Would you say non-white people born & raised in England are English?

[rack909]

Just thought I should hear people’s perspective on this.

Some say it’s an ethnicity, some say it’s a nationality & others say it’s both of them.

I personally think it’s both a Nationality & ethnic group.

If someone says they are from England, they are denoting their nationality as English even if they don’t say it outright. It’s the same thing.

'Non-white' is not an ethnicity. Neither is being 'white' for that matter.

OP asked whether describing yourself as English means Nationality or Ethnicity. She thinks it’s both.

It isnt.

Nationality is derived by the laws of the land you were born in and the legal citizenship of your birth parents.

Ethnicity is derived by cultural ancestry and shared heritage.

You could be born in England and be an English National with Indian Ethnicity. Or born in Wales with Irish ethnicity. Or born in Scotland with Danish Ethnicity. And you could be born in Gambia with English ethnicity.

in some cases this also makes you a dual national with dual citizenship even if you left at 8months old.

Apparently ethnicity is a social classification of shared cultural identity so I guess you can call yourself whatever you want!
if I speak to someone and they speak English with a local accent, then i assume they were born here or have been here for a very long time since early childhood.

However, I also know people who have been here all their adult lives who still have a strong accent of another place and others who have a barely discernible accent.
It’s very individual , because hey, shock, surprise, People are Individuals!
if you live in a multicultural city and are a sensible person you learn to treat people as individuals. Common sense no?

when people move from one country to another they often (but not always) group together with people who speak their native language, just as the English speaking ex pats do in other countries. It’s not something to automatically fear.

Human nature is universal i suspect.

there will always be bad eggs in every part of society.

I’m disgusted by people like Tommy Robinson and the way they’ve co opted the English national flag in to a symbol of racism.

I’m regularly amazed by the attitudes of people like my parents who will make racist comments and when I pick them up on it and point out they’d be dead without immigration or that their neighbour is Asian, get an answer like ‘well they're alright’ or ‘well they’re ok individually’.
it’s repellant which is one of the reasons I only see them as a duty.

People are individuals…..some are great, some are arseholes, such is the rich tapestry of life.
I really hoped we’d started to move on but Identity politics plus social media is a societal wrecking ball.

If they're integrated. Not if they've ghettoised themselves.

I think it’s slightly nuanced, if someone has been brought up in Britain and their family have been living here for generations they are British.
My reasoning is this, my children are half French and were born in France so technically French from birth certificates, passports (although they have a British one too) however I will always say they are English, they speak English we have a English community they are part of, they visit England and have English family- they are technically French and have one French parent but we are actively keeping them English too by the way they are raised. You see this a lot in communities in the UK too, Indian and Pakistani communities who all share their culture with the children born in the UK.

They are English if they say they are English. If they prefer British or if they prefer to identify more strongly with the nation of their parents or grandparents that's valid too but "English" has no legal definition. British is a matter of legal status and they probably have that status if born here (they will if at least one parent had settled status at the time of their birth ie not on a temporary visa) but that doesn't stop them from claiming "English", or any other classification, too if they wish. The English were already a mongrel race made of immigrants from at least a dozen countries right back in 1066 and more has been added to the melting pot since, and more will be again in centuries to come.

I think @Caspianberg's contribution is entirely valid @GoodkneeBadKnee - we can use it as an analogy that someone born in England to parents who are from France or China or Nigeria might consider themselves culturally French or Chinese or Nigerian and may have a passport from those countries as well as the British Passport that they are entitled to because of their British Citizenship if they have that status - but they might not have full rights as a citizen of those other countries (such as the right to pass their citizenship on to their own children) if those other countries have laws that mirror ours. Their reliable actual citizenship is British - their citizenship of that other country is uncertain and dependent on the laws of that country.

Interesting choice of word. Define ghettoised.

That still wouldn't change their nationality status.

As soon as you move onto Grandparents you probably start to move into the effects of multi generational settlement. By the third generation you should be fully assimilated into the English culture. If someone is still clinging to the identity of say “Pakistani British” when their grandparents permanently settled here 70 odd years ago, they clearly haven’t assimilated and therefore not English. Tracing it back my great grandmother came from wales, wouldn’t consider myself Welsh at all, I’m fully English, don’t celebrate any Welsh culture or speak Welsh at home etc.

Yes, if they claim the identity.

It might need an asterisk if they aren’t British citizens.

Maybe another caveat to say and fully assimilate and leave other cultures behind

Sorry I think that is daft. Of course there is English culture! It’s baked into the way we speak, the customs, the history, the literature.
As a non- English by race person who has grown up in England these are all part of my culture. I don’t really fit anywhere else.
Of course some people can be both as well.
My friend is Kenyan by birth (but with Indian dna) and grew up mostly in England.
She’s English and Kenyan ( and yes, she says Kenyan- she’s never been to India!)

You mean like British expats often do ? ;-)

Nationality is a legal status. English is not a nationality because we don't have English passports etc. The nationality would be British.

Ethnicity is primarily about identity. It is subjective and it is ultimately self-defined. Ancestry and race etc may play a part in how people define their ethnicity but they are certainly not the only factors.

Personally, I would describe "English" as an identity. If POC who were born here choose to describe themselves as "English", then they absolutely are English. Just as I regard myself as English despite my ancestry being primarily Irish/Welsh.

There are no real scientific or legal definitions of "English" so it isn't really appropriate for other to decide that someone else does or doesn't "qualify" - if they have some sort of connection with England and regard themselves as English, then they are English.

They probably don’t consider themselves say Spanish, so that probably backs up the other posters argument

Indeed, they'd still hold British nationality.

Yes and they don't tend to then claim that they're Spanish or whatever.

Yeah, but that's ok because they tend to be white. 😊

Alum Rock.

It doesn’t matter how someone identifies. Many people will still judge (and treat) English born non-white individuals based on how they perceive them. Rishi Sunak may consider Englishness to be part of his identity, but that does not necessarily mean many other English people fully accept that identity.

Yes. They’re English / British. They just have different heritage so while I’m White English theyre X English.

If you mean is their ethnicity English? No. The ethnicity would be White English or White British vs say Black Nigerian or Black African or South Asian (whatever they identify as).

Is their nationality English? Yes. They’re an English person by birth and citizenship.

This genuinely blows my mind that it’s even controversial.

I have a white Kenyan friend. I have a friend whose family is originally from Pakistan but who was born and raised in Zimbabwe and considers themselves Zimbabwean. Another friend’s family is ethnically Indian but they grew up in Uganda, so of course they see themselves as Ugandan.

Nationality is not the same thing as ethnicity.

You can be ethnically Indian and nationally Ugandan. Ethnically Pakistani and nationally Zimbabwean. Ethnically white and nationally Kenyan. These are not contradictions unless you have a very narrow view of what a country “looks like”.

I honestly think this is quite a small-minded British/English way of seeing the world sometimes - this idea that nationality must match one particular ethnicity or appearance. Huge parts of the world are multicultural, multi-ethnic societies shaped by migration, empire, trade, displacement and generations of shared history.

If someone was born somewhere, raised there, speaks like everyone else there, shares the culture and sees that country as home, why on earth would they not identify as being from that country?

People seem to hear “I’m Kenyan” and think the person is making a claim about race, when actually they’re talking about nationality, culture, upbringing and identity.

The constant “but where are you REALLY from?” attitude is exhausting and, frankly, reveals more about the person asking than the person answering.

They don't consider themselves Spanish because they're not born in Spain...
Or speak the language.

Don't you have a train to catch?

English is not an ethnicity. It’s a nationality.