To not want to be slagged off all the time because I was born in England?

[JustaNickname]

I've lived in Ireland nearly my whole life and my heritage is Irish essentially Both my parents were born in England when my grandparents went there to work when times were hard. My parents grew up in England, met each other, had me, moved to Ireland and had my sister etc. Even though my family tree would be Irish and my son was born here I'm not ashamed of having been born in England and I love it there and still have plenty of family there. My problem is that a lot of the people I know slag off the English all the time to the point I actually end up getting into heated discussions with them. Usually on FB over Football matches and such but sometimes in RL as well.

AIBU to expect that If you really hate the English that much and insistent on labeling every English person a C**T then maybe you shouldn't be such a hypocrite and Go to England, eat English food, watch English tv shows/films and support English football teams? I think i might actually be over sensitive but it honestly bothers me :(

Can people stop using Eire when writing/speaking in English? It really won't endear you to an Irish person when you can't get the name of their country right.

Lucy... I think the slagging is our biggest hurdle to being understood by the English isn't it? We all do it and it's perfectly natural, normal and friendly but it can be taken the wrong way.

I think part of the reason the English round here fit in so well is that they're all perfectly happy to join in with the slagging.

lol Winter... I had to point that out too up thread, makes my teeth itch to read Eire!

My in-laws aped my sons's accent when saying water. Repeated Wah-tah pronounciation (not a hard r). Fil did not do it in a nice way. How ugly can you get, ridiculing your grandson's accent. It made me terribly sad as these are only gp's my son has. My deceased mother would have loved everything about him because he was her grandson. Wish she was still alive and we didn't have to do fake grandparents.

Surreal as then what passed as conversations with his sons (not dh) would be about Liverpool vs Manchester football clubs.

Why are people so so so interested in looking back at centuries old behaviour that any reasonable person would acknowledge as being unpleasant, unreasonable and probably unwarranted.

However, they were different times in a different kind of world, and it just so happened that it was mostly the people who called themselves English were the ones who wanted to go to other parts of this island, and neighbouring ones in order to say that owned more land and were therefore more important. That's little more than accident of birth - big wow.

Like an earlier poster, if there is a sporting competition, and for whatever reason England are not playing (like the 6 Nations games, for example), I have always favoured Wales, Scotland and (Northern) Ireland in no particular order, and the same if there are any domestic football or rugby teams, like Celtic or Rangers playing in Europe. I can't tell you the number of times I have been verbally abused by some of the people from these countries in the "we don't NEED your support!" kind of way. I understand it's not NEEDED, but as I like sport of many kinds I have a right to decide which of the two teams I am going to favour for the duration of the game.

My husband is in the armed forces, and there more than anywhere you seem to get some really mixed up people - especially Scots. The number of times I've heard some of his Scottish colleagues on one particular day saying that they joined up to get out of "the shithole where they were born/brought up" (their words, not mine) meaning various parts of Scotland, but then after a few beers (or maybe even when sober sometimes) the tirades of anti-English sentiment all wrapped up with the dislike of government policies have really shocked me.

It is a well known fact (within the forces) that there is a disproportionate number of Scottish people in the Armed Forces as a percentage of the whole population, when compared to the percentage of English, Welsh and Northern Irish. I find that very interesting - not sure what it "means" though.

thats a good point, perhaps what we see as natural joking is seen much more antagonistically by some English people? We swear much more readily as well, but with much less feeling, so perhaps people feel got at when they are just being slagged?

(and it does, doesn't it. Southern Ireland also gets me every time. Its not hard, its just IRELAND. Not Rep of, not Southern or South, not Eire, just Ireland)

I think it is the other way around. There are mean spirited people who will harass some group or other in every country in the world.

What makes it possible to cope with that when we experience it as an individual is that the wider society around those mean spirited people isn't giving their tacit approval by making jokes at our expense.

But Lucy

When "my" team win, whether we are talking about domestic football (LFC), international football (Eng), or my absolute favourite ice hockey (Nottingham), it's always the case that what the losing side sees as "smug" for us is just celebration of winning.

I can only imagine the abuse we (and here I mean supporters of any team, but we is shorter) would get if the celebrations upon winning were half-hearted in order to preserve the opposing side's fans' feelings. We'd get called part-time supporters and all sorts of things.

What's the solution? I'd like to say mutual respect on all sides, but I know that some people - of all sides - are not capable of that.

Summer Exactly. And it's always a serious black mark against someone when "they can give it out but they can't take it". But I understand, it can be a complete minefield.

Winter For some reason, it bothers me more when people call the language Gaelic. Now, I know that it's a closer approximation to the Irish, gaelige, but every single person in Ireland calls it irish, I just don't understand why it's been renamed abroad. Completely my own bugbear though, I know, not something I get pissed off with people about.

YANBU. I was born in England and moved to Scotland aged 9, Dad is Scottish.

I was terribly bullied in school. Followed home being called english b--. Kids calling me it in the playground etc.

Class bully would tell a different child everyday to batter the english b--. I swore I would never have children and move them to England or vice versa.

Dh got a job in england 5 years ago and we moved down (two daughters in tow). DD1 started school just 4. Older kids in the playground did follow her round copying her accent. Told school and they sorted it out straight away. Nothing ever happened to her again. I never experienced prejudice in England the way I did in Scotland.

