The Differences in Identity Politics Between America and Britain
Photo by Nicolas Raymond http://freestock.ca/flags_maps_g80-english_language_grunge_flag_p1173.html
Upon watching the coverage of the US election, I was struck by something. A lot has been made of Kamala Harris being a woman, and a woman of colour. Those interviewed spoke about how much finally having a woman/woman of colour becoming president would mean to them.
I found this interesting, as a Brit, and as a woman. Personally, I don’t care if a woman is a leader or not, and I don’t subscribe to the belief that women are better or worse leaders than men. As for race, I believe that it’s much more of a factor in American politics than it is British. That’s not to say race isn’t discussed in Britain or British politics. It’s still a topic that’s frequently brought up. Protests and riots have occurred over race, from the Brixton riots to 2020 and George Floyd. We’ve had a minority PM in Rishi Sunak, whose parents are Indian. We’ve also had three female PMs, two elected (Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May) and one not (Liz Truss).
That being said, I feel class has more impact in British political history. Unlike America, our class system is more rigid and sustained, with actual differences in rank.
Race, religion, and female leaders have had more of an impact in American politics. America has had no non-Christians, non-men, one ethnic minority and two Catholic presidents. More has been made of it. Rishi Sunak becoming PM was much less of a deal than Barack Obama becoming president, though he was not elected. I wasn’t alive for Margaret Thatcher’s ascension, but I was for Hillary Clinton’s near-win, and people were very excited about having a female president.
I wanted to write about the differences in identity politics between America and Britain.
Class/Background
The British class system has been around for a long, long time. Whilst the formal classification now is a little more complex, but here’s a layman’s analysis:
Most Prime Ministers pre-20th century were gentry or nobility. The first PM not born to the peerage or gentry was Benjamin Disraeli, who was also born Jewish before converting to Anglicanism as a pre-teen. PMs born into working-class families were Ramsay MacDonald (born illegitimate), James Callaghan and John Major, and others were from the middle-class.
In America, such a rigid social class does not exist. If it does, then it’s generally divided into upper, middle and working class. Because there is no nobility or peerage, the upper class tends to contain wealthy families of inherited wealth and old lineage, such as the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts, or the Southern gentry.
If we were to direct the background of each US president into one of these classes, they would likely be as follows:
Upper Class:
George Washington
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
William Henry Harrison
John Tyler
Franklin Pierce
Theodore Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
John F. Kennedy
George H. W. Bush
George W. Bush
Donald Trump
Middle Class:
John Adams
John Quincy Adams
Martin Van Buren
James K. Polk
Zachary Taylor
James Buchanan
Ulysses S. Grant
Rutherford B. Hayes
Chester A. Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
William McKinley
William H. Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Hebert Hoover
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Gerald Ford
Ronald Reagan
Barack Obama
Joe Biden
Working Class:
Andrew Jackson
Millard Fillmore
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
James A. Garfield
Harry S. Truman
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon
Jimmy Carter
Bill Clinton
There have been presidents from incredibly wealthy families such the Roosevelts and Trump, and those born into poverty such as Garfield and Carter. Most from the poor and middle class have climbed up the ladder via education or distinguished military service, though some like Andrew Johnson barely received schooling and weren’t soldiers.
Race and Religion
Nearly all U.K. Prime Ministers have been WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). Exceptions are:
Tony Blair did not convert to Catholicism, his wife’s religion, until after he left office.
Whilst the U.K. is a Christian country with Christianity as its official religion, society at large is generally secular and increasing numbers of the public are atheist, agnostic or follow a non-Christian religion such as Islam and Hinduism.
Contrast this with America, which practices a separation of Church and State, but where Christianity is a dominant force and the majority religion. It also has a high number of believers in other religions such as Judaism and Islam,
The majority of US Presidents have been WASPs, with three notable exceptions:
Martin Van Buren was White Protestant but had no English ancestry.
Whilst all presidents have been Christian, some like Jefferson are deists.
Two Vice Presidents have been minorities:
Joe Lieberman, had he been elected as Al Gore’s running mate, would have been the first Jewish Vice President.
Gender
There have been three female PMs in British history:
There have been no female presidents in the United States, though that could change if Kamala Harris is elected in the 2024 election. Four women, however, have been on the major party ticket:
Several women have been included in major party primaries or even won them, such as Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Amy Klobuchar and Nikki Haley. Others have led or been on third party tickets, such as Victoria Woodhull (though she was not 35), Toni Nathan and Jill Stein.
If Kamala Harris wins, she’ll be the second minority president and first woman. For some, it’s a victory for women and minorities. For others, it’s identity politics. Whatever the case, the issues of class, race, religion and gender will continue to purvey politics on both sides of the Atlantic.
At least Britain has had more than a few Queen Regnant, amrIite?
I think it’s noteworthy that England/Britain has a long, long history of women in leadership positions, going all the way back to Maude. Elizabeth I was no titular-only leader. Victoria was not the power, but she set a tone. And there’s Mary, who perhaps many would rather forget about, but she ruled, and had her way.
I think this is important. The US does not have any history like this.
As regards class in Britain, I think you are on the mark. There is class in America too, but we pretend that there isn’t. When someone calls someone “sketchy” it is a class slur. If a woman calls another woman a “slut”, the complaint is not that she’s having too much sex, but rather that she’s having sex with the wrong men. It’s a class slur. This can be hard to spot, since we are very invested in “we don’t recognize class”.Report
“I think it’s noteworthy that England/Britain has a long, long history of women in leadership positions, going all the way back to Maude.”
