Amateur sociology
Cultural differences.
She says, not taking herself at all seriously, not bragging at all, not boasting about how self-deprecating she is, not accusing other people of what she’s doing herself.
I see this claim a lot, in fact: the claim that people in the UK are massively self-deprecating. It’s a self-defeating claim, because it’s self-flattering. You can’t convince us how self-deprecating you are by bragging about how self-deprecating you are.
In other words “We’re too humble to brag, unlike you brash Americans.”
I had started a comment on how many ( #notallbrits) British still consider themselves to be superior, but I didn’t want to contribute to the internecine war between us lingual kin. I’m a peacemaker, unlike those imperialists across the pond.
But, in my comment (which I dd not post) I was alluding to the fact that the people who prounce “th” as “v” and contract “isn’t it” to “innit” and never tell us what they’re offering in their “cuppa” can’t quite get over how we destroyed their language by dropping the “u” in “favor”, reversing the “re” to “er” in “center” or spelling out the entiire words “forecastle” and “waistcoat.” Get me, bruvva? Also, just so you know, I’ve had English ale, and it’s not that fantastic, with the exception of extra special bitter, of course. American chocolate selection is not limited to Hershey bars, so they should drop that trope as well.
But I deleted that post because I don’t want to add to the rancor.
But, I do want to point out that it was a bit snide of Helen Joyce to imply that Amercans are more susceptble to believeng in gender identities. It’s lilkely based more on stereotype than fact, and hardly fair. American feminists have been working as hard and at as much risk as English feminists to counter gender ideology as English women, and the TERF Island idea is also more a concept than reality. We doin’t have rainbow cop cars here, do we?
And don’t get me started on Canadians. The famed politeness is as much a marketing ploy as “Minnesota Nice.”
But this post is not meant to cause hurt feelings, because I am above all that.
Also, to add:
As Alexis de Tocqueville demonstrated, we often need to be able to see ourselves through the eyes of others. It’s easiest to fool ourselves and a mirror is not always the best tool for self-examination. But, even those how criticize us have the weight of their own perceptions and we can’t take their word as being absolute. There are more than 300 million Americans and the idea that we have unifying characteristics is belied by the fact that even in the 4th or 5th generations we identify by our ancestral roots as Irish Americans, German Americans, African Americans, and so on. To paint Americans with such broad brush strokes is a mistake because we don’t even agree as to whether pariticipating in an insurgency should be a disqualifier for elected office or the main reason to vote for someone. We’re a country so divided that “patriots” parade the battle flag of a group of states that tried to secede from the union rather than think of Africans as fully human.
Our English friends need to examine where their wealth emerged. We’re not the only country that has people who think that we are the greatest nation in the world, even though the sun never sets on our own military bases.
I’ll stop now, I’m actually an anglophile and wouldn’t mind a three month tour through the UK and Ireland. I’m just not happy with such stereotyping.
In my (totally objective and of course non-superficial) experience, if there’s anything the English like doing more than deprecating themselves, it’s deprecating others.
My default assumption is that people are pretty much the same everywhere.
FWIW, I’m flashing on _The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy_, a sprawling sci-fi series by the Englishman Douglas Adams. A central theme of the series is the ultimate meaninglessness of existence. To make his point, Adams populates his stories with a cast of hapless, bewildered and befuddled characters, mostly at the mercy of events, and all very clearly British (even the ones from other planets). I very much see Adams laughing at himself–at all of ourselves–in this.
I do have to agree, as someone who’s spent more than 20 years in each country, that the US is, surprisingly, more ‘class bound’ than the US.
For example, in the UK I have met many people from poor/deprived families who have literally worked their way up from an apprenticeship, or the mail room, to director of a large company, and probably dozens who are the first in their family to go to university who have earned PhDs and practice in the professions; I don’t think I’ve ever met an American who has done the same (I remember having a conversation with a friend where I said I’d known only one American who was a ‘self-made’ millionaire, and the friend, just to be contrary, pointed out that this particular person, a friend of both of ours, actually came from a well-off family and had a lot of support, so in fact I know no one who started with no advantages or privileges and achieved notable professional success).
Another minor incident, which happened shortly after I moved to the UK: I was working in a professional office which was having renovations done, so there happened to be a lot of rough-looking repair guys around putting up walls, putting in wiring, etc. I and the receptionist were chitchatting about something and one of these guys chipped in with a funny response as he passed by. I was surprised–in my experience in the US ‘blue collar’ guys would not engage in casual conversation with ‘white collar’ employees who were strangers, particularly not women (aside from, say, polite chitchat while delivering a package or something).
guest @5,
On a related point, Americans seem much more disposed to regard wait staff, bartenders, cashiers, and other service employees as being beneath them. They expect these employees to display abject servitude: yes sir, yes ma’am, right away, I’m so sorry, the customer is always right. I’m convinced that’s a part of how tipping culture got so embedded here. Americans watch Downton Abbey and think it’s terrible that Lady Mary gets to boss a servant around because of who their respective parents were, but they’re totally fine with the bossing around and can’t wait to go to Applebee’s and make some minimum wage employee grovel.
