Hypothetically if I’m born in India would I be Indian

[eRobin]

I’m a bit nervous asking about this subject incase it’s taken the wrong way. I was speaking with a not-quite friend (an acquaintance as I don’t know them very well but we’re friendly) from Bangladesh. I am Celtic. I asked him hypothetically if I was born in Bangladesh, India, or Africa, would be considered Indian or British or both because of my ethnicity/skin colour. He said I wouldn’t be considered Bengali because I wouldn’t be part of their culture/religion, and other places like India or Africa would feel the same. But when I asked him why he considers himself to be British despite being born here if I couldn’t be classed as Bengali if I was born over there, a woman from Dubai who was also present said that my comment was racist - but I felt that what the person from Bengali had said was racist. Do celtic people not have a culture?

There can be a huge difference between what you "feel" you are, which is a mixture of genetics and culture, and what nationality/citizenship you're entitled to claim based on where you/your parents/your grandparents were born.

@ForPearlViper I get what you're saying. You've assumed I am of singular nationality - I am mixed race and a dual citizen - one of which is Ireland as it happens!

I commented on that poster because while I understand how someone can consider themselves 'Irish and (insert other place)' I don't really see how someone born and bred in the north of England can consider themselves as only Irish if that makes sense. Surely they are Irish and English/British, or British with Irish heritage.

Both Mumsnet vipers!

To be honest, my comments were really intended to be more general. I do feel that so many discussions in life would be much simpler if the opening was 'OK, so how are we defining X'. I've been in many rooms with people having heated discussions whilst they are completely at cross purposes about what they believe X to be!

I like how they do it in the US- ethnicity put before nationality e.g. Italian-American, Chinese-American, African-American, Polish-American etc. Makes it very clear!

Being Polish or Italian isn’t an ethnicity though…..

Somebody once described the Duke of Wellington as Irish because he had been born in Dublin. The Duke replied "Just because a man's born in a stable, that doesn't make him a horse."

What’s making things more complicated is
1- the citizenship - someone might have been born in England, spend all their life here and yet not have the British citizenship. In that case, how can they describe themselves as English (or British)?
2- how people see you - personally I know that having people here putting me in that box ‘you’re french’ and that created an identity that I didn’t really have in the first place (I’m french, citizenship wise, but have spent all my childhood abroad so didn’t ‘feel’ really french when I came to the U.K.). So I think that when you repeatedly have people mentioning ‘you’re not from here’ it’s hard to feel you belong if that makes sense.

Dah!
But some countries do require that at least one of your parents is from the country or already got the nationality before supplying a passport to the new born.

Is this more of a general comment that one that relates to what I was asking initially?

The poster I was replying to initially says they have British, Irish, and another passport, but only really considers themselves just Irish, despite growing up in England (or at least that it what I deduced from their post.

Agree with your second point, as a mixed race person who grew up in both.of my parents countries (plus a couple more) I know exactly how it feels to be told "well you are not really from here are you".

Do you have quite a french name? As you'll know, most people don't really get the international kid thing - it's too far outside of their experience so it's much easier to just say/think you are french and be done with it!

It actually is.

So few Americans would admit to being Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Macedonian, Czech etc Americans after a generation though. They are often ethnically white and do not want to be othered. There is research on that. If I remember correctly, the Eastern European groups benefit from being white and non distinguishable. They often come from poorer communities and step up socioeconomically above black and Latino Americans due to being white.
@ApplesAgainstHumanity and @LoveIsLikeAFartIfYouHaveToPushItsUsuallyShit

@HorribleHisTories15 "hierarchy of whitness" exists though for first gen. At leat in UK from experinece. Pretty sure it applies elsewhere

East Asians in US perform amazingly and out performing anyone actually iirc? I think it's more of the case of "we did not move accross the glove so you would be average at school!" case?

Also, they are ethically Slavic, if not by their area (that's going specific). White is race.

I had a friend who was born in Ireland, childhood in Denmark, had a Welsh dad, a Dutch mum, and lived in Scotland as a teen. She's now married to a Norwegian and lives there.

Where is she from?! She laughingly described herself as an Earthling!

There are obviously facts and then there are feelings/culture. Facts would include what does a particular law regard you as and what is your genetic heritage. The UK by the way is changing the law following the budget so that if you leave the UK for 10 years and only then die your whole estate will fall outside inheritance tax., There are some big changes in this as the Uk for tax purposes for years has had very very complicated tax rules on domicile (which are not the same as what is your passport) based on how many days you spend here a year, if you keep a house here and all kinds of things HMRC look into to decide. It is a probably a good thing that is being hopefully simplified.

