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Q: Theory on Classism (Classicism? No...Classism. I was right the first time)
Discussing this with my friends the other day. I have a theory that the most potent forms of classism come from close proximity between the haves and the have-nots
A little background on me...I grew up the kid of two professionals so I had a fairly privileged upbringing that i'm very grateful for. Not wealthy mind you, my parents still had to work for a living but absolutely an objectively comfortable life in a suburb full of similar people. You'd think that my school would be a hotbed of elitism; making fun of kids with bad clothes etc. but honestly it really wasn't. I don't remember ONE time in my entire school career that ANYONE was ever put down because of the brands they were wearing or their parents car. My dad drove an old Jeep because it was what he liked best and I never once felt self conscious about any of the dents or anything and I don't think anyone else did either. Basically it was that we were all pretty comfortable, so to compete we had to develop talents and personality instead of just resting on saying "My Daddy is a VP" for our social status.
When I went to college and met people with similar economic backgrounds as mine, but from less affluent towns, they tended to be WAY more elitist than anyone I ever met growing up. I never heard someone described as "trashy" (outside of high-school TV shows) until I met people from places that had poorer people. In a place where there are both haves and have-nots, identifying yourself as a have becomes really important to your social standing
This brings me to China. In most places here, it is so hard for a kid from a rich family not to have his "specialness" reinforced on a constant daily basis. If you're the son of a rich man in an average chinese town, your CNY is Paris vacation; the other kids CNYs are seeing their father for 8 days a year. So yeah...you don't have to have a personality or follow the rules. Your "betterness" is so obvious to everyone that it becomes a feedback loop where you have to make no effort socially to get what you want. I lived in Anhui for 6 months and I saw this kind of shit constantly from these arrogant little shitheads (the adults not the kids) with absolutely no ability or personality of their own.
In a big city like Shanghai...and i'm Beijing and Guangzhou as well, where being a have is the rule rather than the exception, people can't get away with that; just like with my town they need to develop personalities to compete. Doesn't mean there aren't tons of arrogant assholes, and a ton of looking down on people from other places (there is still that sense that their group of Shanghainese is superior, but within the group there is a lot more equality), but a guy driving a BMW in Shanghai is just as likely to be a smart, fairly progressive Senior Consultant at PwC whose been around the block a few times than they are to be a corrupt govt official or recent farmland buyout king.
I think that's why societies like Sweden and Norway work so well, and why they are willing to accept such high taxes, with everyone hovering around a very comfortable mean there isn't the sense of “makers vs. takers" there is in the US. That I don't want MY tax dollars going to some trashy piece of shit! They don't deserve healthcare or they'd work harder! There's a lot less empathy when you're dealing with a group with much lower norms than yours. In my town, our property taxes were insane, but they funded two top-50 US High Schools. People generally didn't mind paying them because there wasn't a sense there was this "trashy" group freeloading off everyone else.
Also, when you don't have that out-group in close proximity, you don't get frustrated with them. I think it's paradoxically easier to think of poor people as just an unfortunate group who deserve your help when you don't have to deal with potentially bad behavior. Here, no matter where you live you're still stuck dealing with people spitting, cutting lines, throwing trash and acting like assholes. The frustration destroys any empathy. I think that's why Americans can tend to rally behind causes supporting poverty relief in Africa, while voting against social benefits at home. The African villagers so far away seem so friendly and like they never had a chance so they deserve our help, not like those ghetto/trailer park jackasses here. They deserve to be poor!
I dunno if there's anything really positive we can take away from this theory, just wanted to throw it out there
I dont have anything to add, just want to say I enjoyed it. Its nice to read something unbiased and well though out. I especially like the piece about different cities within China. Which is why, im sure, so many people here have different feelings about the upper/lower classes.
Ive noticed people like me and others in larger more developed cities tend to lean towards the upper class side of the fence where other foreigners in places like Anhui as you said or Nanjing or Chengdu seem to often take the lower class side.
Interesting read. Props
coineineagh:
I'm from a lower class background, and it colours my perceptions no matter where I live. I've learned that solidarity is strength, and protects against 'taking' from above. Something I'm especially vigilant of, to the annoyance of many. My unionist attitudes find little reciprocation in Europe much less China, and it makes me very few friends. I even find myself arguing with my wife's programming, just to defend my right to talk and care about politics and ethics.
expatlife26:
Thanks I appreciate that
you and me definitely see eye-to-eye on a few things like the "scooter driving hippy set"...like I don't think for a second that lower class locals deserve us sticking up for their lifestyles. They don't live like that to make a statement about simple living and probably think we're failures to our family for not living up to our parents/country standards.
