Thread by @HPluckrose

This is the second time I have seen this outlet & the second time it is making a bad argument and the responses to it are also bad. (I must finish my essay on the first one). (cont)

https://twitter.com/onlinehyphen/status/1640648925320208385

In order to reasonably claim that Muslims are rarely depicted among the working class, you'd need to compare this against that of other religions (or lack of). If we hear a lot about the Christian working class, Jewish working class or atheist working class, you'd be right

But, in fact, searching trends on all of these terms produces this:

Go into race instead of religion for the last three months & you might have a point.
Black working class - Yellow
White working class - Blue
Asian working class - Red

There is least interest in Asian working class and 67% of Muslim Brits are Asian.

There is slightly more interest in "black working class" than "white working class" and almost no interest in "Asian working class." It could be potentially useful to know the cause of this in some contexts.

It is unlikely to be people searching for their own ethnic group as only 4% of Brits are black compared to 9% who are Asian and 81% who are white unless black Brits are way more likely to be interested in class than everybody else but particularly Asian Brits. Seems unlikely.

If this were the case & 'black working class' shows up most as a search term because black Brits are most interested in finding information about their racial demographic's socio-ecomonic status...

...it would suggest that Muslim Brits (who are 6.5% of the population) are so much less interested in finding information about their racial demographic's socio-economic status that it doesn't show up as a search term at all. (Like all other religions)

It is more likely that society-wide, people who are interested in breaking the working class into subgroups to find information about them are interested in race rather than religion & most interested in black Brits, then white ones, but not Asian ones.

As I said, the reasons for this variation in interest could be interesting to find out. The particular interest in black Brits could be due to those of African ancestry having the least wealth statistically & Indian & Pakistani most property wealth with white Brits close behind.

But this doesn't tell us that much about religion & class, the statistics of which are generally very confusing in the UK. e.g., middle class people are more likely to go to church but working class people are more likely to believe in God.

This report by the Muslim Council of Britain and this quote from the Muslim Council of Britain makes the complexity of the relation between religion & class very clear.

Nevertheless, despite boosts to the economy from Muslim millionaires and small to medium business owners, it does seem clear that Muslims are overrepresented among the lowest socio-economic classes in the UK & knowing why requires forgoing simplistic ideological narratives.

I do not myself see anybody assuming that 'working class' means 'white' here in East London. That would be rather difficult to do unless you go around with your eyes closed.

And it is nonsense when people suggest that those of us who think class should be a primary focus of the left really mean 'white people' should be. The #EnoughIsEnough movement has rightly focused on transport workers, NHS workers, postal workers & care assistants.

I support this goal in my area and encourage anybody who thinks these workers are primarily white to come for a visit & use the London Underground to visit hospitals & care homes. You won't be able to sustain that belief for long.

To be fair, the perception that calls for Labour to focus on the working class is a call to focus on the white working class may be because Labour's chances of being elected are so closely tied to winning back the support of the Red Wall.

For those of you of the Yankish persuasion who can be a little inclined to fail to notice the rest of the world exists, the Red Wall is a set of counties in the North that have traditionally always formed Labour's voter base but didn't in the last election.

These are formerly industrial and mining areas which have relied on having strong Trade Unions and relied on Labour to ensured that. A bit like your 'rust belt', I think? It was a shock when they did not vote solidly Labour in the last election.

Although this sudden change was significantly influenced by party policies about Brexit, there is still a strong feeling that Labour has a lot of work to do to regain the trust of the Red Wall & it needs to focus on the working class & Trade Unions to do that.

The Red Wall is much more predominantly white than London. However, contra to CSJ views, 'white' is not synonymous with 'racist' & focusing primarily on the working class does not focus on white interests seeing as how "BAME" people are overrepresented in it.

So this is nonsense. The only reason a focus on the working class would ignore 'BAME' people is in the case of those who are not working class AND don't prioritise socio-economic issues in which case they should vote Tory & probably already do.
theguardian.com/politics/2020/…

I appear to be wittering again. I was also going to say why so many of the responses to that article are shit. A lot of them say that Muslims are not members of the working class because they don't work which is bullshit.

While it is true that fewer Muslims are in full time employment, this is due to a number of factors which do not prevent them from being working class. Firstly, we need to factor in Muslim Brits are younger on average than the general population. Half are under 25.

Young adults frequently do not work full time because they are studying or training or doing part time work or moving about to find what they want to do.

Then there is the fact that figures are skewed because Muslim women are much more likely to be categorised as 'looking after home & family' than the general population of women.

Does one stop being working class if one is a stay at home mum or caring for elderly relatives? Why are Muslim women more likely to be doing this? A mixture of practical and cultural reasons, most likely.

Remember that the mean age of the population is lower meaning that there are more women with young children. Women with young children are more likely to stay at home generally. I did and I was only able to have one.

Then, (and this is where I get accused of endorsing an Islamophobic myth) socially conservative women are more likely to stay at home longer with their children & religious people are more likely to be socially conservative & Islam is a particularly socially conservative religion

Sorry, but this is true statistically even though individuals vary hugely and it is becoming less common.

There is also a cultural difference that I have observed more broadly among South Asian families in my work as a home carer which is a greater sense of duty to care for elderly relatives suffering from dementia or disability in one's own home.

