http://www.amazon.com/Unequal-Childhoods-Class-Race-Family/dp/0520239504

Both the in the very different child rearing styles of the two groups and in the book’s insistence that the lower middle class is stunting their kids in some way. “If only you did things our way, we would be would welcome you with open arms”

That is probably true. It still can be the case that class is a more prominent feature in certain countries than others.

Race and ethnic issues are more prominent in the US. For example, in many California restaurants, the kitchen workers are almost all Hispanic but none of the waiters are Hispanic. Who the hell knows what is going on, but this kind of thing is a lot more prominent than class differences among whites which, of course, do exist.

Very true.

Despite growing up in Northern Ireland, and spending more than five years in the U.K., I realised I would never truly grok the English class system. But it’s definitely better to have a Dublin, Belfast or lowland Scots accent than having a Scouser, Yorkshire, or God forgive, Brummie accent if you want to work in the City or Inns of Court.

Adapting to the West Coast of the U.S. was a breeze by comparison, although how elites are formed int he U.S. is much less obvious than in the U.K.: the East Coast seems a lot closer to the U.K. in terms of important of family background & private school than the West Coast.

I find Americans talk to me a lot about the British class system, and view it as some quaint idiosyncrasy, but here in DC class is so in your face I don’t understand how people can’t see it.

RS, don’t you think in the US we pretend we have no classes—we’re an egalitarian society where anyone can get ahead like Horatio Alger—even though class obviously matters and we are less socially mobile than some other countries? And people don’t say “class” as much as they say “snooty,” “stuck-up,” “white trash,” “redneck,” “rough,” and so on.

Not that it isn’t plausible that people would do this – human history of slavery is proof enough of that – but more that no one seems to be truly engaging intellectually with the question in these (usually) futuristic societies – it is painted as just an accepted fact about the world rather than what would presumably be a massively contentious issue rending society.

And it applied class-wise (to other Britons) as well as race-wise.

It was very friendly on the whole, even when they wanted me out. The pub didn’t want posh people in, for a very large category of posh or it wouldn’t include me. But they only had a problem with English posh people, perhaps because foreigners cannot be really posh by definition.

I told them I didn’t understand their class system, and recognizing that it exists without understanding it was apparently the correct position.

I knew people like that when I was growing up in the South-East of England. You could sum up the attitude as “I’m a racist, no offence intended”.

Each to their own, OK? It works for us and it works for them. So if one of them tried it on by coming in here, obviously we’d put them straight, wouldn’t we? But you, well, you weren’t to know, were you? You’ll know another time, eh? No harm done – can I get you one for the road?

I didn’t really like the South-East.

I am gobsmacked by your pub story. Clearly the pubman wasn’t parsing “race” the way I’m used to—you’re acceptable because you’re not trying to be English, and hence above your station, but that means you can drink in the pub…? No, I don’t get it.