I had a really interesting conversation with some people about class and activism. Here’s my lil thread:

My mum is a migrant, my dad grew up in a working class household. When I was born, we were on benefits, my dad worked three jobs and we scraped by. My dad had a major breakthrough in his career when I was around 7-8 years old.

So, I have do not have many memories of the working class experience. We’re quite well off now, we tend to spend money on experiences rather than materials so we have a modest 3 beddy house, in a cute lil suburb. But we stay in 5 star hotels, travel to Europe,eat whatever we want

But my parents always instill different things into me. Work hard, study hard and earn lots of money to provide for your family. Now, I am in a very leftist space. All my university friends are lefty’s, I do a lot of activism and community work in my city.

I’ve always made sure I buy my friend food who can’t. Pay so my friends can join me on outings etc etc. but I have this intense nagging that does my class privilege undermine my activism?

Does the fact that I wouldn’t have to worry about a place to stay, food to eat, get top medical care when I need it mean it’s performative to fight for different issues? I am still trying to unlearn a lot of my internal thinking around class and tonight has been confronting.

The biggest thing that stood out for me around my thinking was “well if they just worked harder, studied harder etc they could be well off as well. My family did it as POC”. But that’s so so wrong. I know Class has a lot of intersectionality, but I didn’t realise the extent of it

Does the fact that I drive towards having a good job and earn plenty that my current family and future family never have to worry, undermine my desire for socialism?

I know from a POC perspective and racism, I find it honestly annoying when ytp try to yell over myself and other activists in this space so is it the same for class? Do working-class comrades feel upset when upper class try and champion these spaces?

I know that this is the major reason why I keep my family lowkey, I feel embarrassed as a leftist and as an activist to come from this background. I don’t like talking about it, and honestly questioning why I’m even making this thread- I just need to place my thoughts somewhere.