Ghost of a flea

Very white of EU

K-punk comments on the BBC's White Season, claiming an elision of class is carried out by the substitution of a pernicious "ethnologic". What of non-white working class people and what of middle and upper class white people? What is missing, in other words, is the class box of the race/class/gender metric that now dominates sociological thinking. Also missing are religion and nationality as organizing principles, the opiates which have entranced the masses in so many contemporary conflicts.

My only surprise at this argument is that it should need to be made. I had thought it was a commonplace on the left that white working class racism was a canard, a false consciousness meant to produce an unwarranted solidarity with a white ruling class. "The Jew is using the black as muscle against you. What you going to do about it, whitey?", etc. and forth.*

There is a further elision at work, however, one former Marxism Today readers are quite happy to ignore, viz Englishness as ethnicity. The more parliaments and assemblies pop up around what once was Britain, and the more everyone from the Basques to the Albanians to the Québécois carry on carrying on, the more likely someone is going to assert an English nationalism. We are meant to believe this is a serious problem, so much so the idea remains unthinkable in polite society.** But being "white" and being English are not the same thing. The distinction deserves to be made with at least the ersatz seriousness to which the various Celtic nationalisms have been treated. It seems to me that if everyone's identity is to be celebrated we might - perhaps as an apologetic afterthought - think to include the nation England is, for now, still named after.

The "ethnicization" of the English working class is not a new phenomenon. Victorian anthropology needed look no further than the East End for its model savage***; noble savages could only be found abroad. These days indigenous English natives have access to cheap flights and consequently may be found abroad in ever greater numbers. At least until their anti-global warmenists social betters tax away these latter day working class Grand Tours along with beer, bacon and proper English sausages by way of looking after the health and safety of the natives. The noble savage, meantime, may now be found at Finsbury Park mosque where his charming folkways and legitimate grievances are celebrated by no less than the heir to the throne.

* Note how the neo-Nazi analysis of the situation summed up by my Blues Brothers paraphrase neatly echoes the Marxist version: For "Jew" read "capitalist". Most anti-IMF/free trade/globalization posters I have seen use fat cat caricatures that could have been printed in Der Stürmer.
** The English, like the Jews, are a people whose nationalism is considered illegitimate. There should be an English equivalent of Zionism.
*** Sherlock Holmes made it his habit to always carry a pistol when venturing east of Aldgate. Sound advice then as now.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at March 19, 2008 06:24 AM