Ex-worker says ex-colleagues constantly criticize white-collar workers

For ages, the divide between “working class” blue-collar and degree-holding “white-collar” career types seems to be growing more and more contentious — and more and more politically impactful, too.

At the heart of the divide is the conventional wisdom that many white-collar workers, including our political leaders, view blue-collar workers as less sophisticated or less important. But one former trader says we need to re-examine this long-held belief.

A former worker claims that it is actually blue-collar workers who judge white-collar workers, not the other way around.

After last week’s shocking election results, it really seems like Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 victory may have been an aberration brought on by the previous administration’s incompetent handling of a terrifying pandemic.

The 2024 election appears to have followed many of the same contours as the 2016 election, namely Donald Trump coming to power in part because of a wave of economic concerns and class resentment among the white working class.

But for a former worker turned doctor on Reddit, it all seems a little confusing. In his experience, it is not the “educated professionals” who have been the targets of populist sentiment over the past ten years who judge the working class, quite the opposite.

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“Am I missing something or do most blue-collar workers just hate white-collar workers because of their (education),” the man wrote in his Reddit post. For him, the problem does not seem to come from elite judgment but rather from workers’ deeply rooted insecurity about themselves.

He expected to be judged for his blue-collar background when he entered medical school. Instead, the opposite happened.

“I was a stonemason before applying to medical school and it was almost a personality trait of everyone I met in my line of work that white-collar workers ‘hated’ and ‘despised’ them,” a- he declared.

He also said his fellow stonemasons constantly talked about the importance of their work and made fun of white-collar workers for having school debt.

This is pitiful victimization,” they said, “simply because these guys made the choice to go to college” rather than a trade school.

“When I first went to higher education to learn, I had the idea that white-collar workers would hate me,” he continued.

Instead, the exact opposite happened. “They thought it was cool what I was doing before and even wanted to see me in action.” And this led him to take the opposite view from that dictated by conventional wisdom.

He believes that blue-collar workers have an “inferiority complex” that causes them to attack white-collar workers rather than the real enemy: the 1%.

“I honestly think blue-collar workers have an insane inferiority complex,” he continued. “They’re afraid of smart people, so they put them down.”

But he said he never really saw it going the other way. “I see (blue-collar workers) acting like they’re being belittled,” he wrote, but “I don’t see anyone doing that.”

And he thinks we collectively need to stop accepting the claim that this so-called judgment on the working class is real for one very important reason: “Neither type of…workers should be against each other, and it is the richest 1%. who we should be against.

His view definitely seems controversial, but most Reddit users agreed with him. “I come from a region where coal mining has always dominated,” one wrote. “If you don’t become a coal miner, the only reason is that you can’t handle it, you’re not man enough, or… you’ve been brainwashed by big city elites, etc. .Blue-collar elitism is absolutely a thing.”

Others described being white-collar or blue-collar workers themselves in a family of the opposite type, and that this only resulted in a mutual interest in their very different lives and the ability to use the very different skills of each.

Yet there is no smoke without fire – decades of politicians insisting that everyone must simply go to college to succeed are quite dismissive of blue-collar work and the culture that is often attached to it. (It also led to a crippling labor shortage in the trades.)

But this man’s central point is just as indisputable: It’s the elites who run the corporations and the politicians who best serve their interests who make our lives more difficult.

And these same politicians have cleverly stoked and exploited our anger at each other to convince too many working people to vote directly against our own interests and empower people who, time and time again, prove that their only goal is is to make corporations more powerful and the 1% richer.

Whatever the cause and whoever is judging whom, we all need to stop letting ourselves get caught in the trap, assuming it’s not already too late.

John Sundholm is a writer, editor and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. It covers topics related to culture, mental health and human interests.