Much respect for this and I was going to try to do it with my own mother, but it is exhausting if you are trying to do it on your own because people with Alzheimers often sleep in short bursts & then wander about endangering themselves & disarranging things.

Then there is the fact of being relative newcomers. We see the effect of this in Caribbean Brits having twice the wealth statistically of African Brits due to having generally arrived earlier. Makes getting regular work harder.

And then there is living in poorer areas generally making jobs limited and short term & also there is prejudice which ties into class a lot too.

If you are a South Asian Muslim who is a doctor or a pharmacist or an engineer, you're unlikely to have difficulty finding a job because these are much needed skills. But if you are competing with others for fairly low paid unskilled work?

Claiming that racism, xenophobia or anti-Muslim bigotry never exists in individuals with the power to give jobs is as implausible as claiming that it exists everywhere & at all times and is the explanation for every disparity.

I don't know why I thought I could just have a short thread on this. It'd be quicker to have written an essay. I've just read about 40 studies and surveys though, which is never wasted energy.

Not sure what to make of this, though I suspect it is quite a lot to do with perception that more young adults feel they have been discriminated against and often than older ones.

At the risk of calling upon my own lived experience, I am 48 and was here in East London in the 80s & would be astonished if any South Asian Muslim also here at this time never experienced discrimination.

Yes, this is when & where I grew up too. It was being discussed in my school, though, and the news and among parent groups & there were protests and zero tolerance policies & patrolling of danger areas.

I only remember bits and pieces from primary school like my mother going to a protest against the National Front & yelling at BNP canvassers on the doorstep & an ongoing debate about not being able to shave boys heads every couple of months as a cheap haircut.

The schools banned shaved heads because of the association with racist skinheads & also if you had a white son with a haircut like that, it looked as though you supported them & people would keep their kids away from you.

I have a dim recollection that may be entirely wrong that pudding basin haircuts became a thing then for boys too because parents who couldn't afford hairdressers & had to cut their kids hair themselves would cut round a bowl instead of shaving it.

Trivial things, then, but I have clearer memories from secondary school from 1985 and definitely from sixth form college in 1990. My school was private and in kind of a bubble but it had a lot of South Asian kids whose parents were mostly doctors recruited by the NHS.

In that small, affluent area, they were safe but we all knew that not very far away on the other side of the railway tracks, it was not, so my friendship group could not go there even though it had good shops and the park. Shops owned by Asian people would be regularly smashed up

On two occasions, one of my friends had the "Paki" slur shouted at her from a car when we were just walking. 14/15 year old girls. A new boy joined the school. He was white & a foster kid & he had a skinhead haircut & was angry with the world.

I'm afraid it was just assumed he was racist because of his shaven head & scowling at everybody & bursts of rage. He never said anything racist though & grew his hair out. I think he'd probably had a severe lice infestation when fostered but it was paranoid times. Sorry, Clive.

But 1985-1990 was a time when we were given leaflets & shown to films about 'just saying no' to drugs and, if white, not becoming a Neo-Nazi, which was kind of treated in the same way like this might be some kind of enticing idea you could hooked on.

Meanwhile, the parents of teenage Asian boys were terrified that they were going to go to Southend and confront the Skinheads & get stabbed & killed & had to keep promising they weren't doing that. Southend was the place to go to fight.

I remember some guy in a seedy rock club that I should not have been in at 16 trying to convince me it was perfectly honourable & OK to go to Southend to fight Asian boys because they had also come there to fight. It was people attacking random brown people that wasn't. Wtf.

My private school chucked me out because I was an argumentative pain in the arse & had the "wrong attitude" to do A levels. I was very glad about this & went to a state funded sixth form to get my Preliminary Certificate in Social Care.

This college was majority black but also had quite a lot of South Asian kids and a few white ones. The students had come from further into East London from areas where the police were being a menace & particularly liked to shave off dreadlocks for no good reason whatsoever.

I was definitely the posh weirdo of the class but everybody accepted me anyway. I think I was weird in a good way. The college had its own problems & I put my ability to be an argumentative pain in the arse at the service of a classmate.

The only boy in the class, Jaz, was told he was going to fail the advanced first aid class if he did not take his hat off to allow for his partner in the exam to demonstrate bandaging a headwound. Without this, he could not get the certificate.

He made the perfectly reasonable case that the college allowed for Sikhs not to remove their turbans for religious reasons and accommodated this in first aid exams so there was no reason not to extend this accommodation to Rastas & hats worn for religious reasons.

But this was not accepted. OK, Rastas don't actually have to wear hats & those who do usually remove them for prayer but Jaz was clearly very uncomfortable with the idea. He never had shown his hair & nobody should make him do this.

And it just wasn't necessary. He needed to demonstrate his ability to bind head wounds to show proficiency. Somebody else could offer their head to his partner in the exam for this purpose and many people offered.

We managed to convince the trainer that it was her responsibility to give a good reason for accommodating Sikhism but not Rastafarianism and if she couldn't, she must allow him to keep his hat on, or expect to have to defend her religious discrimination. Small battle won.

(You can probably tell I am still quite indignant about this 30 years later).