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In defence of the chav
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
This comes from the Journalist Johann Hari check out his site good articals with a few crappy ones where he misses the point.
http://www.johannhari.com/index.php
Only a handful of privileged people will ever admit to themselves that they fear and hate poor people. It's a strange phenomenon: individuals consistently act to protect their own privilege and damn the poor, but they do not think about it in such naked terms. Instead, the privileged create subtle myths that suggest the poor are dirty and stupid and lazy, and therefore deserve their poverty.
Think I'm exaggerating? Let's take a look at The Little Book of Chavs, which I found on the counter of Borders this week. "Chavs" are, it explains, "imbeciles" who do jobs like hairdressing, cleaning, bar-work and being a security guard. They live on "Pot Noodles, cheap cider and McDonald's for Sunday lunch". The extremely popular website www.chavscum.co.uk tells us how to spot a chav: "Chavs have such a tribal dress code that you can spot one yards away! Now what makes the Chavs [sic] attire so funny is they think they are at the cutting edge of fashion... In reality they look like a bunch of pikeys!"
Of course, the people who read this book and website will insist they don't hate all poor people. Just all the ones who live on estates and talk about their mobiles and wear tracksuits. This category sounds suspiciously large to me. Indeed, whenever I hear the term chav, I hear naked and defensive class hate; it is a category that now embraces almost all white, working-class people below the age of 40. The lexicographer, Susie Dent, identifies the word as "just one of the many newly popular, blatantly classist labels that have become popular over the past year. Look at 'council house chic', which describes brands like Burberry and Kappa. Or 'the Croydon facelift', where a chav's hair is pulled back so tight it makes the skin taut".
These are words and phrases that make it possible for privileged people to laugh at and hate the poor without admitting to themselves that this is what they are doing. Indeed, one of the things about chavs that seems to anger middle-class people is their loudness and lack of "taste". "Why are chavs so in your face? Why can't they just shut up?" asks one website. They want their poor people to be passive, silent, unseen. They want them to be a kind of trainee middle class, humbly saving up to buy the same labels as decent Middle England folk. If they develop a value system of their own - or if they dare to intrude into middle-class space in any way - then they must be put in their place with this degrading and cruel label.
Many of my relatives do chav jobs: my grandmother cleaned toilets for a living. My dad is a bus driver. My nephews have "Chav names", according to ChavScum. When I hear the children of privilege ranting about chavs, I want to lock them on a council estate with three kids, no education and a hundred quid a week to see how they cope.
The extent to which the chav label hides real social problems can be seen if we look at the story of a young working-class woman who has been described as "the ultimate chav" - Jade Goody. Jade was ridiculed when she appeared on reality TV show Big Brother a few years ago because of her lack of general knowledge and apparent illiteracy. Nobody asked how she had become this way. When she was two, her father dumped her seriously disabled mother and ended up in prison. Jade did not go to school much because she insisted on staying at home to help her mother dress, eat and get around. For showing this degree of compassion in extremely tough circumstances, Jade is slapped down as a "moron".
For every chav, there is a story like this. Growing up on an estate in Britain has been an unusually tough experience over the past 20 years. Britain's biggest social problems - from poverty to addiction to unemployment - have been played out on chavs, and they have coped as best they can. The "underclass" routinely denounced by rich politicians and journalists is the direct product of the decades of Thatcherism that rolled out unemployment and slashed school budgets and provision for the poor across Britain. If one of their coping strategies is to fetishise a few silly fashion labels, isn't that forgivable? I don't hear anybody mocking the rich and middle classes for doing exactly the same thing - or is Nicole Farhi acceptable while Burberry is vulgar?
Not very far from the surface of talk about chavs is the idea that the poor are culturally - or even in some way genetically - deserving of their circumstances. Do you think people are poor because of lousy educational opportunities, wildly unequal social conditions and layer upon layer of middle-class privilege? Think again, say the prophets of chav-hate. ChavScum tells us the real reason: "Stupidity, alas, breeds stupidity." One poster on their message board explains, "They have no shame because they have no brains - it really is as simple as that." No need to worry about redistributing wealth or investing in schools; there is simply a genetic sub-race of stupid, crude chavs who will always eat crap and think crap and can be happily ignored. Sit back and enjoy your privilege - you deserve it. Even in polite liberal company, the white working class are routinely abused in shockingly vicious terms that aren't used about any other minority. How often have you heard people talk about "white trash"? I've even noticed a weird phenomenon where people try to justify their hatred of poor people by saying the poor are racist and homophobic. In fact, the Institute for Public Policy Research conducted extensive research in 1997 into the attitude towards other ethnic groups among British people. It found that the white working classes were - in many important respects - the least racist of all groups. They were more likely to have had sex with members of another ethnic group and more likely to "marry out" than anybody else. It's easy to blather about multiculturalism from a wine bar; on my sister's estate, these supposedly racist chavs are actually doing the real anti-racist work of falling in love with black and Asian people and producing a post-racist generation of "miscegenated" kids.
