Embarrassed to be English

[Traballi]

Got ancestry results back recently and apparently I'm 98% English, tiny bit of Irish but not even Scottish or Welsh. It wasn't a surprise as already looked into family history and been here for centuries.

I'm actually embarrassed of my English lineage to be honest. What's there to be proud of with our appalling history of colonialism and more recent dallyings with the far right and flag shagging?

I see the British flag up where I live and I honestly cringe. I'm also married to someone who is from a country we have a history of conflict with too so that doesnt help although DH doesnt hate us excessively (won't name country in case outing but with our history of wars/ conflict/ invasion, it could be dozens of places lets be frank)

I guess I've had a different perspective on Englishness over many years through the people I know from overseas and I speak other languages too. I also went to a Catholic school (in England) which taught us about slavery and what happened in Northern Ireland. None of which was nice about the English (teacher was Irish). I'm grateful for these perspectives though as I wouldn't want to be brainwashed into being a blind patriot.

I have friends with strong Irish and Welsh roots and they have a real sense of identity to hold onto with it, ancestral languages that they're interested in and a feeling a pride.

If you're English, it's hard to feel like that unless you're in Tommy or Nige's crew, which makes me even less inclined towards patriotism tbh.

Does anyone else feel like this? It's a bit sad really. I'd love to at least be half something else to cling to that identity instead and ignore the English but.

Luckily my DC is only half English and has two other nationalities through DH, and is being brought up in Wales so will probably feel more Welsh. I'm also obtaining a passport from another country through DH soon and I'll be using that for all overseas travel as soon as I can so I can appear to be from there instead.

AiBU or do others feel like this? Being English just isn't cool.

Jesus, get a life.

I think I can see two reasons you have felt this way, OP.

1. You have only looked on the negative side about England.
2. You have not compared the awful behaviour of the English with the awful behaviour of other nations.

I entirely agree with everyone who has said there is a lot to be proud of about being English.

• Democracy, going back to Magna Carta. We don’t have violent changes of regime.
• Our freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly. They don’t exist everywhere.
• Our beautiful landscapes and buildings. York, Bath, the Cotswold villages.
• Our amazing heritage of literature, paintings and music. Just Shakespeare is enough to be very proud of. Today our popular music is known across the world.
• Our history of scientific discovery and inventions. Steam power, railways, DNA, computers. We’re not quite as good at making money out of them, but we’re very creative.
• Your German friend had a grandad who was a Nazi. At one point in 1940 Britain stood alone in the world against the Nazis. We helped to save the world from Nazism.

Yes, we have oppressed, colonialised and enslaved. So has everyone else who could. When I studied 19th and 20th century A level History, I was astonished at the appalling, greedy, selfish behaviour of the European nations. I thought they behaved like toddlers, grabbing things from each other and fighting unnecessarily. I have come to realise that’s just human nature.

At least we abolished slave trading first (1807) and we enforced its abolition in our empire.

Yes, we were horrendous to Ireland. Would they have done any differently in our place? I doubt it. English human nature is no worse than human nature the world over.

Have you considered that and foot-binding and suttee (wife burning) were never practised in England? We never had polygamy. We didn’t believe it was okay to beat your wife into submission (as taught in the Qur’an, Sura 4.34). This is currently one of the best places to be a woman in the world.

I love my country.

This is what narcissism looks like.

EVERYONE LOOK AT ME. I DENOUNCE ALL OF MY ANCESTORS AND DECLARE MYSELF BETTER THAN ALL OF THEM. FOR I, THE ONE TO WHOM ALL YOU MUST PAY ANTENTION, I AM ABOVE IT ALL.

Grow up.

The Egyptian slavery comment was meant to make it clear… they built the pyramids, had loads of slaves, no dispute. No one is having a go at them for their past misdemeanours!

Some would say the Irish saved civilization after the fall of the Roman empire.

Mind you at various times they liked to enslave the English, were involved with human sacrifice, and all the rest.

It's a weird thing, no one gets their knickers in a twist about that stuff. Or asks the Danes to atone for Viking atrocities. I don't often see us blaming the Japanese today for the behaviour of their state in the years and decades and centuries before WWII.

And they shouldn't it makes no sense to blame people today or expect them to somehow atone for their ancestors in that way. Nor to denigrate the beautiful things produced by those cultures.

• Democracy, going back to Magna Carta. We don’t have violent changes of regime.

Democracy since Magna Carta! And no violent regime change! You might want to add a bit of English history into your reading for 2026. There is a load of fascinating stuff ahead of you. I can only imagine what it would be like to learn of the Anarchy or the Wars of the Roses or the Civil War or the Jacobite rising for the first time ever as an adult.

I think Cromwell & the Protectorate (getting Charles I executed, as well as the absolute horrors Cromwell visited on Ireland, not to mention the general oppressiveness of Puritan rule) would count as a "brutal change of regime", tbf.

But one that didn't last long, and I think there's quite a lot of later history of England that stems from that. Like why we haven't ousted the monarchy, despite their many failings.

Fibonacci2 · Today 00:36

Bridge on the River Kwai, have you any concept of the brutality that was dished out to those by the Japanese. It was beyond most of our comprehension. Where’s your hatred of the Japanese?

