To wonder when Black African etc becomes Black British

[Bobbiepin]

I teach in a school where 98% of the cohort are classified as Black African or Black Caribbean even though most were born in the UK and identify as British.

Clearly I don't want to take away anyone's heritage but can someone explain to me why we still insist on people who are not white explaining where they come from? Will there ever be a point where Black British or Asian British etc is a category?

Black British is already a category on some ethnic monitoring forms so I'm not sure what your issue is.

If you are unhappy with how your school monitors pupils then bring this up with whoever runs the school.

Oh and only someone who hasn't spent years with herself, her family and friends not finding the right boxes to tick on such forms what start a thread on this instead of being proactive about it.

It's what people identify as and most definitely not everyone fits neatly into a box. For example my parents were brought up in India and view themselves as India, I was born in India moved here at 2 years old view myself as British Asian.

I wouldn't be so harsh with the op and think it's a really interesting question.

My DH family always tick “white Irish” - I think it’s a cultural, honour his heritage thing. I tick “white British” for DS though.

Why we have the little boxes? Because white people are in charge and it’s a way of pretending look race doesn’t matter, look at the variety of brown people we have. Racism is sadly a huge problem, but all you can do is try to get better.

Why no Asian British? Well I’m Asian and British, so my ethnicity could be Pakistani, Indian, Nepalese, Bangladeshi, Bornean, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Korean, Iranian and the list goes on and on and on.

No ones ‘insisting’ on anything. People are being given a set of options to choose the ethnicity they identify as. And it’s not necessarily about not being white ‘White Irish’ and ‘Traveller’ are categories, and there was a 2017 focus group about adding Roma and Jewish as well as Sikh and Somali.

I think the question also is where does genetic stop and where cultural division begins. Where is the point that black becomes white and white becomes black?

It is interesting to think about and I think it’s how people themselves choose to identify . I’ve met people here who introduce themselves as Palestinian but were born and lived in Iraq, or Syria , they were living as Palestinians within that second culture, and didn’t take on that identity .

I work in HE and use this data quite a bit. One reason will be that there have, historically, been quite different outcomes for pupils/students with different heritages within an overall ethnic group. I agree with SimonJT that the categories really aren't detailed enough, and I suppose it depends on why you feel the data is being collected. If it's to reflect how people identify (which is important) then perhaps it should be a free text question. But if you want to monitor and try to address inequality of outcomes, for example, then you need standardised data which is collected based on predefined categories. Maybe we need two questions, one about identity and one about heritage.

@EffervescentElephant I'm being harsh with the OP because myself, family and friends have had decades of this regardless of how we would like to say what our identity is.

I have family and friends whose ethnicity and identity is a lot more complex than the tick boxes on the forms. They've ended up having to tick some "other" box, getting annoyed and ticking a random box, or simply refusing to tick one at all

So OP if you aren't happy with how your school ethnically monitors it's pupils bring it up with whatever body runs the school.

I think there was a really interesting perspective on this idea in Barack Obama's book, Dreams of My Father. He viewed himself as white for most of his childhood and youth and went by the nickname Barry. It was only after he met Michelle that he started to acknowledge the African part of his heritage and he now views himself as black.

The DfE doesn't have "Black British", "Asian British" categories for children... but if you're school staff you can identify as "Pakistani or Pakistani British", "Indian or British Indian" etc
I find that quite odd tbh.
People class themselves whatever they like. I know plenty of children that are classified as White British whose parents were both born abroad (often in different countries to one another) and moved to UK, then child born here.
What makes someone British?
Living here and knowing how to queue?

It's also interesting looking at a person's 'domicile', versus nationality or residence for example

@LittleLittleLittle I also end up putting my children as other, but it's an enormous catch-all.
Schools cannot change the categories they collect- DfE prescribes them (used in census).

This is the list of options for self defined ethnicity used by the police.

@Haskell What’s odd about Pakistani British? Being British doesn’t change someones ethnicity.

@MuddyPuddlesAndPrettyBubbles the police form forces a lot of people I am related to and know to ignore half or more of their ethnicity.

I actually know people, who aren't children, who had 4 grandparents who each came from a different country on a different continent.

What makes someone British?
Living here and knowing how to queue?

I would say accent. I am white, came to the UK at 23. Although English is my first language, I will always have an accent that means people can tell I didn't grow up here.

My neighbour is a black man of Nigerian heritage. He has older relatives I've seen around that don't look like they live in the UK, so it's possible he wasn't born here. Judging by his accent, he went to (a very expensive) school here though. Eton, I imagine.

If you have relatives in Africa, an accent/language as pp said, are clued in on the culture etc. then that's black African.

If you diverge from African heritage and have no connections there, you're black british.

But black British can also be used as a general term for all black people in Britain, if were comparing with African Americans for example.

It’s an interesting question.

I work in education and our ethnicity boxes include ‘mixed race - white and black African’, ‘mixed race - white and black Caribbean’, ‘mixed race - white and Asian’ and then ‘Other mixed’.

I’ve always found that odd. What about other mixes? Or are you only really mixed if you’re hard white? .

^half White

Interesting thread. The categories relate to ethnicity not citizenship so eg my husband who was born here is "Chinese" not "Chinese British" whereas I am "white british".

But we are both British citizens surely? (Are we British citizens or uk citizens? Idk)

We cannot even agree on our DD as I put "mixed other" but she prefers "mixed Asian" (too much American tv imo)

But after reading this thread I'm now thinking that the categories are a bit odd

Also I've written and read the word British so many times in the last 5 minutes it's gone all weird in my head!!

Their accent?!?!

So if they were born here, parents were born here, parents sent them to school for say 6 years in Africa, returned to the uk and now they have an accent, that means that makes them less of a black British ( if that is what they want to identify themselves as)