Bea Arthur as Queen of England!!!Report
Would Donald Trump be considered upper class in two generations?Report
because he lies about his wealth consistently? Maybe not, but it’s not how he’s seen in the future that matters in the present. And in the US he’s as upper class and elite as they get.Report
C’mon. Anyone can understand what I was asking.Report
Well you got the answer you got based on how I understood the question. If you want a different take, ask a different question.Report
I asked if Donald Trump would be considered upper class in two generations. A simple question. The article from an English author suggested that Trump is upper class, and I questioned it in light of his grandparents being poor immigrants.Report
Ah see, I thought you were asking about two generations forward from now, not back from now. More context maters. Given how things work in the US, I still maintain he’s as upperclass and elite as they come.Report
In England, class is very much about the past.Report
We don’t live in England, and as the OP noted the “rules” in the US are different.Report
In England, absolutely not. He’d barely be considered new money (especially since how much actual money he has now is an open question).
In America, definitely. Trump was born to money, was given money fished it up and then inherited more money which bailed him out him from his life choices from that point on. Americans generally seem to view class, from my own observation, as mostly a question of money. There’s a level of delineations within elite depending on how long you have had your money and your background but that largely only matters to other elites.Report
I think class in this country, before I was born, revolved around land ownership, and during my lifetime has been synonymous with educational attainment.Report
I think that’s a plausible interpretation but since both land ownership and educational attainment tend to go hand in hand with lucre, I think that, at least in modern times, it’s mostly blurred over into money in this country.Report
I think it’s worth pointing out though. A lottery winner or a successful drug dealer, versus an $80K assistant professor, we all know how we’d label them.Report
Perhaps but it’d be pretty heavily dependent on their parentage. The internet levels things a lot so, yes, an 80k assistant professor can posture like an elite on social media but you wouldn’t mistake them for one in person.
A lottery winner wouldn’t automatically be considered elite unless they managed to not squander their winnings immediately but their kids, in the happy scenario they keep their money, would be considered elite. A successful drug dealer, on the other hand, would have no shot since their money would be physical, unlaundered and imperiled.Report
I’d say DJT was born/raised upper middle class.
His children grew up upper class.Report
I taught English in Japan from 2002-2003 and lived in a glorified dorm basically with a bunch of other expat English teachers. Most of my housemates were Brits, Australian, or from New Zealand. I was the only American. There was one guy who was Canadian and a few Japanese people. Everyone had university degrees but the Brits (and to a lesser extent the Australians and New Zealanders) felt locked in their classes despite the university degrees in ways that just don’t happen in the United States.Report
This is a tough assignment. I’m not sure about using the label “middle class” for many of those US presidents listed who were raised in the 17th & 18th century (JQA, Van Buren??). Also, a bit of conflation between wealth and class. Kennedys and Trumps were not exactly high born. George Washington was a soldier who married well, etc.Report
Slightly off-topic, but when would you say that the political and administrative abilities of the King or Queen largely ceased to matter as opposed to the political and administrative abilities of the PM? What would it be like for a King or Queen who has real governing talent to have to sit and watch future Liz Trusses and Boris Johnsons make a hash of things while they are helpless to intervene?Report
King Charles is notoriously good at filing.Report
It is a complex question. Certainly, the British monarchy had some significant pull well into QEII’s reign though it was much more subtle.
As early as George the IIIrds’ reign in the late 1700’s or earlier scholars were talking about how the Monarchy’s temporal powers were steadily migrating into the moral realm.
But, really, the history of the British Monarchy has kindof always been a story of a long devolution of power from the Magna Carta on down. Britain was an island nation so, once Scottland and Wales were incorporated, they didn’t have the same requirements for a standing royal army that other nations did which naturally lent itself to more decentralization. Not having a huge army around both reduced revenue needs and also made the Monarch not quite as capable of throwing elbows as would otherwise be the case.Report
Interestingly, England (and its successor states) has been the European state with the most regnant queens, six, not counting Lady Jane Grey. And in the case of Lady Jane, who would have been the first, she was not disqualified for being a woman, but for there being two women with a better claim that hers.
That in the 1550s no one in England was debating that women could be sovereigns on their own was quite amazing.Report
A lot of this is because that Center-Right parties in other developed democracies do not have anything like the Evangeliban or Dixiecrats being utterly nuts. After World War II, the European democracies basically decided that certain forms of demagoguery were forbidden. This doesn’t mean that everybody was a non or anti-racist but World War II convinced enough politicians that politicians who deliberately indulge the populace in some ways can not be tolerated. This is why Enoch Powell was punished for his Rivers of Blood speech even if the rest of the Conservatives weren’t that keen on the Ugandan Indians moving to the United Kingdom in mass either. He said things that were impermissible.
For a variety of reasons, it was impossible for American politicians to impose this type of discipline and racial and religious demagogues like George Wallace could thrive after World War II. In large parts of the United States, the politics of White Supremacy and Protestant morality never went away. So this led to the gradual crazification of the Republican Party and sorting everybody who is not nuts into the Democratic Party. In the UK, a person who didn’t like Jeremy Corbyn could vote for the Conservatives without the fear of an abortion ban being imposed. This isn’t the case in the United States.Report