There isn't always a good guy and a bad guy in every situation. If you have a city full of scummy, obnoxious common folk and arrogant, mean-spirited rich people...what does that tell you? To me that says that if you took away the money from a rich guy he'd go right back to being scummy and obnoxious and if you gave it to a poor guy he'd become arrogant and mean-spirited. I don't want to listen to someone complain about something that they would be doing themselves if they had the option to.
Like I said the only locals that I really find break this trend are people of at least some means, from big international cities, who spend time with other people of similar background. So there isn't that big fish small pond mentality. People who had the means to have interesting experiences to shape their lives and the necessity to develop a good personality. No it's absolutely not fair.
I know that average zhous here get bullied by rich jerks, but that doesn't make either of them fun to be around either. I guess what i'm getting at here is that when the options are two groups of unpleasant people...you don't have to take sides at all.
Spiderboenz:
Hey now, i'm not sure that i can agree with that list, as a middle class foreigner in Nanjing
I'm confused...
"the most potent forms of classism come from close proximity between the haves and the have-nots".
Then, you site Sweden and Norway, where everyone is basically level due to their social welfare systems.. and implying that there's little/no classism.. I tend to agree with this.
Yet, you also suggest that cities like SH, BJ and GZ are less likely (I think) to be classist due to close contact between the rich and the poor (which all 3 cities have bucket-loads of next to each other). I think that's ridiculous!
Also, let's look historically (and currently) - the uber-rich try as hard as they can to separate themselves from the 'common folk' - and while perhaps not as overtly as in the past, still snub those poorer lot as being beneath their notice.
mike695ca:
Hes not saying that there isnt a wealth gap in large cities. He is saying wihin these cities there are large groups of people with the same social status that have spent there lives together thus without a need to compete as their situations are relatively the same. Thus these people dont have so much of an us vs them atitude and are more emotionally and socially developed. Thats not ridiculous at all. Whats ridiculous is a dude that isnt from one of the cities mentioned calling a person who has these experiences every day ridiculous.
expatlife26:
No no, I’m saying they are less classist within their group (like from shanghainese to shanghainese) though still to others.
I think having a sizable peer group of people who demand more out of you than money is what makes some rich people tolerable and interesting and others not.
Shining_brow:
@Mike...
Firstly, it's about 'classism' - which means he can't be talking about people at the same social status and how they interact with each other.
The claim that having lots more people around you of the same social status leads to being "more emotionally and socially developed" has been proven ridiculous for aeons!
I'd like to know exactly what it is that makes you think I'm not 'from' one of those 3 cities I've mentioned, or have absolutely no experience about them....
To say the people in those cities are spending their "lives 'relatively the same" (except those of similar status) is ridiculous! There are people who live in those cities (and across the rest of the world) who can buy a nice new BMW every week, and others (the majority) who won't ever be able to afford a 2nd hand one! Will you honestly suggest that there's no classism between them?? No superiority/inferiority complexes going on? No angst? Resentment? Callous attitudes??
@Expatlife... so? This has been fairly well established for a very long time. There is classism around the world, and the members of those distinct classes stick together (more or less). In fact, that's what class is... it's a group of people who have common interests etc (including attitudes).
Having more people within your particular class doesn't change people's attitudes.. again, proven over centuries (compare the lower classed farmers in China now with the lower classed farmers of 3000 years ago... they're basically the same, and the classism still exists. Compare the rich elite of China (or England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia... etc etc) now, with those of the past... still basically the same. The only significant difference has been that the rich of now have come up through a much stronger middle class through the acquisition of wealth, so that once they've gone from MC-UpperMC-UC, there are still (sometimes tenuous) connections with those lower on the rungs. Attitudes towards lower classes hasn't changed significantly, and where they have, tended towards becoming worse (except where they are needed to keep wealth accumulation).
expatlife26:
Listen, what I’m saying is that if you’re the one rich kid in a poor town where all the other kids’ parents are basically beholden to your dad…you aren’t ever getting anything close to honest social feedback. There are very few incentives to try and be good at anything or to become an interesting person. There will always be people to suck up to you; you will always have a girl willing to put up with you because you’re the only one who isn’t poor. That’s why I think the powerful people out in the provinces can be so awful…why wouldn’t they be? Why incentives would they have had to become halfway decent people surrounded only by those they feel contempt for?
On the other hand, you put that kid around others who aren’t impressed by him and then the bar suddenly gets raised. He can’t just be the rich little dipshit around other people who are living comfortably, he has to do more. It creates an environment where there is more of an incentive to develop a personality, to excel etc. He has to compete with others of similar opportunity to impress girls who won’t throw themselves at him out of sheer desperation.
