How does one define class identity in 2017?

Hello again. I love my readers because I can always rely on them to ask good questions - credit to my loyal reader Choaniki for the question that made me think hard about my answer, then I realized I couldn't do it justice in my reply and decided to do a full length post. In his question, Choaniki pointed out that because my parents (retired primary school teachers) didn't live in a HDB flat they were clearly not working class. In fact, on that front, my parents are doing very well: not only did they manage to buy a substantially large terraced house years ago, they also have a lovely buy-to-let condominium with stunning facilities. (Think about the kind of inheritance my nephew is going to get.) So yeah, regardless of the fact that they do have a rather working class mentality and act pretty much like working class folks, their personal net worth is anything but working class. This is hardly uncommon - in the UK, there are plenty working class folks who have managed to make a lot of money but still remain staunchly working class in their behaviour and mindset.

How do you define your class identity?

And then on the other end of the spectrum, there is a brilliant saying in Chinese to describe the situation: 打肿脸充胖子 (dǎ zhǒng liǎn chōng pàng zī). We're talking about younger adults in their 20s, maybe 30s who are seemingly well educated but are struggling to get well-paid jobs. However, despite not earning much, they aspire to have a glamorous lifestyle: they want to wear the nicest designer clothes, hang out in fashionable bars, dine in the best gourmet restaurants, drive expensive cars, go on exotic holidays: they want to be seen to be living a lifestyle akin to famous celebrities and that is the image they portray on social media. Certainly, one could argue that such young people have a middle class mindset (whilst others would describe their mindset as 'aspirational') despite the fact many of them are not just poor, but are obtaining all these luxury items on credit, thus plunging them further and further into debt. They want to appear to be middle class whilst their bank balance tells a different story. So clearly, there doesn't seem to be a direct correlation between one's class identity and one's bank balance, the picture is indeed a lot more complex than that and there are many other factors we need to consider. Let's look at some interesting case studies in this context.

So we can look at one's bank balance (or more accurately, the summary of one's total assets, otherwise known as one's personal net worth) or one's lifestyle - but there's also one more aspect of social class: the social aspect, more specifically, whom your friends are. If a rich Chinese family sends their children to be educated in the UK, would they have the social skills to be able to fit in and be accepted by the upper class in the UK given their wealth? It isn't a straight forward process - once again, this is down to one's social skills rather than one's bank balance; however, the more money you have, the more social skills you can develop. I have a friend who was an Oxford graduate and he had a lucrative part time job whilst at Oxford to teach these rich Chinese kids the finer manners of British society, so they will not do embarrassing things like slurp their soup whilst having dinner or talk too loudly whilst having polite conversation. This is a very British obsession with manners and decorum - we're far more subtle about using such methods to establish someone's social class. We are observant and use little details like the buttons on one's shirt/jacket to the way you pronounce certain words to your table manners to establish your social class: then based on that, the upper/middle class person would be able to ascertain, "are you one of us or are you an imposter-wannabe of the 打肿脸充胖子 variety?"

Class identity isn't solely defined by wealth.

Let me give you an example from a few days ago when I was at the Henley Regatta - I was invited there by a client who had booked a marquee at the Temple Island Enclosure. Within this enclosure, there are several marquees, each booked by a different company and whilst we had our separate dining areas, we were free to mingle around and be social with people who were in the enclosure. There was this man whom I got talking to in the enclosure - I don't know which company he was working for or whom he was invited by, but he was talking about going to Greece on holiday and I joined in the conversation as I had worked in Greece The conversation was fairly bland and polite but it was still early in the day, around 12 noon and people were simply making small talk. I ran into him later in the afternoon around 6 pm and by then, he had had a lot to drink (open bar - free alcohol all day) and was clearly drunk. He wasn't misbehaving as such, but any decorum was gone - I remember him talking and laughing very loudly and that was when I thought, right - I don't want to be anywhere near you. In sharp contrast, my rather posh colleague whom I went to the event with did have plenty to drink as well - but even when he was somewhat intoxicated, the alcohol seemed to have no impact on his impeccable manners. I don't doubt that the drunk man heading to Greece on holiday was rich (he wouldn't have been invited to the event otherwise), but such was the difference being accept and rejected by people of a certain social class.

