Rejoinder: Classism is Social Activists' Forgotten Prejudice - Ahmed Sule

Wednesday, December 23, 2020 / 09.17AM /OpEd By Ahmed Olayinka Sule, CFA* / Header Image Credit: Twitter

Dear Jemima,

I read with interest your article titled, "Classism is social activists'forgotten prejudice" published in the 2 December 2020edition of the Financial Times. You argue that to be a white working-class maleis often a marker of underprivilege. You note that while all sorts of bigotryare shunned, "Ridiculingsomeone for their lack of education, or for their social class, often appearsto remain acceptable." You also suggest that social activistsare not accepting of the plight of white working-class men as they see,"whiteness, cisgenderness and maleness as the ultimate privileges."Furthermore, you state that the prevalence of the cancellation culture makes itdifficult to make class issues the primary discriminatory factor relative toracism and sexism.

Your article rests on three faulty pillars - First, it restricts the so-called workingclass to a particular race and gender. Second, it affirms the humanity of the so-called white working-class man whileoverlooking the humanity of so-called non-white working-class men and women. Third, it ignores the role white elites haveplayed racialising the working-class to maintain power. I will address theseflaws in the next couple of paragraphs.

In writing this piece, you join a long list ofthinkers and politicians from the Global North such as Owen Jones, DonaldTrump, Bernie Sanders, and Angus Deaton in whitewashing the working class as a"Pale and Male" collective group. In his book titled Chavs- TheDemonization of the Working Class, Owen Jones mentions white working-classsixty times while black or Asian working-class does not get a single mention.Likewise, in your op-ed, which discusses classism, the words "white"and "male" gets mentioned seven and four times, respectively. Thewell-worn argument among white thinkers that if you are not working-class ifyou are black, Asian, Roma or female needs rethinking.

It does not have to be a case of either classism orracism/sexism, as you suggest. Why can't it be both/and? After all, thesestrands of discrimination are not mutually exclusive. When we narrow ourdiscussion on classism to only white men, we get a whitewashed understanding ofwhat class discrimination is. Similarly, the focus on gender diversity to theexclusion of racial diversity has led to a situation whereby the patriarchalstructure in corporate Britain is now morphing into a white matriarchy that excludeswomen of colour. Furthermore, the focus on white working-class men wouldsuggest that sizeable portions of non-whites are part of the elites when thisis not the case.

Without a doubt, the so-called white working-class menare getting the wrong side of the stick as you pointed out in your article.However, when one takes other ethnicities out of the class analysis, thesuffering by the non-white working class goes unaddressed. The Racial Disparity Audit released by the British Government demonstrates that the non-whiteworking class is at the bottom of the class totem pole. According to thereport, Asian and Black households and those in the Other ethnic group weremore likely to be poor and were the most likely to be in persistent poverty. Italso states that Black, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi people are more likely tolive in areas of deprivation. Black adults were more likely than adults inother ethnic groups to have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. In contrast,of those receiving psychological therapies, White adults experienced betteroutcomes than those in other ethnic groups.

Despite these glaring disparities highlighted above,it is the suffering white working-class that gets the attention of the media,politicians, and academia partly because the humanity of white working-classmale is placed at a higher pedestal than the humanity of the non-whiteworking-class.

You cite a Princeton study, which reveals that "Middle-aged white working-class males'"deaths of despair" have driven a decline in US life expectancy."The ongoing opioid crisis devastating white communities across America has gotthe attention of the political, academic and media class. In response to thetens of thousands of Americans dying of drug overdose every year, the USGovernment declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in 2017. TheTrump Administration secured $6 billion in new funding over a two-year window to fight opioid abuse. In the followingyear, the US Congress passed the single most extensive legislative packageaddressing a single drug crisis in US history.