Heh. See it’s not that I think the US is totes egalitarian and the UK is the opposite, it’s just that I think it’s a little more complicated than UK modest & classless while US conceited & class-bound. I have no problem with what Helen said, but I think Barnett-Ward’s reply to me is laughably smug and self-contradictory.
gues, both Ray Kroc and Sam Walton (both dead now, of course) meet that criteria. If you define “self-made success” as being a millionaire, then I don’t either, because I don’t know any millionaires, but I know quite a number of people who worked themselves up from nothing or practically nothing to professional success and a comfortable middle class lifestyle.
I think we are class conscious in America, but we divide our classes differently. There is the monied class, of course, the famous haves and have nots. But there is also the military class, a royal family if ever I saw one, at least a figurehead royal family. Since most soldiers aren’t paid well, they would match the titled aristocracy who are poor. The idea that anybody can work themselves up is a myth, both here and in England, but in both countries some people will.
Ray Kroc:
‘Kroc was born on October 5, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, near Chicago, to Czech-American parents, Rose Mary [née Hrach] (1881–1959) and Alois “Louis” Kroc (1879–1937).[6][7] Alois was born in Horní Stupno, part of Břasy near Rokycany.[8] Rose’s father Vojtěch was from Ševětín and her maternal grandfather Josef Kotilínek was from Bořice.[9][10] After immigrating to America, Alois made a fortune speculating on land during the 1920s, only to lose everything with the stock market crash in 1929.[11]’
Looks like he came from a very wealthy family.
Sam Walton:
‘Samuel Moore Walton was born to Thomas Gibson Walton and Nancy Lee, in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. He lived there with his parents on their farm until 1923. However, farming did not provide enough money to raise a family, and Thomas Walton went into farm mortgaging. He worked for his brother’s Walton Mortgage Company, which was an agent for Metropolitan Life Insurance,[4][5] where he foreclosed on farms during the Great Depression.[6]
He and his family (now with another son, James, born in 1921) moved from Oklahoma. They moved from one small town to another for several years, mostly in Missouri. While attending eighth grade in Shelbina, Missouri, Sam became the youngest Eagle Scout in the state’s history.[7] In adult life, Walton became a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America.[8]
Eventually the family moved to Columbia, Missouri. Growing up during the Great Depression, he did chores to help make financial ends meet for his family as was common at the time. He milked the family cow, bottled the surplus, and drove it to customers. Afterwards, he would deliver Columbia Daily Tribune newspapers on a paper route. In addition, he sold magazine subscriptions.[9] Upon graduating from David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, he was voted “Most Versatile Boy”.
Walton in his high school yearbook, 1936
After high school, Walton decided to attend college, hoping to find a better way to help support his family. He attended the University of Missouri as an ROTC cadet. During this time, he worked various odd jobs, including waiting tables in exchange for meals. Also during his time in college, Walton joined the Zeta Phi chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity. He was also tapped by QEBH, the well-known secret society on campus honoring the top senior men, and the national military honor society Scabbard and Blade. Additionally, Walton served as president of Burall Bible Class, a large class of students from the University of Missouri and Stephens College.[10] Upon graduating in 1940 with a bachelor’s degree in economics, he was voted “permanent president” of the class.[11] ‘
I wouldn’t say he really started from the bottom either, if he started his adult life with a college degree and elite (if provincial) social connections. And of course both grew up during the Depression, which makes it a bit difficult to compare with people in current generations. The UK’s relatively ‘classless’ society is a result of postwar government and economic reforms, particularly in housing, education and health care–reforms which didn’t happen, or happen to the same extent, in the US.
I’ve traveled throughout the UK, Europe and the USA, and never really found any stereotype that survived for long. As an American, I certainly don’t feel like I have very much in common with someone from New England or Mississippi, or even Minnesota. If you put a bunch of us in the same room, you’d be hard-pressed to find much commonality (including much common language). The same seems to be true of my British friends. I honestly feel like I have more in common with German culture, in many ways, than I do with English culture (my father’s family emigrated from London, UK). Even the Swedish kin on my mother’s side seem like aliens to me in many ways.
Not super on-topic, I know. Apologies. The opening comment: “cultural differences” sort of got me thinking about this stuff, again.
It’s plenty on-topic enough.
I have a friend, an ex-pat American (we went to school together, but he’s lived in Europe for a long time) who constantly makes sweeping statements about people in various categories or from various countries. It’s clear from the way he phrases things that he isn’t talking about tendencies or “typical” or “on average” because he uses these assessments to make prejudicial determinations, as if all members of a group share the characteristic until proven otherwise. I might agree with him on some of the items as tendencies, but not the way he intends them. It is really difficult and often infuriating to talk about various political topics with him.
So I can see Barnett-Ward giving a similar impression.