There are also the changes to tax treatment of non-doms (such as Rishi Sunak's wife) " The UK will move to a residence-based system from 6 April 2025 that will see IHT being charged on worldwide assets for individuals who have been UK resident in ten out of the last twenty tax years. Such individuals will remain within the scope of IHT for up to ten years following exit from the UK, and the IHT ‘tail’ will depend on how long they were resident in the UK. " https://www.bdo.co.uk/en-gb/insights/tax/private-client/changing-rules-for-non-dom-status-what-to-do-now

You sound deeply confused. There’s nothing at all ‘dog and pony show’ about an Irish person living in the US drinking Barry’s or speaking Irish — why wouldn’t they? Everyone does 13 years of Irish at school, even if they’re not a native speaker, and Barry’s is widely available. I lived in the US for years but left for the UK, having decided I didn’t want to stay, like many other Irish people who live overseas in various places, but remain Irish. I can’t think of any Irish Americans who’ve been ‘reclaimed for doing something great’ since JFK. Michael Flatley is an embarrassment wherever he goes, and ‘reclaiming’ various presidents is more or less a joke (see Barack Obama Plaza) because countless millions of Americans have some Irish blood. And respectfully, Ireland doesn’t need to borrow kudos via its diaspora, it’s doing fine. But is the diaspora important? Sure.

... some black Americans persist in calling themselves African Americans even though they’ve not been in Africa for hundreds of years at this point.

One major reason for this lies in the history of transAtlantic slavery; ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) may not know where their ancestors came from in Africa, since children were separated from parents and people were not allowed to congregate with others from their home area, or talk about home. Slave owners often "bred" the next generation without allowing any communication among the people they considered their property and forced to have nonconsensual sex with each other - and also in some cases added in their own DNA via yet more sexual contact without consent (aka rape). Modern DNA testing has helped some people narrow down their ancestry, but it's still pretty vague.

A bit different:

DD was born in England to German parents - we are still all here 17 years later and DD sees herself as German ethnically, English cultural. She has both nationalities.

At the same time I had friends who moved to England just before their DS was born, dad Irish, mum German. They moved to Germany when he was 4. He doesn't see himself English at all, he is irish/German.

I live in the UK for 24 years now, I do have now dual-nationality. I don't see myself as British/English apart from on paper. I see myself still as German.

Its not racist to ask questions. People call people racist just to try and shut them up and people like that are pretty grose.

Do you think that's a good thing?

Is that what you think we should emulate?

It's worth noting that up into the 70s Japanese children were taught in school that they were ethnically superior to all other Asians, I'm not sure their ideas on ethnicity and nationality are ones to emulate.

Yes, I hate when people use African countries as a gotcha, saying that black Africans never accept white people as an member of their country when clearly that often isn't true, and when it is, it's very wrong.

Exactly, people use India as a gotcha when that's hardly the full picture.

Tbf I've read of a few Raj types who knew Hindustani better than they knew English and did seem to genuinely love, appreciate and feel affliated with India far more than they did with England. Obviously this is controversial and a lot did live in a bubble and not really integrate, but not all.

You are what your passport says you are. Citizenship is an official classification

Yes, it makes my blood boil when I see people advocating Japan's citizenship laws as if their attitude to ethnicity is one to be admired and mimicked.

Japan's ethnic contempt for other Asians came to a head after being progressively whipped up in the years leading to WW2. The treatment of other Asian countries is something that arguably the country still hasn't come to terms with. They were still teaching racial superiority ideology in schools in the 1970s. I don't think they're a good model for questions of ethnicity and nationality.

I agree.

People like Judith Kerr and Joseph Conrad came to the UK in their teens. They made themselves an integral part of our culture. It's surprising when you research how many important UK figures were originally born/had parents from elsewhere.

This interview with Kerr points out the key contributions of the German-Jewish refugees who came in the war years : Eric Hobsbawm, Ernst Gombrich & Lucian Freud among them.

www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=www.ft.com/content/37f1f0a8-ae0f-11e7-beba-5521c713abf4&ved=2ahUKEwjT-Mnys-qQAxWkWkEAHUsfHr0QFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0VH9G-tBTgsvKMzjpOaQWl

Other countries too : Yves Montand and Charles Aznavour were the sons of Italian and Armenian immigrants respectively. Yet they again are seen as integral French figures, even though France is famously more wary of extending that label than we are. Isabelle Adjani is another one : would you call her non-French? By blood she's German-Algerian.