Oh the same thing can go the other way as well - in one of my earliest posts on my blog, I recounted in great detail an incident when I had caused offence by speaking in a very posh manner to a very working class person. It is not even something I did consciously, it is just that when I am nervous (such as when speaking to a stranger), I overcompensate when it comes to my accent. This is mostly because I don't want the stranger to think that English isn't my first language just because I am not white - but in this case, I had gone way too far and he took offence to the way I spoke. He thought I had come across as somewhat condescending when really, I just wanted to sound 'proper'. I suppose I was way too self-conscious about the way I came across that I didn't pause for a moment to think about how my accent would have been received by the other party - in fact, I am somewhat disappointed that I didn't handle that incident a bit better since I had gone through similar circumstances when I was serving NS and had to deal with many über-working class guys (aka 'Hokkien pengs') then. This was no different and I had clearly misjudged the other party for I had unintentionally caused a lot of offence. Oh don't get me wrong - I clearly thought that I was his socially his superior, I just didn't mean to rub it in his face like that and upset him. It wasn't my intention, I don't round looking for a fight by upsetting people like that.

So Choaniki had been asking me how we define one's social class apart from your wealth and your mindset? Well, I say the third important aspect is your friends - if I were to go through phone and see the last 50 people you spoke to or texted (yes you can include Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, Snapchat and Skype as well), what are their social classes? What kind of jobs do they do? You see, aspiration can only get you so far - you can desire to identify yourself as middle class, but are you socially accepted by whom you identify with? If you aren't, then you have failed the social test: you can't certify yourself as 'middle-class' or 'upper-class' if you are not accepted by the cohort you wish to be a part of. Likewise, the late Bob Crow - a former union leader - had angered a lot of his working class supporters: in 2014, whilst his union members were in the middle of a strike, he jetted of to Brazil on a luxury holiday - leaving many of his union members questioning whether he was actually the right man to lead a union for working class transport workers. Sure he may claim to be working class, but he had abandoned his cause for a luxury holiday that practically all of his union members would never ever be able to afford on their meager salaries. Oh well, as if in an act of poetic justice, he died just a month after that amazing holiday in Brazil - but that meant we never really got to see if he was ever going to be rejected by the working class folks he claimed to have represented. So Choaniki, what kind of jobs do your friends do?

Who are your friends, where do you 'belong'?

Let me share a story that my friend Fred told me - Fred is a golf coach, most of the time he works with the spoilt brat kids of the mega-rich who would like their children to play golf too, but he has one client who is an adult, let's call him Mr Bus. Mr Bus used to be a bus driver but one day, he won the lottery, winning a massive fortune and became a multi-millionaire overnight. He realized he never had to drive a bus in his life ever again, so he retired and decided to try to do all the fun things he could never afford to do when he was a bus driver, such as play golf. He bought himself a membership at an exclusive golf resort, invested in the most expensive set of golf clubs and engaged the services of coach Fred to get him started in golf. After a few months of lessons, Mr Bus thought he was good enough to challenge some of the regulars at the golf resort - but each time he made polite conversation to try to engage the regulars there, the conversation went nowhere. It was not like anyone was hostile or rude to him, but the regulars there knew he was a former bus driver who won the lottery. They would often congratulate him for winning the lottery, at first Mr Bus thought they were just making small talk - but soon it felt as if they did it just to remind him how he stumbled upon this massive windfall purely by chance. Each time Mr Bus challenged them to a game, they would politely make their excuses and it wasn't long before he realized that nobody wanted to play golf with him there even if nobody specifically said, "you're not one of us".