Whether or not the UK or the US is more ‘class-bound’, I do not know – though I do recall some study from many years ago that determined – whether accurately or not – that there was in fact more class mobility in the UK than in the US. Whether the same could be claimed now, when we have, and have had for years, a government in the UK that is intent on pushing more and more people into poverty, and a set of ministers who believe that British workers are the laziest in the world, I do not know. I find it hard to take seriously Barnett-Ward’s self-congratulatory words about the British not taking themselves seriously and not taking the remnants of the class system seriously. A number of British people do take themselves far too seriously – witness Brexit, and the present government’s claims about the ‘world-beating this’ and the world-beating that’ which they have, they say, brought to fruition, even as the country staggers from one catastrophe to the next. Or read Johnson’s book on Churchill or Jacob Rees-Mogg’s book on the Victorians, of which one reviewer wrote: ‘the book is terrible, so bad, so boring, so mind-bogglingly banal that if it had been written by anybody else it would never have been published.’
Any discussion about what a given nationality is like obviously relies on gross generalities. That said, American culture has always struck me as being rather more deferential than Britain’s. The whole thing of young men addressing older men as ‘sir’ is one example, the veneration of the flag is another.
One aspect of British political culture I quite like is the jeering and barracking in the House of Commons. (I think I’m almost alone in this, it’s very easy to find people decrying it as juvenile and embarrassing) but to my mind it shows a healthy tradition of disparagement and disrespect. (Undercut of course by conventions like the ridiculous prohibition on pointing out when somebody is lying.) American politics, in contrast, does seem rather more deferential. Or at least it did until recent years and the proliferation of paedophile pizza restaurant accusations and campaign literature with your opponent shown in the crosshairs of a rifle.
There’s probably also just the issue of unfamiliar things striking you more strongly. Standing for the national anthem seems to me like a bizarre deviation from the natural order, whereas the obsequious coverage of the royals is more familiar and fades into the background.
As far as the influence of class goes, my understanding is that in both countries the best predictor of your income is your parents’ income.
There is a real tendency here to preen ourselves about how sophisticated we are in comparison with the States. Remarks about how Americans don’t understand irony or are brash and boastful, (which show the speaker has a certain unfamiliarity with irony themselves) are fairly routine. It even extends to complaints about American English such as the use of ‘fall’ as a season and the past participle ‘gotten’, both of which are old English usages that we’ve dropped, rather than American neologisms. I think it’s a vestige of Britain’s former place as a world power and the resentments borne of American usurpation of that role. I imagine the ancient Greeks had a raft of poorly supported stereotypes about the Romans too. In a similar vein a lot of Australian assertions about their national character seem to involve defining themselves favourably in contrast to the British.
@13 Agreed–I’m middle-aged (well old, actually) so my UK contemporaries are the ones who really got the benefit of the welfare state. Anyone under say 25 will probably not see these benefits.
Well maybe, but I think that Americans perceive differences that are not obvious to foreigners. When there is a school shooting in the USA (something that seems to happen depressingly often) it can be hard to guess from the pictures we see on television whether we are looking at Alaska or Florida or somewhere in between.
For the first (of three) years I was at Berkeley (1967–1970) I didn’t have a strong feeling of being foreign (after all, we speak the same language, more or less), but by the time I left I felt very strongly that I was in an alien environment. Now, several decades later, I feel less foreign in France or even Chile than I do in the USA. I think the prevalence of religion in American politics is a very striking thing: we are having a presidential election in a couple of weeks, with about ten candidates: I don’t have any idea whether any of them profess a religion or go regularly to church. I live very close to a church, and so I do know which of my neighbours (elderly ladies, for the most part) go to it, but if the church were further away I wouldn’t have any idea.
Djolaman @ 14 –
Yes! And by the same token a lot of ancient Romans felt like brash uncultured newcomers compared to the Greeks. The parallels have always interested me. See also: Russia in relation to France. War and Peace opens with a party at which everyone is speaking French. See also: Japan in relation to China.
It’s been several years since I read War and Peace so I may have this wrong, but I think there’s also a nicely observed scene later in the novel once the French invasion is underway, where several of the characters who were at that opening party are disavowing all things French and talking about how they’ve always detested Napoleon.
Is there any sense of cultural inferiority towards Britain in the States? My impression has always been that it’s a very self confident country. Possibly excessively so.
Oh yes. It’s not universal of course, but yes. Like, for instance, the fact that PBS calls its recycling of various UK tv soap operas “Masterpiece Theater.”
That’s interesting. I’ve heard of Masterpiece Theatre but I’d always assumed it was critically acclaimed stagings of Hamlet and The Cherry Orchard and so forth.
Yes exactly – just as you were meant to. Sometimes it is items like that, but mostly it’s stuff like Downton Abbey. Snobbery and pop culture both in one gulp.
Well, we Canadians have a whole cottage industry based on being more polite than Americans. I’m not sure about Quebec, but I think they’ve got more confidence in their uniqueness than we maudit anglais do. I think we’re a little more desperate to differentiate ourselves as the “nicer North American Anglos.” Ask the First Nations peoples how accurate that self-description is…