My point about the native Shanghainese (not the migrants just the locals) is they’re an example of a group here where the mean living standard is pretty high. Of course there are differences in wealth within that group, but you don't have to be rich to not be intimidated by rich; more importantly to not just blindly suck up to them. Owning a toyota isn't that different from a BMW...but they're both a hell of a lot better than pushing a wooden vegetable cart. A 15K RMB vacation and a 150K RMB vacation can both be fun experiences...seeing your kids for 8 days a year after a hellish travel rush is terrible. Your average shanghai guy is going to have a little more poise and confidence in dealing with the wealthy. People can treat you only as badly as they can get away with. That’s not to say that Shanghai locals don’t look down on migrants, they do. But my opinion is that having such a big group of more or less affluent peers, people who need even a little more than money to be impressed creates more interesting people on average.
Shining_brow:
I'm still not buying it!
Firstly, it's not 'classism' you're describing. And the examples you are using are examples of within class peers - upper middle, or lower upper class. Sure, the lines blend a bit, and that's where there will be changes in behaviour, but the extremes will become obvious, and that's what your Shanghai example partly illustrates, and partly completely ignores. The serious haves don't give a toss about the have nots (check out the beggars on the streets, and see who's given them the money!!) those closer on those steps may have a little more tolerance, but that's because a) they might get there, or b) that's where they came from.
Go see how an ex-multi-billionaire treats people...
Also, for those social 'norms' (ie, peer groups) - sure, those at the top with no peers can and will do as they like, cos they have no-one to feedback off. What's 'right' and 'wrong' in behaviour is dictated by parents (and reinforced by the lower classes putting up with it). Throw said person (young adult??) into a group of peers, and peer group pressure starts up. They will have far more tolerance for those within their own group/class, but the attitudes towards the others aren't going to change (quickly nor greatly - unless those peers have changed class level).
Humans can be cruel both individually, and in large groups.
Society has had an ever increasing middle and upper middle class, and with that, an increasing Upper class. Those from lower classes have been moving up the chain. Some have made it rich super fast (within years or only a decade or two). And, those who have made it up, have very quickly gotten away from their 'roots'... and their kids have known nothing of that former level, and are more than happy not to! However, compare them to the 'old money' people, and you'll see exactly what I mean! And that is what is meant by 'classism'.
The homogenous cities of the world (Shanghai, Hong Kong, most of Europe. Nth America, Australia, etc) have a vast middle class, where all those class lines blur. And so your theory might seem good. It can be hard to determine if the guy or girl sitting next to you is from the same class or not (probably is, or you wouldn't be in the same place!) But when it becomes obvious, it's obvious! And watch the attitudes change then!!!
"Interesting" is a very subjective term... But, sure... within your own group, you need to put in the effort... but that's not 'classism'. That's just norms and peers.
I can't really comment on your experiences in America. In Holland, I've heard people from well-off families summarize a community at a glance, and it goes something like: "Streets are reasonably clean. Neighbours seem to keep their houses in good shape, but they're clearly renters, not house owners. I don't see anyone hanging around on the streets, fortunately. A black man is cycling, but it looks like he's only passing through. I see some Moroccon guys getting out of a car. Keep an eye on it: If it happens late at night, they might be dealers. There's another muslim with a headscarf and a baby, but from the looks of the neighbours' windows, most of them are normal people. I see a few regular Dutch folk, too, so this definitely isn't a black neighbourhood. Okay, I think this place is decent enough." Saying stuff like that *literally* stuns me more than it would most people, I think. Many things in there struck me as offensive, but I didn't make a fuss since it was my friend's brother. He wanted to make sure his bro was moving into a 'safe' neighbourhood, using his definition of one.
I get the impression that big coastal cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen have a large population of rich locals, and locals are all about superiority complex. The foreigners who talk like they do can make friends with them easily, so it's no surprise that an elitist subculture of expats exists in those cities. I've met many expats here in Sichuan province, and though some are more friendly than others, I never got the impression that people felt too important to associate with a lowly ESL teacher. But I do get that impression from the local "welly impotent possums".
And the simple fact is, that showing empathy and consideration is a sign of weakness in this culture. Only beggars and poor people show humility, because they *have to*. the "Wee eye pees" are cruel and inconsiderate because they *can* be. Everyone in between feels the need to emulate the rich and powerful in their antisocial behaviourisms, to feign strength and protect themselves. Mao Zedong showed what gruesome things happen to the poor and unconnected in this country, so it's hard to blame people for behaving this way.
mike695ca:
You call it superiority complex and elitist subculture, i call it not coming to china to live like a smelly hobo and worry that i cant eat bbq tonight. To each his own i guess. Enjoy your 5 kuai noodles tonight!
expatlife26:
I've never been to sichuan but I would imagine it's pretty similar to anhui, with arrogant pricks as the WIPs you talk about and then people who are at best friendly but ignorant rounding things out.