Mr Bus did enjoy the game of golf, so he kept on engaging the services of coach Fred who ended up playing with him, Fred was the only person who would play with Mr Bus there. I suppose Mr Bus knew the score, he was never ever going to fit in at the golf club no matter how he tried to dress just like the others or impress the others with the most expensive set of golf clubs used by Tiger Woods. As for my friend Fred, he didn't have an axe to grind with Mr Bus, "oh he treated me with respect, unlike some of the other nasty kids of the other clients I have had to teach. He would tip me generously, he would buy me lunch at the club house and I always have fun chatting with him when we play together. He is a very nice guy and undoubtedly my favourite client but he's working class and even if he spent the next three decades playing golf there, I don't think any of the regulars will ever accept him as one of them, he's always going to be the bus driver who won the lottery. It doesn't matter how rich he is, I am guessing that he may be even richer than some of the regulars there. You just don't find working class people playing golf there. It is quite unforgiving but well that's just the way it is."

Why does this matter? In the case of Mr Bus, he realized that no amount of wealth can get him the kind of acceptance he was seeking. This matters to you only if you are trying to fit in and be accepted by a certain community. In my case, because I am working in sales within financial services, it is very important for me as I often need to build business relationships with people from the middle/upper classes of British society. So I would never get drunk and misbehave when an important client invites me to an event - there would be unthinkable consequences if I ever did something like that.  But in the case of my parents, well not only are they retired, they are financially comfortable - they have neither the need nor incentive to do anything to 'fit in' or even work anymore, so basically they can do what the hell they like and not worry about the consequences. This does of course, create a separate category for those who do not crave acceptance by either side of the social class divide: I call them the weird loners. It is hard to come up with a neutral phrase to describe them without sounding as if I am passing judgement on their choice to eschew any kind of belonging to a particular social class. In rejecting any kind of class identity, they would probably label themselves as rebels, but I see them as loners. Do we need to invent some new categories to try to define these individuals outside the system?

A good example of this would be Navinder Singh Sarao, otherwise known as the flash crash trader. Despite once having made as much as £40 million in 2009 (approximately S$80 million then), he was a loner who still lived at home with his parents, working from the bedroom of his parents house. After he made that much money, did he spend his millions on champagne, fast cars, loose women or at least buying his parents a bigger house? No, he seemed oblivious to the fact that he was ridiculously rich and wore an inexpensive track suit everyday. He would cycle around and sometimes borrow his father's car, despite the fact that he could have bought any car in the world he wanted. You get the idea - Sarao was undoubtedly a genius who was brilliant at making money but completely lacked any kind of social skills and had often been compared to the character 'Rain Man' from the movie of the same title. Sarao was eventually arrested and extradited to the US for his illegal trading activities where he has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. So if you were to use Sarao as a case study: yes by virtue of his wealth (an estimated £27 million of his wealth is still unaccounted for), then he's richer than most middle and upper class people. But he never once tried to use his wealth to lead a more comfortable middle class lifestyle (or even spend that some of that money making his poor elderly parents more comfortable - his mother still worked despite the fact that he made vast sums of money) and it became clear that he was a loner who had virtually no friends (nor was he ever interested in making any). So is Sarao just a rich working class person? Or are such labels like working or middle class just meaningless when it comes to special cases like Sarao?

In any case, given the complexity of our modern society, it seems overly simplistic to imagine that three categories: working class, middle class and upper class would suffice. The BBC had come up with a class calculator and if you have not tried it before, give it a go! I like this class calculator for several reasons, it does ignore the concept of "only those with inherited wealth can truly be considered upper class" - no, this class calculator doesn't care how you acquired your wealth as long as you have the money. It also looks at other aspects of your social and cultural life in order to determine what your class is. It then offers you a possibility of seven different social classes which reflect the realities in modern Britain. Oh and yes, I came out as an 'elite' of course, given the combination of my wealth and social/cultural patterns. Although this test does have its limits - it doesn't quite know what to do with people like my parents who do have money but do not lead a middle class lifestyle, there simply isn't a category of 'rich proles' that would adequately describe them.

