To disagree that only white people can be English

[Neome]

This idea popped up on a thread about something else entirely. I have white and asian heritage. It sounds like, in this person's view, I cannot describe myself as English only as British.

Aibu to say that being born in England I can reasonably describe myself as English and heritage and skin colour do not bar anyone from describing themselves as English?

Just hurt my jaw as it fell on the floor

Well of course. Are you looking to start a bunfight? Nobody will deny your right to call yourself English.

YANBU to say that racists are wrong, no.

What kind of fucking idiot actually thinks this? Don't even engage with it.

I'm mixed heritage too, but was born and grew up in England so feel more English than anything else.

I see other people as English if they sound it when they speak, or just seem English through their attitudes, mannerisms, habits, or were born in England, or attended school in England etc.

Skin colour is pretty irrelevant in a country where people from all over the world have settled over the centuries. Religion is also irrelevant. If they said only a particular look can qualify as English, I don't think they'd have an easy time deciding on what look that would be.

I think quite a lot of people feel half English/ Scottish / etc and half something else. Or a third, quarter etc whichever matches their own particular situation and feeling.

The English vs British thing confuses people from other countries no end. I've often come across people who think England = Britain and that Scotland and Wales are regions within England. I've even seen a map where England was labelled Britain while Scotland and Wales were labelled correctly.

I find it a bit weird that someone is telling you that you can be British but not English as England is where you were born. They are maybe rather ignorant?

OP you need to realise that sometimes it isn't worth trying to argue with stupid. Logic just doesn't work on these people.

Eh? That's bonkers. Of course you're English.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who calls themselves British either.

I have a very Scottish neighbour who’s family migrated from Pakistan two generations before she came along. She’s definitely Scottish, no one could ever deny that. Only slightly miffed that her accent is more Scottish than mine though, folk mistake me for Canadian!

I have been having this discussion with DS for years on end. I know that he is right but the vast majority of British people will be happy to consider you British but not English if you were born in England but your parents are from elsewhere. It is not about being white, plenty of white people, children of immigrants are also considered not English but British but if they have a good local accent they will get an easier ride.

When people ask me the dreaded question where am I from originally, I really have to hold myself from saying “from here, even if the locals disagree with me”.

I have to say it. No shit Sherlock!

@LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett round here folk call themselves British if they’ve moved from England to Scotland, never refer to themselves as either English or Scottish

I don't think the poster on the other thread was trying to be unpleasant but she read the National Statistics form as meaning English=white.

It shocked me enough to start this thread (it really wasn't the topic of the other thread and in danger of derailing).

I'm glad other people have reacted with jaw dropping. It might mean the definitions on the form (census possibly, the post was deleted) need to be revisited.

The most English person I've ever met was black, from the Caribbean. He had a perfectly English accent, partook of all the typically English customs with a very English sense of depreciation, such as drinking tea, elevenses, a hot roast dinner on Sunday afternoons and complaining about the weather, and represented his country in sport, including in the Commonwealth Games where England is specifically represented. I have never met anyone who embodied Englishness more.

Neome, my ancestry is half Irish, quarter Welsh, quarter French but I was born here and far as I'm concerned, I'm 100% English. Just as you are.

Pay no attention to anyone who says otherwise.

You're no less English than anyone else born in England.
I'm white and call myself British though I think of English as an identity and language and British as the nationality.

Some labels, for want of a better word, have racial connotations. For example, if someone describes themselves as Chinese, it's assumed they are racially Chinese. Many people would find it odd to say a white person that was born in China is Chinese, even if they have a Chinese passport. My uncle's wife was born and grew up in South Africa, but her ethnicity is Chinese and she now holds a british passport. She considers herself Chinese despite never having lived there.

At the end of the day we shouldn't have to label ourselves at all as the world is complicated. We are who we are.

Did you ever see the Joan Hickson Caribbean Mystery Incandesent? Just beautiful scene of JH having tea with another older lady. Sisters under the skin.

I have a mixed heritage and wasn't born in England but have lived almost my whole life in England, I call myself English.
I don't say I'm from the country I was born in as I have not lived there since I was 4 years old. I have no memory of the place and no ties to it at all.
No one can tell me what I am

@MissingTheMissletoe I'd suggest that's because they'd get an unpleasant reaction from calling themselves English, which is exactly what the OPs talking about. But I may be reaching.

I met a girl who looked Chinese but was actually Indian. There's a region in India where the people look Chinese. It took me a while to see her as Indian!

I am of Indian origin (from East Africa) and would describe myself as British. I think it’s possible to be Scottish and Irish and welsh and a person of colour because, on the whole, in those nations skin colour and nationality is separate. Most racist piece of shites there could tell a brown person with a scottish / irish / welsh accent they aren’t that nationality because in those nations accent and birth equals nationality. That’s not the case and has never been the case in England - it doesn’t matter how posh your English accent is (and most English speakers from India / East Africa and the West Indies who can get a visa to the UK have equally posh accents as the queen because they still teach the old Victorian dialects there) if you aren’t white people just don’t accept you.

@Magicroundabout321 - looking Chinese or East Asian isn’t usually tied to a region. In most Indian families you will have a range of ‘races’ just as you would in Latin America- for example I have family members that can pass for black, South East Asian (ie me), Arab, and white. ‘Indian’ or ‘Gujarati’ or ‘Punjabi’ aren’t races; they are locations. Most Indians come from a hodge podge of different races.

I'd describe myself as British because I don't think of English as a nationality, as such - although I am both, of course. I used to rather like being European as well, but that one's being taken off the table

Of course, the only thing you can't be is white British on those monitoring forms, there's usually mixed heritage options. I refuse to fill in English myself as I'm British, it's on my passport! Perhaps people mean pure ethnically English, so you are dual heritage, but that's nothing to do with nationality which relates to your passport!