As for homophobia, who is the latest chav icon - the Queen of the council estates - but Nadia Alamada, Big Brother's transsexual winner? If you want to be a snob and sneer at white working-class people, fine, but please don't tell me you are doing it for anti-racist, pro-gay reasons.
The snobbery of the right is, as ever, even worse. One newspaper recently sent Petronella Wyatt - the talentless daughter of the late Lord Wyatt - to East Croydon to meet some chavs. This is a woman who quit Oxford University because the other students were "common", only to walk - after blatantly playing on her father's name and connections - into a string of high-paying jobs. Yet she feels perfectly entitled to mock the "laziness" and "vile food" of chavs. (Memo to Petronella: they can't afford to shop in the Fortnum & Mason's food hall.)
She reports with shock that chavs "take so long over one Big Mac". That's because they don't have any money or anywhere else to go, except back to their cramped houses. Didn't this occur to you, Petsy? Did you imagine they would just pop into Harvey Nicks for a few drinks and a spot of shopping that night?
POSTSCRIPT: Lots of responses to this piece:
CJ wrote:
"I don't know if your chav article is predominantely tongue-in-cheek, or possibly some form of catharsis for your own guilty prejudices, but equating "chav" with "poor" betrays your misunderstanding of the concept of a "chav".
Maybe after you've been physically assualted for simply looking at someone, or witnessed a group of tracksuit wearing youngsters verbally abusing and spitting on a long-haired individual dressed in black because they're "a fucking goth ****", or watched a 20 year old drunk mother swearing at her 5 year old child in public at the top of her voice you'll be better qualified to opine on the chav phenomenon.
Your points about middle class snobbery are valid - such vile snobbery only antagonises the chavs' feelings of exclusion and persecution - but primarily chavs are characterised by their lack of social responsibility. The chav problem is not a class issue but a moral issue."
Dan_a_Dude said:
"tell me have you ever been beaten up by chavs just for walking past and not saying anything, i did and i got my nose broken so you can shut up in defence of the chav"
Mazzdontbother said:
Let's examine Jon Hari's bullshit in more detail.
Right - "Chavs=poverty". When challenged about wearing shitty burberry hats and labelled sportswear, your typical chav on this site defends his clothes by bragging how much he spends on them. People spending £50 on tracky tops and £100 on trainers are not in serious poverty. If they are, I rarely spend more than £30 on a jumper or £40 on shoes so I must be in need of an Oxfam appeal. Sure you get poor ones who buy fakes from the market but you get poor goths, poor skaters. Chavs do not = the poor, unless you are fucking stupid or are trying to twist the argument to suit your own agenda, like Mr Hari. It's a fashion trend.
I don't know about cleaning as a chav job but hairdressing is a career goal for female chavs since they get to spend the entire day gossiping with other female chavs about blokes and celebrities and being a security guard certainly seems to attract the dimmer male and they get to wear a cap. Don't forget the well-paying chav professions such as being a premiership footballer or a soap opera star or being in Blazin Squad.
They do live on pot noodles, Maccy Ds and cheap cider and they do dress in awful pikey clothes. I suppose these are the only food and clothes the working class can afford in Mr Hari's deluded mind.
http://www.johannhari.com/index.php
Only a handful of privileged people will ever admit to themselves that they fear and hate poor people. It's a strange phenomenon: individuals consistently act to protect their own privilege and damn the poor, but they do not think about it in such naked terms. Instead, the privileged create subtle myths that suggest the poor are dirty and stupid and lazy, and therefore deserve their poverty.
