working and middle-class people is a mixture of traits, experiences and values. It is a frame of mind, even. Something that runs deep within you and touches every bit of you. You can taste it, even.

It is absolutely true that Britain has problems with racism. Some people’s racist attitudes, as well as the sort of institutionalised racism you get in all western countries, limits and restricts opportunities for coloured people and makes life extra hard for them. There are many coloured middle-class people though. Struggles due to racism and struggles due to class aren’t the same thing. Racism is an attitude; class isn’t. Race is a group within society, rather a layer of society. It’s true that people’s experiences of racism will be different depending on their class, but this difference isn’t big between working and middle-class, and there will also be experiences of racism that people have across all classes. The fact the woman in the article is the first marchioness (the wife of a marquis) is due to the fact that society is starting to tackle racism. It hasn’t happened before because western society is racist, not because class and racism is the same thing. She still had to be wealthy for it to happen, but then so would anyone, no matter what race they were.

Class and gender

Again, there is discrimination based on gender. Again, gender is a distinct ‘group’ within society. It’s true that people’s experiences of gender discrimination will be different depending on their class, but this difference isn’t big between working and middle-class, and there will also be experiences of gender discrimination that people have across all classes.

It’s interesting to note that the idea of upper-class status being defined by your surname gives a new dimension to how changing your surname changes/destroys your identity: women can move classes if they change their surname when they get married, and that will, in turn, change who they are, much more deeply than the way your identity is usually changed when you get married.

Class and health

Inevitably, working-class people are in poorer health than others. We have the NHS here, thank god, so everyone can get decent healthcare. However, the NHS is not that good. The people usually are, but the system isn’t. The NHS is a government body, which means major decisions and funding come from the upper-class or upper middle-class, since they are the only ones who can the contacts required to get into government. The government interferes with research, blocks the release of medications approved by other countries and generally makes life difficult for NHS employees by giving them onerous paperwork or giving them no choice but to work triple shifts with no break. They also dramatically under-fund it. Hospitals have poor facilities, too few beds and very long waiting lists and doctors sometimes hold back prescribing none-essential medicine because of the cost. Moreover, you do have to pay for the dentist and optician. In fact, it is at breaking point at the moment. We have our most right-wing government in years and a of people (including me) believe it won’t be long until it is scrapped. This isn’t the place to get on about that, but believe me, it would be a socio-economic disaster.

A few anecdotes, as ever:

- One of my mum’s colleagues has a detached retina. It was diagnosed by her optician 3 weeks ago. They sent her immediately to hospital, but she couldn’t go to her local hospital as, like nearly all hospitals serving smaller towns and more rural areas, it is too basic to deal with almost everything. So she had to have a journey of an hour. The hospital she was sent to (my local hospital – I live near a city) decided that they, too, didn’t have the equipment/expertise/staff to deal with it and sent her to a hospital in the nearest major city, so she had another journey of an hour. That hospital agreed they could operate but they couldn’t fit her in for nearly 2 weeks, so she would have to go home and come back then. So she travelled home (2 hours). They called and postponed the appointment due to lack of staff not once, not twice, not three times, but FOUR TIMES. She has still not had the operation. If her retina moves again at all, she will be blinded in that eye. She isn’t allowed to even get out of bed in case sitting up moves it.

- My uncle recently had an illness that caused him to have severe pains in the region of his appendix. He went to hospital (the same hospital my mum’s colleague couldn’t go to). They didn’t even have the expertise to diagnose appendicitis so he was sent to my local hospital, like my mum’s colleague. After arriving at the second hospital he was left for 9 hours before he was seen to. If it had been appendicitis he would have probably died. Luckily it wasn’t. Since there was a chance he might have had to have surgery to remove the appendix, during those 9 hours he wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything. Once they established what it was, they brought him some toast (bearing in mind he hadn’t eaten in at least 12 hours, if you count the time he spent at the original hospital), which is inadequate enough, but, they served it in a bowl, because they had no plates. Honestly.

I could give many more examples. Almost everyone here has got numerous horror stories about the NHS. We do support them and working-class people especially and fervently behind the NHS, because without it we wouldn’t have healthcare at all. If it goes we genuinely fucked.

Higher class people, being most often wealthy, can afford private healthcare, so they don’t realise and/or don’t care that basic healthcare is so inadequate.

There’s also the issue of how living a working-class life affects your health. You work harder and longer than some people. You don’t get a good diet. You live in housing that might be cold, damp, cramped or have maintenance issues you can’t afford to fix, or your landlord doesn’t fix, like missing roof tiles. That all takes its toll on the body. If your personal hygiene isn’t great you might develop skin problems. A combination of not cleaning your teeth well and eating too much processed food, combined with the fact we do have to pay for dental care, might mean you have bad teeth. I have 4 teeth missing, for instance. I know someone who does voluntary work at a homeless shelter, and they have to make soup or stew and that’s it because the people who eat there have no teeth. They have all rotted and fallen out. It is possible for middle-class to end up homeless and in need of such help, because class isn’t all about wealth, as I’ve said, but at least they could access a decent diet if it was provided by charity because they are likely to have decent teeth.

Then there’s mental health. Mental health services are woefully inadequate anyway, but if you are working-class then the system is designed to keep you working, so you might be accused of whining, or have your illness ignored completely if there’s no physical evidence of it. The people around you are likely to be unsympathetic towards weakness, especially if you’re a man, because working-class people can have a ‘shut up and get on with it’ kind of attitude. You might struggle to get and keep a job, which makes you even poorer. Your life is likely to predispose you to depression, since you are working so hard, not getting much back and have little time for yourself. Since you have no choice but to work and the system won’t help you much via support or disability benefits you might look for other ways to cope, such as alcohol or crime. You won’t have the time, money or energy to get out and do much with people so your relationships will be affected, which also can lead to depression.

You are likely to live in a more urban area and won’t have the time, energy, money or transport to get into nature, so you probably don’t get enough fresh air, exercise and relief from stress. That affects your physical and mental health, and also stops you accessing your own country.

My next post will be about the 2 pillars of class in Harry Potter - the wizarding world class system and the muggle/real world one.

To finish, here are 2 pictures of working-class areas in Britain around the time Snape was born. The first is the town I grew up in. I’m not sure where the second is. The photographer thought possibly Birmingham, in the midlands.The silhouette (although it’s a girl I think) reminded me of Snape!