Who is English?

[mids2019]

I see reform have started a debate about the meaning of being English which has stirred a few feathers. To my mind anyone who is born in the country is English..

I would say moving to a country does not necessarily make you a national of a country e.g. if I moved the South of Spain as a retired I don't know if could reasonably call my self Spanish but children of English people definitely could.

One thing that is worth debate is how you frame heritage and is this important? For instance would 2nd.generation immigrants from India would want to be referred as English but if Indian oriigin? Is there an actual desire for people of foreign heritage to maintain a part of their identity connected to their country of family origin for cultural reason?

Culture is about language, customs, values, food, religion, even clothing, shared identifiers.
Tourists will always be wanting to see places which are unique to the country they are visiting.

But we should be ashamed of our colonial past we exploited divided and murdered people from other countries because we believed we were superior. We should be bloody ashamed. And we are still doing it now. We in the “west” are relatively wealthy because we are exploiting some poor sod in a developing county. If another countries aren’t ashamed that’s there problem (and they should be ashamed).
People arent coming here because they love scones and cream and red buses or our English accents they are coming here to escape poverty war exploitation and corruption that we created and continue to enable because our “colonial past”

Going with the self identication route is clearly ridiculous. I cannot self identify as Japanese, it reminds me of Oli London self identifying as South Korean:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oli_London

He considers himself to be English, alongside other identities. I'm not quite sure what gives you the right to decide that he isn't?

Of course he’s English. He has Indian heritage but he’s English.

What I mean by it is, the things that define your daily life - what culture do they come from? What kind of things do you eat and drink, what do you call your meals, where do the traditions and rituals in your life come from?

It is a very similar question to 'What is a woman?'

The answer to both is genetic,, with more leeway for Englishness.

Then you may want to change your username. Scotland launched a massive national venture to build a trading colony called New Edinburgh on the Isthmus of Panama. Disease (malaria), starvation, lack of English support, and Spanish opposition doomed the project.

It’s not a ‘sneering superiority’ to recognise that an English person in a different part of England (for example an industrial town in the north-west or north-east) wouldn’t recognise flat caps and wellies, or maypole dancing or oak apple day (whatever on earth that is!) as part of their culture. I don’t think we’ve worn flat caps since the 1930s!

‘Culture’ is completely subjective. Your English culture obviously differs to others’. I think regional cultural identities are stronger than national ones.

Plenty of flat caps were seen at fetes over the summer and in rural villages. You need to get out (of Scotland?) more.

And to think Northerners wouldn’t know what a flat cap is 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Being English is an ethnicity. Bring British is a nationality.

We're British Indian, DH and I moved. DC born here. We consider ourselves British Indians but not English

We do have culture but when you live inside it you’re not as aware of it than a visitor or someone who has just emigrated here. There are many YouTubers, mainly American but also Asian, who talk about the culture shocks they experienced when first living here. In most cases the Americans love a lot of the differences between our and their own culture (in our favour). I’m sure the Japanese or Koreans are not acutely aware of their culture on a day to day basis either.

I hate it when people try to make out that brown-skinned English people aren't English because of the colour of their skin. It's so ignorant and racist. Let's take someone who was born and raised in England and has never lived anywhere else, but their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents came to the UK from India. I would say that that the descendant, who was born here, is English and their heritage is Indian.

We love rishi Sunak. He's a good hard working man who was and is still dedicated to public life. He's not English though. He's British Indian.

We know what a flat caps is, but nobody wears them in towns. A baseball cap would be more fitting where I live.

I was born and raised and have lived all my life in England.

PS. There’s no ‘village fetes’ here either!

I’m English, I was born in Oxford and have lived in England all my life. We were discussing something at work a few months ago and someone said I’m British not English. I disagreed, mainly based on the fact that she was born in Edinburgh and proudly (and quite rightly) said she was Scottish. It seems sometimes the English aren’t ‘allowed’ to declare themselves English yet the Welsh/Scots can embrace their nationality without being told othwerwise.

It does though, I emigrated to another Commonwealth country (from the UK) at 36wks pregnant - my child is a citizen of that country by birth. As is my younger child.

Have you ever been to Scotland? Trust me fish and chips and pies, afternoon tea, castles (we’ve got castles everywhere) are not unique to England. Frankly I can live without Morrison dancing😀.
When I go to France or Italy (and many other European countries) I visit cathedrals, most of Europe have lovely villages as do the rest of the world and shock horror white cliffs are not just an English phenomenon.
Gosh it looks like we’ve got lots in common with the rest of the world who would have thought it?

Sure, but if you had strong social and cultural ties to Japan and considered it to be your only home, then you might feel very differently.

Born in England, but lived in Scotland more than half my life.

I identify as Scottish even though I still speak with an English accent.

My family came from South Africa and I’m the only one born in England, so that may explain why I’m not that attached to being English.

One of my sisters now lives in Canada and has taken citizenship. She counts herself as Canadian.

That’s not a uniquely English thing though. White people born and raised in Japan, Korea, China have faced the same challenges.

Where have I said Scotland that didn’t also have a disgraceful colonial past?
All countries (and there many of them) who exploited other countries for their own gain should be ashamed.

I didn’t realise you had posted this. I’ve just referenced these countries too.

That’s every country in the world then. Bar perhaps Iceland and Greenland.

I was born overseas to British parents. Lived abroad (travelled around) for quite a while before coming to the UK permanently. I am British, nothing else I could be is there? Though to be fair I don't think of myself as identifying anything. I am just someone who lives in England.