Do the Scottish Police Hate the Working Class?
This week, I’ve been thinking about how otherwise ‘progressive’ people can sometimes have a blind spot when it comes to social class.
Like the Scottish Police’s ‘hate monster’. I have a problem with this.
According to the Scottish police, ‘young men aged 18-30’, who are ‘white’ and ‘from socially excluded communities’ are more likely to have ‘ideas about white-male entitlement’ that lead them to commit hate crimes. I disagree. Or, at least, I don’t think you can ascribe criminal intent to a group. I’d also like to see the evidence for their assertions, perhaps a comparative study; I’d have thought the more damaging ‘white-male entitlement’ would have come from those with more money and power.
After all, doesn’t research suggest that we have the opposite problem, that working-class people (particularly men) are the objects of middle-class hatred?
In her research, Alison Phipps, (Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies at Glasgow), concluded that ‘the unruly, uncivilised, violent working-class Other … is a repository for the qualities the middle classes fear and … reject’. (I reproduced this quote once before in a post about ‘othering’.) I’d respectfully suggest that the Scottish police’s ‘hate monster’ is a prime example of hatred towards young, working-class white men.
I have a feeling, riffing off Alison Phipps’s work, that working-class men have simply become symbols of everything the liberal elites fear and loathe. And because class isn’t a protected characteristic, they’re fair game. No need to tax the wealthy, properly fund social care, or solve the housing crisis if you can blame the violent proles (or weaponise their genuine sense of hopelessness, discontent, and fear).
This ‘hate monster’ nonsense is some of the most patronising prose I’ve ever read. And if I still lived on a council estate with no prospect of escape, I’d be incandescent at being told that I didn’t matter, that everyone else’s grievances trumped my own, and moreover that the problem with society was me.
Love the article - superb points!