And then, there's my former colleague Seth (not his real name) - his family are/were upper class, he was sent to Eton when he was young and had a very privileged upbringing. His father had been running the family business but in the mid 1990s, he made a few terrible mistakes and the business failed, forcing them to sell off almost everything they had to pay their debts as a result. To make matters far worse, his father was so stressed out dealing with all that, the old man had a heart attack and died. Seth was posh but not that intelligent - just because his parents bought him the best education money could buy didn't mean that he was intelligent, even the best teachers in the world couldn't get him into a good university. He wasn't stupid, he just wasn't that brilliant either - he was but average with a degree from a university that sat in the middle of the league tables. He got into sales as he oozed upper class charms - but dig a little bit deeper, scrape away the veneer of his good looks, posh accent and fine manners and you'll realize that as he is supporting two children and an elderly mother (who unfortunately has been quite ill), he was struggling to make ends meet. There is always the assumption that posh, upper class people have access to a bottomless pit of inherited family money - but in the case of Seth, through no fault of his own, he found himself in a difficult situation financially despite being upper class. He is the complete opposite of my parents: my parents are working class but rich, Seth is indeed upper class by virtue of his parents but so poor today he is in debt. So is Seth still upper class or not - or are such labels totally inadequate to represent his unique (and unfortunate) situation? Or do we need to come up with a new sub-category for Seth then?

Seth was undoubtedly posh but very poor.

In any case, do all upper class people have access to a bottomless pit of money? Clearly not - yes they will have some inheritance, but the amount of money they can access varies from family to family. Sometimes this wealth is tied up in land and property, so they may look rich on paper but freeing up that money would mean liquidating the assets and most rich families are more interested in protecting their estate and legacy, rather than simply spending the money. The property could be co-owned by several people in the family and trying to sell it off could be a complex decision. The real advantage they have however, is firstly being able to afford the best education money can buy for their children and even if they have mediocre results, their family connections will enable them to get good jobs anyway - nepotism runs deep in such circles, that is the true advantage they possess. Once they have secured well paid jobs, that's when they are truly financially independent, rather than simply spending their inheritance. You can't stay rich if you are constantly depleting your reserves of wealth without topping it up. Contrast this to my nephew who currently is sitting on a sizable inheritance that includes three properties in Singapore (two amazing condos and a large terraced house) - he may not be posh or upper class, but our situation is such that he is actually better off financially than some upper class people in the UK (such as my friend Seth). My nephew could let out two of the properties and live in one, then as a landlord, he probably never needs to work a day in his life. (I'm presuming that he is going to get everything from my sisters and parents.)

Are there any conclusions that I have arrived at, after having explored all these different angles? The bottom line is that class identity is a very complex issue and when people get shoved in one box with a certain label, it could be a case of squeezing a square peg into a round hole. But such is the complexity of the modern world: there are working class people who have managed to make their fortunes and upper class people whom like Seth's family, have found themselves really struggling to make ends meet. Ultimately, I think the good news is that we live in an age where social mobility is possible in a way that wasn't possible for our parents or our grandparents. And for those who say, "oh if you don't have inherited wealth, you'll never be upper class", I think you're missing the point. The number of upper class aristocrats who live in castles and palaces today whilst turning their noses up at anyone who isn't royalty or nobility is tiny: the amount of wealth and influence they have in the world today has dwindled when you compare them to modern day media-royalty like Selena Gomez, Katy Perry, Ariana Grande, Cristiano Ronaldo, David Beckham and Beyonce. What social class label do you use to define someone like Selena Gomez, who was born to a teenage mother and had a really difficult childhood due to their poverty? Today she has far more money and influence in the world than some old rich British aristocrat or minor royalty who may be a third cousin to the Queen but lives in relative obscurity? What is the point of being from a certain privileged social class, if it isn't about money and power at the end of the day? The modern world is changing fast because of the internet and I can't help but feel sometimes that concepts of social class are something that has been constructed from another era, it badly needs updating to remain relevant in this day and age.

So that's it from me on this topic. What do you think? How would you define your class identity in this modern age? Is it all about money now - or do we get to define our own class identity by picking our friends and activities to suit the social class we wish to identify with? What about those who eschew the concept of social class altogether and refuse to identify with any one group - do we still try to define them based on criteria or do we give up trying to define them at all? And finally, how do we evolve our concept of social class to take into concept media royalty like Selena Gomez who richer and wields far more influence than some minor royalty in the UK? Do leave a comment below, many thanks for reading.