In contrast to the recent opioid crisis, the USgovernment declared War on Drugs during the crack epidemic of the 1980s, whichled to the demonisation and criminalisation of the black and Latinoworking-class. In a paper titled, The War on Drugs That Wasn't, Julie Netherland and Helena Hansen note, "To date, we have seen no move to similarlycriminalise white suburbanites for their illegal use of prescription opioidsand heroin, even though the scope of this epidemic far exceeds that of crack inthe 1980s and 1990s." As the black working-class languish inAmerican and British prisons for possessing and supplying cannabis, white investors are lining their pockets via the launching of multimillion-dollarcannabis funds.

From the Trans-Atlantic Slavery era up to the 21stcentury, white elites have used the white working class as pawns to maintaintheir power and white supremacy. White and non-white working-class have bothgot the short end of the stick in the Global North economic order. However, thepower elites result to the old divide and rule to keep the two classes separateto eliminate the existential threat the working-class combination could pose totheir hegemony.

During the time of slavery, the wealthy plantationowners utilised the services of white working-class overseers to keep the slaveplantation running. The overseer directed the work of the slaves and meted outpunishment on the black slaves. The Western labour union has a long history of discriminating againstethnic minorities. In Britain, following the immigrationof the Caribbean's in the late 1940s, the white working-class organised labourunion joined hands with employers in restricting job opportunities to blackworkers. As Lee Jasper puts it, the white working-class has "Also been the Labour aristocracy of theworld for years at the expense of other nations. White privilege means theyexpect, and will be treated differently, to their Black and Asian neighbours."

Today, the diversionary tactics used to divide theworking class along colour lines takes a different form. Politicians andwestern pundits often use classism and the invocation of the whiteworking-class man as a red herring to silence the non-whites quest for racialjustice. When black working-class boys cry out for being criminally profiled,all we hear is, "It's timeto give white, working-class boys a fair shot in life.

White elites sometimes suggest that ethnic minoritiescause the woes faced by white working-class. They present a zero-sum argumentby linking "white pain" with "black gain". For long, thewhite elites deceived the white working-class into believing that theirwhiteness meant they had more in common with the white elites than the non-whiteworking-class. Isabel Wilkerson in her book Caste notes, "If the lower-caste person manages actuallyto rise above an upper-caste person, the natural human response from someoneweaned on their caste's inherent superiority is to perceive a threat to theirexistence, a heightened sense of unease, of displacement, of fear for theirvery survival... The malaise is spiritual, psychological, emotional. Who areyou if there is no one to be better than?"

It is somewhat confusing when western politicians andthinkers push the narrative that it was the white non-college-educated peoplewho voted for Donald Trump. They argue that his message resonated with thepoor, non-college-educated white working-class men as if there is no non-whiteworking-class. Paradoxically, the exit polls of the 2020 US election reveal 72% of white protestant, 56% of whiteCatholics, 61% of white men, 55% of white women, 53% of white youths, 58% ofwhite, middle-aged, 51% of white men college graduates and 45% of white womencollege graduates voted for Trump - yet media pundits spend their energy askingwhy the white working-class flocked to Trump. As Ta-Nehisi Coates notes, "The focus on onesubsector of Trump voters-the white working class-is puzzling, given thebreadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind of theater at work inwhich Trump's presidency is pawned off as a product of the white working-classas opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes the very authorsdoing the pawning."

Rather than framing classism in competition withracism and sexism and setting the white working-class against the non-whiteworking class perhaps it is time for white pundits and politicians to focus onrevamping neo-liberal policies such as austerity, offshoring, predatorylending, deregulation, labour flexibility, financialisation and tax cuts forthe wealthy which have contributed to the hierarchy of classes.

Selah.

About the Author

Ahmed Olayinka Sule is a CFACharterholder, photojournalist and social critic. He is an Alumnus of theUniversity of Arts, London; where he obtained a Certificate in Photojournalism.He has worked on various photojournalism projects including Obama: TheImpact, Jesus Christ: The Impact, The Williams Sisters etc. He can becontacted via e-mail at [email protected] andvia Twitter @Alatenumo