Well, quite. I was a child of the immediate post-war era, and it was our fathers, uncles and neighbours who returned from years away in the war. Many were prisoners of the Japanese, including my grandfather-in-law, who died in a prison camp from starvation, ill-treatment and disease. A friend's father was shot and thrown in a pit full of corpses, yet he managed to crawl out from under the bodies and survive- to become a lifelong alcoholic with appalling PTSD. My own gentle DF, who never spoke ill of or to anyone, reverted to the war years whilst desperately ill in the ICU and began shouting the most terrible abuse at a Japanese family who passed his bed. Yet I spent 20 years of my life teaching Japanese, and he was totally accepting of our many visitors and exchange students, and my speaking the language to them in his hearing. He had got over it, on the surface at least, yet his mates never bought a Japanese appliance or car. The modern generation has absolutely no idea of the suffering of their gt grandfathers.

Because a Constitutional Monarchy really, really bloody works for this country despite the fact the Royals themselves are German lizard people (apparently)

Putting aside the failings of the Royals as individuals, do you want President Farage? I bloody don’t, mostly due to his extremely concerning attitude toward Russia

She’s right though. The Troubles weren’t about Irish vs English.

I don't believe that's true at all.

I think you are noticing interest in the culture because it is relevant to you. Many, many cultures are fascinating to others.

This view that England is "obsessed over" is fed by the fact that England had a moment of global significance during the British Empire and the industrial revolution, during which time English culture held a certain fascination, but that wasn't actually that long a period in the broader scheme of things. Anglo Saxon and medieval England regressed quite significantly in terms of culture and education from where the ancient Greeks and Romans had been, and the stark reality is we are not particularly a global power today. Our culture has had many inroads and is largely subsumed by or amalgamated with American culture - at least from a global perspective.

But none of this is a reason not to be proud of it. Every country and culture has is embarrassments and its sources of pride. England is no different.

I said we don't have violent changes of regime. Not that we never have.

Our democracy began to develop with Magna Carta. Obviously. I didn't say we have had uninterrupted full democracy since that time.

The slave trade started in the 16th C? This is so historically illiterate it almost beggers belief that anyone could believe it.

Slavery predates written records - the oldest surviving pieces of writing like Urak Period clay tablets (3100 BC) or the Code Ur-Namnu (2100- 2050 BC) all document slavery and discuss it as an already existing societal condition.

If you in fact meant to refer to a specific period of slavery - the Trans Atlantic slave trade then Brazil (under Portuguese rule) was by far the largest recipient, in terms of the number of slaves, with near half of all African slaves ending up there.

Further, England through out its history, and predating the Industrial Revolution by centuries was targeted by, for exemple, the Vikings and Normans, because it was an incredibly wealthy, centralised and organised kingdom making tax revenue gathering uniquely successful. It is from this national character that the Industrial Revolution springs.

look at any nation and it will have its shame. You can run but you can’t hide….. I’d genuinely be interested in the new residency they have taken up that is without fault….. please tell us……

I found it funny too. Probably because I’m an English tasteless reform voting flag shagger [sarcasm]
Do you think these highly clenched folk just wander about the world being offended by every single smirk and titter?
for some reason reading the “Egypt loves a slave” post made me jump to Joseph and his steamboat and now I have Jacob and Sons stuck in my head.

How would you have felt if your results were mainly German or Russian or North American or Mongolian or Italian or Japanese or....

DREAMCOAT
Not Steamboat
though I reckon the introduction of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Steamboat could be a great contender as a sequel for ALW’s next musical disaster.

No, I don't. But you can get rid of a President after a number of years, which is one great advantage of a presidential system.Other countries manage. I don't really buy the argument either that a presidential system necessitates us having WORSE people than any Royals. I don't hate them, by the way. The Royals could, as individuals, be good or bad. But let's face it, it's entirely an accident of birth that we're not stuck with a King Andrew representing us and being lumbered forever with him being the face of the nation until he carks it. I really don't see the advantage of a monarchy in that sense.

To go back to Cromwell, though, he pretty much behaved as a monarch as Lord Protector. And of course, his (useless) son then inherited the role... whereupon the whole thing collapsed and we were back to restoring Charles II and a monarchy again. But all of that is about how power and dictatorship works and suitability for roles, not whether you have a monarchy or not.

OPs like this make me laugh. These views are fashionable now, but George Orwell observed something similar over 80 years ago, among people who considered themselves intellectuals.

As Orwell said in England Your England, in 1941:
England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box.

🙌

That's fantastic. I love George Orwell. Funny how things dont change!

The whole thrust of The Guardian and the OP right there.

One of the best countries in the world. What we have achieved / given the world is phenomenal. Liberal democracy / rule of law / our language/ poetry/ culture. Best and oldest universities. . Stood alone for a while against an evil fascist regime. A great uncle of mine died a hero at the hands of the Japanese whilst saving others (army doctor).

We have been “victims” too Roman invasion, Viking raids, Norman conquest. Your post made me cringe with second hand embarrassment.

Exactly! Can you imagine saying "Luckily my DC is only half-Irish"! Why would that cause outrage but it's perfectly OK to write that about the English? Anti-English sentiment is very fashionable these days, and it really annoys me.

Again, I suppose it's down to skinheads and the likes of Farage and Robinson who have tainted and co-opted the whole idea of bring proud to be English.

For the record, I am proud of English diversity and tolerance and our willingness to help citizens of other countries with harsh regimes who come to us for refuge.

Yeah, its not that Britain was unique in this. Empires have been around since time immemorial and they are inherently violent.
However if you compare the British empire to its contemporaries like France, Spain, Portugal - and let's not even touch on the total Belgian insanity in Congo - or even Russia, Ottomans etc it was indeed less oppressive. Still oppressive but the others were absolutely brutal. This is not a justification for imperialism and colonialism (with today's lens at least) but when you look at the transition to independence of former British colonies compared with the other European colonisers you can see (on average) a stark difference in the chaos and outcomes.