Think I'm exaggerating? Let's take a look at The Little Book of Chavs, which I found on the counter of Borders this week. "Chavs" are, it explains, "imbeciles" who do jobs like hairdressing, cleaning, bar-work and being a security guard. They live on "Pot Noodles, cheap cider and McDonald's for Sunday lunch". The extremely popular website www.chavscum.co.uk tells us how to spot a chav: "Chavs have such a tribal dress code that you can spot one yards away! Now what makes the Chavs [sic] attire so funny is they think they are at the cutting edge of fashion... In reality they look like a bunch of pikeys!"
Of course, the people who read this book and website will insist they don't hate all poor people. Just all the ones who live on estates and talk about their mobiles and wear tracksuits. This category sounds suspiciously large to me. Indeed, whenever I hear the term chav, I hear naked and defensive class hate; it is a category that now embraces almost all white, working-class people below the age of 40. The lexicographer, Susie Dent, identifies the word as "just one of the many newly popular, blatantly classist labels that have become popular over the past year. Look at 'council house chic', which describes brands like Burberry and Kappa. Or 'the Croydon facelift', where a chav's hair is pulled back so tight it makes the skin taut".
These are words and phrases that make it possible for privileged people to laugh at and hate the poor without admitting to themselves that this is what they are doing. Indeed, one of the things about chavs that seems to anger middle-class people is their loudness and lack of "taste". "Why are chavs so in your face? Why can't they just shut up?" asks one website. They want their poor people to be passive, silent, unseen. They want them to be a kind of trainee middle class, humbly saving up to buy the same labels as decent Middle England folk. If they develop a value system of their own - or if they dare to intrude into middle-class space in any way - then they must be put in their place with this degrading and cruel label.
Many of my relatives do chav jobs: my grandmother cleaned toilets for a living. My dad is a bus driver. My nephews have "Chav names", according to ChavScum. When I hear the children of privilege ranting about chavs, I want to lock them on a council estate with three kids, no education and a hundred quid a week to see how they cope.
The extent to which the chav label hides real social problems can be seen if we look at the story of a young working-class woman who has been described as "the ultimate chav" - Jade Goody. Jade was ridiculed when she appeared on reality TV show Big Brother a few years ago because of her lack of general knowledge and apparent illiteracy. Nobody asked how she had become this way. When she was two, her father dumped her seriously disabled mother and ended up in prison. Jade did not go to school much because she insisted on staying at home to help her mother dress, eat and get around. For showing this degree of compassion in extremely tough circumstances, Jade is slapped down as a "moron".
For every chav, there is a story like this. Growing up on an estate in Britain has been an unusually tough experience over the past 20 years. Britain's biggest social problems - from poverty to addiction to unemployment - have been played out on chavs, and they have coped as best they can. The "underclass" routinely denounced by rich politicians and journalists is the direct product of the decades of Thatcherism that rolled out unemployment and slashed school budgets and provision for the poor across Britain. If one of their coping strategies is to fetishise a few silly fashion labels, isn't that forgivable? I don't hear anybody mocking the rich and middle classes for doing exactly the same thing - or is Nicole Farhi acceptable while Burberry is vulgar?
Not very far from the surface of talk about chavs is the idea that the poor are culturally - or even in some way genetically - deserving of their circumstances. Do you think people are poor because of lousy educational opportunities, wildly unequal social conditions and layer upon layer of middle-class privilege? Think again, say the prophets of chav-hate. ChavScum tells us the real reason: "Stupidity, alas, breeds stupidity." One poster on their message board explains, "They have no shame because they have no brains - it really is as simple as that." No need to worry about redistributing wealth or investing in schools; there is simply a genetic sub-race of stupid, crude chavs who will always eat crap and think crap and can be happily ignored. Sit back and enjoy your privilege - you deserve it. Even in polite liberal company, the white working class are routinely abused in shockingly vicious terms that aren't used about any other minority. How often have you heard people talk about "white trash"? I've even noticed a weird phenomenon where people try to justify their hatred of poor people by saying the poor are racist and homophobic. In fact, the Institute for Public Policy Research conducted extensive research in 1997 into the attitude towards other ethnic groups among British people. It found that the white working classes were - in many important respects - the least racist of all groups. They were more likely to have had sex with members of another ethnic group and more likely to "marry out" than anybody else. It's easy to blather about multiculturalism from a wine bar; on my sister's estate, these supposedly racist chavs are actually doing the real anti-racist work of falling in love with black and Asian people and producing a post-racist generation of "miscegenated" kids.