During a uni lecture (in Liverpool) a couple of years ago, the lecturer told the whole class about an incident that happened to her during a visit to Edinburgh.

Think it might have been at the Make Poverty History concert. Something came on the news or over a tannoy about the July 7th bombings in London and people cheered.

She said she had just never experienced that hostility. Of course she was English and I was mortified, because as far as other 30 people in the room were concerned I was Scottish, and equivalent to the people who cheered about the death of innocent people.

Agree, Lucy, Gaelic is Scottish, isn't it?

letsgetloud - That has shocked me

My mum and dad moved to Aberdeen 4 years ago from Manchester. They have many many Scottish friends up there, infact they all sent me gifts when I had DD at Christmas ( I live in Canada) my dad says that there is friendy banter about them being English but it can get a bit nasty when the football is on. We are talking about people who are 60 plus here though, maybe that makes a difference.

letsgetloud - that's horrible and makes me ashamed. In fact I feel ashamed at all these stories.
We are not all like that up here and those who are like that are ignorant bigots.
My brother experienced anti-Scottish sentiment when he lived in London but he didn't let that colour his opinion of all English people and I really feel awful that some of you hated being in Scotland so much

Winter The distinction that seems to be made is that it's Scotch Gaelic (pronounced 'Gallic') and Gaelic (pronounced 'Gaylic) for Irish. Completely insignificant, but everyone's lives would be easier if they went for irish, like actual Irish people do, surely?

meow That's just how rivalry works, I guess? Some of the most reasonable, internationally minded people I know will always succumb. For the most part though, give it five minutes after the match and everyone is mates again. The kind of people who get nasty about it are just the kind of people who would find a reason to get nasty about it even if there were no such thing as sport. As a Liverpool fan, if I say that England are the Irish people's Man Utd, surely you understand

Gaelic is the group name for all of the Gaelic languages. I suppose that referring to the Irish language as Gaelic would be like referring to the Icelandic language as Nordic.

I'm Welsh & live near the Wales/England border, I've worked and lived in England and had some good-natured banter about the 'rivalry' over the years but only in the spirit of fun.

However, when the 6 nations rugby is on...that's a different beast, and ABE most definitely applies

I was born in England by a Welsh mother and a Scots father - I live in the rural west of Ireland.

Makes the 6 Nations Rugby interesting anyway

Never had serious racism - some of the kids at DDs school give it a casual go occasionally, perhaps it's down to where you live ?

I'm in the west too Cailin and find the same as you... people round here are very open minded and accepting (which I can verify first hand as the tattooed, pierced, young mum on the Playschool Committee with the foreign surname!) I think the people in this region feel England is just an extension of Ireland as so many of their relatives had to emigrate there for work (and sadly do again now). I'm not sure I could name a single person I know round here who doesn't have direct family living in Manchaster/Liverpool/London.

So did you cheer or cry last night when the Irish hammered England?

The anti-Englishness in Scotland is really unpleasant, imo, but you just have to put up with it. What's the alternative - a sort of slanging match? I don't think there's anything we can do about it, short of an example being set by people in the public eye - not the Andy Murray type of course - and a no tolerance approach in schools. That isn't going to happen, and one of the reasons is that people deny it exists or say it's not meant in a hurtful way.

But my family and I have heard some hateful remarks from well-educated as well as uneducated people in Scotland, and if you don't laugh you get accused of lacking a sense of humour or taking yourself too seriously.

As an example, my son's football coach (an otherwise perfectly normal person), playing an away game in England said something like 'Let's get these English c...ts' to a team of 15-year-olds. There are two English boys in the team, and almost everyone else will find they have an English relative stashed away somewhere. But that's par for the course when football is concerned, sadly.

Got loads of other examples. But life's too short. There is no tolerance of 'real' racism, ie white against black, in Scotland. This sort of anti-Englishness is low-level nastiness, a way of venting against life's perceived injustices as symbolised by the English. It's a coward's way out, and does the Scots no credit whatsoever. Most English people in England don't even know it exists.

But it is interesting how arrogant and patronising posh English accents sound to Scottish ears, and how deeply cultural differences run.

MF, discriminating against someone based on their ethnicity is real racism. There are plenty of horrific incidences of mass racist behaviour worldwide between different ethnic groups who look exactly the same.

Yes, of course you're right MillyR.

I suppose this sort of stuff seems minor compared to other sorts of bullying, but it can be just as hurtful, especially to kids.

Perhaps the difference is that if you are white and English in Scotland, or Welsh in England and so on, there is the possibility that you can return to your country of origin and be part of a majority.

If you are black and English or black and Welsh, there isn't anywhere you can go to and be part of the majority. You will always be a minority.

And much of the issue on this thread seems to be about people who have a relationship to more than one part of the UK and Ireland, and they are always going to be in a position where they will have to hear some sort of prejudice about part of their identity.

i usually find myself apologizing for being english

I wouldn't apologise for my nationality, or feel proud of it. Any more than I would apologise for having two arms. But I wouldn't be horrible to one-armed or three-armed people.

I'd feel awful if someone apologised to me on the basis of their nationality.

Yes, it's an odd thing, isn't it, how we identify with our nationality - when it's just an accident of birth.