Berkley Center

The most notable difference between Scotland and America is one that I still struggle to fully understand. A student of class relations in America (a study that unfortunately often intertwines closely with race relations), pinning down just how Scotland (and the United Kingdom in general) differs from the United States in this regard has been frustratingly difficult for me; I can parse the subtleties of American society but so far Glasgow has left me stymied.

A big part of the reason that Glasgow appealed to me was because of its reputation. As well as being well-known for its arts and culture, the city has a reputation as one of the poorest and most dangerous in Western Europe. As someone who prefers Brooklyn to Manhattan, it seemed like a rich place to explore the interactions between people of all cultures.

What I was met with was surprisingly different. Instead of being one big Williamsburg, the city is much more like Washington, D.C. As much as I love the District, it is nearly impossible to deny its rather segregated nature—in fact Glasgow and D.C. are nearly identical in layout. The northwest is the expensive and classy part of town (and also where the city's most renowned university is); downtown is where you'll find public buildings and shopping (and bland architecture); and you pretty much don't go to the East End except to get to a few progressive eateries or music venues (Glasgow's East End is even less dynamic than Washington's, however).

This class division—so different from Brooklyn or my beloved Philadelphia—permeates through just about everything in Glaswegian society (and, in my limited experience [though this will be my last reference to it because of said limited nature], the rest of the United Kingdom). The grocery stores are decidedly high- and low-class, and the food's quality follows suit. Brand names on clothing are more important here than in America, if that is imaginable. There is a very strong sense of certain products—whether they be inexpensive food, affordable clothes, or, yes, cheap alcohol—are distinctly “low-class,” and no reputable university student would have such an item. Sure, there are certain things that may stand out at Georgetown, but there's nothing embarrassing about serving Natural Light at a party; we're college kids. And let's not even get started on the fashion of wearing secondhand clothes in the United States.

The reasons behind the classist society I'm observing could be due to a few things. The first of them could of course be that I come from a middle-class background in a socioeconomically diverse portion of suburban/rural America, and the people I spend my time with at Georgetown are of a similar upbringing. What I'm saying is: my country may be more classist than I realize. With that said, a simple Google search can lead to significant data showing easier class movement in the United States than in the United Kingdom, and so I think that my hypothesis is not incorrect.

In addition, this whole piece is about what I am observing and what I believe about those observations; any writer is trapped by his or her own worldview to some extent. So then we come to two hypotheses that I've come up with to explain this difference. The first of them has to do with the United Kingdom's longer history than America. Whereas America was founded on ideas of democracy and equal opportunities, we have to remember that the United Kingdom didn't adopt these policies until after we had successfully implemented them and over 1,000 year’s into the nation's’ timelines. Perhaps the very old tradition of monarchy and feudalism and strictly defined class—a tradition, again, not relatively that old, considering it was in place for well over half of English and Scottish society's existence—still has lasting effects on society. The notions of low-class and high-class with little movement between the two are perhaps still a part of U.K. culture despite having been excised two centuries ago.

The other of these two hypotheses is slightly more cynical, and I am less wont to accept it, but I will present it nonetheless. There is a longstanding idea in human culture of “the other”:– that there must always be someone else unlike a group of people to define just what that group stands for. So if America can draw this line at skin color—an idea that I am not upholding; I am simply observing our nation's unfortunate history of racial oppression and the continued socioeconomic disparity between whites and nonwhites. Scotland has more problems deciding which group is which. So, there must be stricter lines of rich and poor to define distinct groups in society. As Scotland faces the same immigration-related growing pains plaguing all of Europe, we can almost see this unfortunate hypothesis playing out; “immigrant” is quickly becoming synonymous with “problematic.”

The good news is, though, that not all people see things this way. I recently read a piece in the Glasgow University Guardian on an anti-xenophobia rally that far outnumbered the original, anti-immigrant rally it was a response to. Perhaps Scotland can avoid the trap that America fell into so long ago and is still trying to extricate itself from.