As for homophobia, who is the latest chav icon - the Queen of the council estates - but Nadia Alamada, Big Brother's transsexual winner? If you want to be a snob and sneer at white working-class people, fine, but please don't tell me you are doing it for anti-racist, pro-gay reasons.
The snobbery of the right is, as ever, even worse. One newspaper recently sent Petronella Wyatt - the talentless daughter of the late Lord Wyatt - to East Croydon to meet some chavs. This is a woman who quit Oxford University because the other students were "common", only to walk - after blatantly playing on her father's name and connections - into a string of high-paying jobs. Yet she feels perfectly entitled to mock the "laziness" and "vile food" of chavs. (Memo to Petronella: they can't afford to shop in the Fortnum & Mason's food hall.)
She reports with shock that chavs "take so long over one Big Mac". That's because they don't have any money or anywhere else to go, except back to their cramped houses. Didn't this occur to you, Petsy? Did you imagine they would just pop into Harvey Nicks for a few drinks and a spot of shopping that night?
POSTSCRIPT: Lots of responses to this piece:
CJ wrote:
"I don't know if your chav article is predominantely tongue-in-cheek, or possibly some form of catharsis for your own guilty prejudices, but equating "chav" with "poor" betrays your misunderstanding of the concept of a "chav".
Maybe after you've been physically assualted for simply looking at someone, or witnessed a group of tracksuit wearing youngsters verbally abusing and spitting on a long-haired individual dressed in black because they're "a fucking goth ****", or watched a 20 year old drunk mother swearing at her 5 year old child in public at the top of her voice you'll be better qualified to opine on the chav phenomenon.
Your points about middle class snobbery are valid - such vile snobbery only antagonises the chavs' feelings of exclusion and persecution - but primarily chavs are characterised by their lack of social responsibility. The chav problem is not a class issue but a moral issue."
Dan_a_Dude said:
"tell me have you ever been beaten up by chavs just for walking past and not saying anything, i did and i got my nose broken so you can shut up in defence of the chav"
Mazzdontbother said:
Let's examine Jon Hari's bullshit in more detail.
Right - "Chavs=poverty". When challenged about wearing shitty burberry hats and labelled sportswear, your typical chav on this site defends his clothes by bragging how much he spends on them. People spending £50 on tracky tops and £100 on trainers are not in serious poverty. If they are, I rarely spend more than £30 on a jumper or £40 on shoes so I must be in need of an Oxfam appeal. Sure you get poor ones who buy fakes from the market but you get poor goths, poor skaters. Chavs do not = the poor, unless you are fucking stupid or are trying to twist the argument to suit your own agenda, like Mr Hari. It's a fashion trend.
I don't know about cleaning as a chav job but hairdressing is a career goal for female chavs since they get to spend the entire day gossiping with other female chavs about blokes and celebrities and being a security guard certainly seems to attract the dimmer male and they get to wear a cap. Don't forget the well-paying chav professions such as being a premiership footballer or a soap opera star or being in Blazin Squad.
They do live on pot noodles, Maccy Ds and cheap cider and they do dress in awful pikey clothes. I suppose these are the only food and clothes the working class can afford in Mr Hari's deluded mind.
0
Comments
Some rich people think of the poor that way in the US too. That's why when conservatives make fun of rich liberals in the US for pushing for programs for the poor etc. I always think that at least they are thinking in a caring way about the poor. Unlike the country club types who go from suburban corporate parks to big homes with 3 acre zoning, to malls where they arrest any homeless people to vacations at exclusive resorts.
Some people believe and say chav equals poor, working class, "pikey", and so on. And from that perspective, it is definitely wrong in my opinion to make fun out of people because of their social class or social background.
Many others however believe chavism is not linked to poverty or social class- it's more like a fashion or lifestyle choice. Anyone who spends £7,000 modifying their cars are clearly not poor. People who wear Burberry practically from head to toe are unlikely to be poor or working class as well.
You may say that it is wrong to mock anyone, regardless of what they choose to wear, shop or do to their cars. And you would probably be right. But it is astonishing how some people feel free to laugh at "Sloanes", 'it' girls and assorted Chelsea poncey types and then they protest at others laughing at people with an equally laughable fashion and lifestyle sense.
I'm not denying that some people might be just laughing at working class folk. But I believe the majority isn’t, and those who claim laughing at 'chavs' is an attack on the working classes and an act of snobbery have got it completely wrong IMO.
