Reverse snobbery
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Reverse snobbery is the phenomenon of looking unfavorably on perceived social elites – effectively the opposite of snobbery. For instance, poorer members of society may eventually consider themselves to be friendlier, happier, more honest or moral than richer members of the society, and middle-income members of society may stress their poorer origins. This is common in British politics, in which MPs often say things such as "I grew up on a council estate" to try to prove their common roots.
The term bourgeois is frequently used in North America among those who self-identify as working class, to describe individuals who borrow veneers of upper classes in order to affect a sophisticated, cultured image. In a related phenomenon, people who have worked to change their material lives may be accused of having "betrayed their roots".
