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Is it simply the British equivalent of the American "wigger", ie a white person who thinks they're black or is it more complex than that?
I know that term is quite recent and has only been used for about a decade if even that long. What American subculture would it best compare to?
"Wigger" is about the closest U.S. equivalent, but "chav" doesn't have the racial connotations that "wigger" has. It's more explicitly classist (though "wigger" obviously has some class connotation) having a strong blue-collar connotation.
Is it simply the British equivalent of the American "wigger", ie a white person who thinks they're black or is it more complex than that?
I know that term is quite recent and has only been used for about a decade if even that long. What American subculture would it best compare to?
It's the equivalent to trailer trash but without the trailer park, since we don't really have trailer parks here the way you do in the US. Basically a sub culture of lower income people and usually white people and blue collar.
"Wigger" is about the closest U.S. equivalent, but "chav" doesn't have the racial connotations that "wigger" has. It's more explicitly classist (though "wigger" obviously has some class connotation) having a strong blue-collar connotation.
Wigger doesn't even come close to the description.
Wigger doesn't even come close to the description.
Nothing in U.S. parlance comes particularly close. "White trash" has a strong rural, typically Southern connotation in the U.S. that doesn't particularly fit with "chav." About the closest you can come is to sort of combine "wigger" and "white trash."
Nothing in U.S. parlance comes particularly close. "White trash" has a strong rural, typically Southern connotation in the U.S. that doesn't particularly fit with "chav." About the closest you can come is to sort of combine "wigger" and "white trash."
What a load of bollox. You arrived at your conclusion how? Have you met a 'chav' or lived in England? Are you deliberately attempting to introduce 'wigger' to offend?
In modern Britain, the working class has become an object of fear and ridicule. From Little Britain's Vicky Pollard to the demonization of Jade Goody, media and politicians alike dismiss as feckless, criminalized and ignorant a vast, underprivileged swathe of society whose members have become stereotyped by one, hate-filled word: chavs. In this acclaimed investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from “salt of the earth” to “scum of the earth.” Exposing the ignorance and prejudice at the heart of the chav caricature, he portrays a far more complex reality. The chav stereotype, he argues, is used by governments as a convenient figleaf to avoid genuine engagement with social and economic problems and to justify widening inequality. Based on a wealth of original research, Chavs is a damning indictment of the media and political establishment and an illuminating, disturbing portrait of inequality and class hatred in modern Britain
"Oh goodness gracious -- someone used an explicitly pejorative term to provide a basis of comparison for another explicitly pejorative term -- let's turn the back of our hand against our foreheads and feign a case of the vapors!"
I didn't introduce the word -- read the OP. And while you're at it, get over yourself.
More like it's what I get for trying to have a reasonable conversation with someone easily prone to histrionics who had no business opening a thread on a controversial topic, but whatever.
A Chav is lower class person trying to impress by wearing gear they "think" is higher quality (and failing miserably by being so obvious). Its somewhat like how Rap/Hip-Hop types from poor/ghetto neigborhoods in the US aspire to designer athletic clothing, shoes, sunglasses, copious gold jewelry and ten year old European and Japanese luxury cars (because they can't afford or qualify for a loan for a new one). Suburban white kids in the US trying to emulate this culture are not the same - they're coming from a more privileged background trying to "dress down" to appear dangerous or bad. Really, about the closest we have to Chavs are the Jersey Shore type Guidos/Guidettes.
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