Oi, you have the whole 'redneck' thing on that side of the pond.
seriously, though, you brits and europeans really seem to have this class thing almost as bad as the caste system in india. we're not so rigidly divided in america. in my opinionanyways...
I would agree to some extent, unfortunately class is a major thing in this country, not sure about the rest of Europe though. I think they maybe a little more relaxed about it.
Mind you didn't the French solve their class issue 200 years ago...
No. They got rid of the aristos, but the middle class bourgeoisie took their place pretty much, leaving the working classes still being screwed.
That said however, I'm not averse to guillotining dear old Brenda...
Ah well...
Can anyone name a truly classless society in existence.
However the chavscum website and its creators surely don't have the exclusive rights to the meaning of the word chav- though it must be said that chavscum was the main reason for the word chav to become so widespread. The word clearly means different things to different people. And whereas no one should really be laughing at anyone else in an ideal world, I think some people have taken the chav issue a tad too seriously.
We regularly get customers clad in Burberry in our shop (scarves, handbags, even prams) and it has become some sort of a secret giggle for my colleagues and I when someone like that comes in. I would say that practically all of those people are actually quite wealthy and middle class, considering the area we're in and the articles we sell in the shop (very expensive antiques).
I almost feel sorry for Burberry... at this rate they will be driven out of business within a couple of years.
None of the criticisms of Hari's arguement refute it entirely if at all and tbh most of the criticisms are based on personal experiences which are then used to legitimate prejudices against all people who are pigeon holed into this group.
Is it not enough to simply say that the group who abused or assaulted these people were (possibly drunk
please :rolleyes:, this person does nothing of the sort
Yeah, because everyone who wears a Nike Track-suit or burberry cap with a child does this :rolleyes: . Oh and while we are at it, of course this person is privvy to the entire scope of social facts effecting the person he is criticising :rolleyes:
This is all SIGHT BASED PREJUDICED and labelling; if someone abuses you or assaults you, deal with that person in isolation. Or maybe you'll turn round one day and the labels and stereotypes here might actually become true on a frightening scale, because these people are so sick and tired of being labelled as trouble and worthless that they dont see any other way
This is made up to support his argument: most of the townies I know of come from middle class backgrounds and are actually quite well off.
crucial difference here with slightly different social connotations.
The 'townie' model is one based firmly in fashion; sports wear and crucially no baggys jeans (crude description i know).
The 'chav' model is more about appropriating a stereotypical behavioural pattern, class, educational standard to a group of people who can be identified by the way they look, primarily.
where i live nobody is called a chav, they're known as townies. Where I am they're not different things, maybe they are where you are though. Same with 'ned' I think.
all the townies are more or less as you described though, they all wear flashy clothes, are incredibly loud, go round making trouble (you should have seen them on fireworks night) and getting drunk in the street. also, they have a habit of getting around a bit.
Those guys who your sister was going to have round for a party; you described them as townies.
Now assuming they all behave in the manner that you have described; is it not enough to just judge the individuals or groups involved, rather than export their image onto everyone who looks like them
if you saw 10 separate black people, mug 10 separate white people in front of your face in one day, that still would'nt mean that everyone who was black was a mugger, not even a basis for a proportion.
Even if you see lots of people acting like twats; is it not enought just to consider them in isolation?
But being black is just how they are, being 'chav' is a lifestyle choice - and the abusive nature of all the ones I've seen is down to this lifestyle. Of course you get anti-social people who don't act like this, and you get chavs who are the nicest people ever. But the vast majority is similar to the prejudice, at least from all my experience, and apparently from a lot of other people's too since they seem to have the same prejudices.
If I met one chav, say at school, and had to work with them, I wouldn't mind at all. If I was out in town and there were a few of them I would stay away because more likely than not they would start trouble.
so the cultural thing is biological, yes?
no you would stay away because you identify a group with which you have had problems in the past and your brain makes a link to it so you avoid them because you are motivated to avoid a potential confrontation. Thats not prejudice thats semi-instinctive, theres a difference. Im talking in ideational terms here.
The benifit of this site is that you talk to other people words and text on a screen and you judge them by the content of their posts rather than what they look like. On here we have all sorts - people talking to others that they'd probably dismiss or ignore in the pub or street.
This chav thing is a class thing and it makes a lot of people on here look like snobs.