I dunno, I don't think you can pick sides there. Everybody has gotta be pretty miserable.
Cities are full of jerks too, but at least there are some cool people there and it's not because I pander to their elitism. It may seem crazy to someone out in the provinces but there are progressive, with-it locals who have been around the block a few times.
coineineagh:
mikey, you're really having a go at people with the ad hominems, recently. What set you off, man? Did you have a brush with an e-bike? Yesterday some woman on a scooter clipped me on a zebra crossing - and she scolded me! It's just too dangerous for people to admit error in China, so they're cruel and unapologetic, no matter their class. And for the record, it's the Chinese who are obsessed with food, not us. Are you copying insults from Chinese people? Because only Chinese wannabes and schoolyard bullies talk like you do. Enjoy your meal.
expatlife26:
Coineineagh,
I want to respond a little to what you said shocked you so much about someone’s attitude towards picking a neighborhood. I mentioned I grew up in a homogeneously affluent town, and surprisingly the attitudes were pretty progressive. I learned about things like racial discrimination and classism and it just seemed like two absolutely ludicrous concepts. How could anyone be so evil to not like blacks? (Based on the black kids at my school who were the talented kids of smart people.) It seemed insane and I would condemn anyone making any negative statements about a person of color. Now when I’d gotten out into the world more I learned that there are lots of black people (and whites, arabs, chinese etc.) that a rational person of ANY color would not want to live around. Theres a big difference between looking at a neighborhood and seeing houses with discarded appliances in their front lawn and blasting loud music and saying “You know this doesn’t look like a pleasant place to live” and saying “I would never live next to a filthy mechanic!!” And when someone is looking to buy a home, they need to think about how to get somewhere the property value is gonna go up. Keep in mind that for a middle class person, a higher home value can be the difference between a comfortable retirement and feeling a burden on your children.
I mean shit dude I agree that in a perfect world it would be wrong to have to make choices and statements like that…but this isn’t a perfect world. You yourself complain about your obnoxious neighbors and the poor living environment that comes from their shitty values. I don’t have those issues specifically because I consider things like that when I picked my apartments (I.E. I picked a newish building where the smallest apartment size was the size I wanted; that lets the bigwigs with the 120m+ houses pay the higher management fees to subsidize my living environment while avoiding swarms of loud low-skill workers piling into one apartment (they’ll pick the cheapest building) and general crowding on the elevator (if I live in the smallest apartment size they’ll be fewer total apartments)). To me it's just good personal management, and avoids a TON of stressful situations. I'd like to think that doesn't make me evil.
coineineagh:
Well, what about China then? There are people here who have never seen a black person in real life, only actors on TV. Despite their only contact with black people being relatively positive, they still have horrendous opinions of them. Kids will scream in terror, and I recall someone saying an adult teacher left the room scared when a black teacher walked in. I think your theory of contact/interaction defining how we view people is at best too simple. The opinions we hold are informed by more than just frequency of contact, and it should be noted that it's far easier to retain memory of a negative contact with a "them" group than it is to let positive interaction influence your opinion.
expatlife26:
I'm not saying anything about positive interaction, my point is that a rational person can want to avoid certain things, like for me I want to avoid obnoxious groups of people as neighbors and I described the steps I took to minimize my risk of a bad home situation.
I know what that person said about that neighborhood shocked you, and I sympathize it shouldn't be like that. But it is. Rational people have to make choices to try and minimize the problems they face on a daily basis.
I'm not so vain to think that i'm doing any good for the world by living in a old concrete block apartment. That doesn't help the people there, it just means i'm more stressed than I need to be.
How do you define class? Monetary income? Old money, new money? Ability to appreciate classical music, fine wines, art?
The "nouveau riche" have always been disdained by those with old money.
Having class and being of a class are two different animals. You can be considered by society as being "upper class" but your behavior can be crass. You can be poor and yet be well-cultured (and even educated!).
Shining_brow:
Class, in this context, comes down to financials. And, obviously, different countries will have different divisions... Zimbabwe will obviously have very different divisions of class compared to England.
The other 'class' you refer to comes from feudal times, and the idea that being of a higher 'class' meant having better manners, behaviours, attitudes, etc. (obviously, this is a fallacy, as we can see quite clearly these days :p)
maybe we should have just talked about Classicism after all.
What do you guys think about Joseph Haydn?
