The White Working Class.
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2018
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The white working class - are they the left behind? Noam Gidron, a Fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University, asks if the right wing, populist vote is a reflection of the declining social status of this group. He's joined by Gurminder Bhambra, Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex, who argues that a concern with economic disadvantage, when talking about the election of Trump, as well as Brexit, has led to a new 'identity politics' of race - one where class takes second place to 'whiteness'. The writer and broadcaster, Kenan Malik, joins the discussion.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. Of course we all know who's responsible for Brexit and for Trump it was the |
| 0:35.4 | disenchantment of the white working class. |
| 0:38.0 | Hello, my parents kept me from children who were rough, wrote Stephen Spender. |
| 0:45.0 | Well, it's a line that's always rather resonated with me because rough was my mother's |
| 0:49.8 | favorite term for the working class, for those who lived in rough areas and went in for |
| 0:54.4 | rough games, areas like Bootle and Seyforth rather than, well you know, Crosby or Blundell |
| 0:59.4 | Sans. And I suppose that distinction was my childhood introduction to social class, to the idea that our |
| 1:06.5 | lower middle class family enjoyed some inherent superiority over those families who lived |
| 1:11.2 | a dozen bus stops near us at the center of Liverpool. |
| 1:14.5 | And then one day just round the corner in Princess Avenue, the Dockities arrived, all seven |
| 1:18.6 | of them, well the Dockities, they were doubly damned. |
| 1:21.5 | They were undoubtedly rough, but they were all so Irish. |
| 1:24.9 | They breed like rabbits, a neighbour confided. |
| 1:28.6 | Race was suddenly as relevant in my life as class. |
| 1:32.6 | There was though one thing that united, my parents and the dockities and the rough types on |
| 1:37.3 | polling day. |
... |
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