Being British - is it a racial, national or ethnic identity?

Um, well if it helps you, I regard myself as British but not English! I'd say being British is a national identity, not an ethnic or racial one, though that's just my opinion

In any case there certainly is a racial meaning to British descent, in the sense that we are a Northern European population(s), and therefore genetically distinctive from South Asians, sub-Saharan Africans etc. - as our appearance indicates.

In terms of genetic reality, I think it is fair to refer to indigenous Britons as a race. The latest information seems to be pointing this way:

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008/02/huge-paper-on-human-genetic.html

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008/09/geography-and-genetic-structure-in.html

In any case there certainly is a racial meaning to British descent, in the sense that we are a Northern European population(s), and therefore genetically distinctive from South Asians, sub-Saharan Africans etc. - as our appearance indicates.

Of course it is popular nowadays to accept the invading non-indignenous people, including millions of non-Europeans, as being 'British' - as I'm sure you are aware. In that sense, it is merely a label given to people born or allowed to stay on this piece of land.

Hard to say that the British are a race: the term itself is no longer used in its original meaning, as the Bretons/Britons are those from Brittany, Wales and Cornwall. The rest of England is a hodge podge of Anglo-Saxon, Breton, French and Scandinavian blood for the most part. Scotland is Celtic and Wales is Celtic.

"British" is a cultural identity more than anything. It does denote nationality, and for the most part that makes it a national identity, but because most prefer to refer to themselves as English, Scottish, whatever, it is not the strongest national identity, but I would argue at its cultural markers being the stronger.

In the sentence you quoted, that's sort of what I was suggesting - that even if Britons are not a distinctive racial group within the Northern Europeans, there is still a British racial descent by virtue of us being part of the Northern European race, the European race, the Caucasian race etc. - i.e. an indigenous Briton is not racially negroid for example - so British descent gives us racial information, whatever the case.

But those posts I linked to suggest that there is some degree of distinctiveness within Northern Europe anyway. It depends how strict your use of the word race is going to be, really.

Whether you can tell Swedes and Britons apart is beside the point, genetic means of distinguishing populations are the important thing; although having said that, I think you'll find that there are slight differences in appearance between such people.

To me, it's just a legal actuality.
Citizenship or place of birth =! ethnicity or any form of identity

No, the definition for ethnicity, is physical traits, ancestry, behavioral traits, religious beliefs, community etc.

You are not part of an ethnic group just because you were born in a particular location.

Ethnic minorities are called so because they are not ethnically british, although they may be british nationals.

I think I agree with you.. But my mind is stuck on the question of can migrants become ethnically British or english/scottish/welsh for that matter.

Probably not British since there is no British ethnicity but can they become English.

Say a brown-skinned boy is taken and dumped at an adoption centre in London and the family that adopts him have no idea where he or his original family came from. He's raised in England and picks up English culture, he sees his nationality as English. But what's his ethnicity? British-Asian? English-Asian? Can it be British if there is no British ethnicity and can it be English without him having English genes/dna?

Edit: My personal view is that my national identity and ethnicity is English. I don't identify strongly with Britain which I feel to be a false construct to find common ground between the Sottish and English which was heavily dependent on Empire and is now redundant. I don't know if I have Anglo-Saxon or Celtic DNA (probably both as my grandfather was Irish) and I don't think many people really know that so I think English is my only possible ethnicity. My race (which I am interpreting as relating to skin-colour) is white or caucasian although the latter is a controversial term. I think it's fairly straight forward in my case but with migrants I'm not sure how it works. If they identify with England then I'm sure they can be classified as English nationals but ethnicially will they always be different?

No, the definition for ethnicity, is physical traits, ancestry, behavioral traits, religious beliefs, community etc.

You are not part of an ethnic group just because you were born in a particular location.

Several computer languages use "!" for various meanings, most importantly for logical negation; e.g. A != B means "A is not equal to B", and !A means "the logical negation of A" (also called "not A"). In this context, the exclamation is named the bang character; other programmers call it a shriek or screech. Invented in the US, it is claimed that bang is from Unix and shriek from Stanford or MIT; however, shriek is found in the Oxford English Dictionary dating from the 1860s. Also, bang was used in "typesetting or printing (and therefore when spelling text out orally), the exclamation mark" could be called, "a screamer or a bang."[6] In the BBC BASIC programming language (and BCPL) it is called a pling and is used to reference a 32-bit word.

No, the definition for ethnicity, is physical traits, ancestry, behavioral traits, religious beliefs, community etc.

You are not part of an ethnic group just because you were born in a particular location.

Ethnic minorities are called so because they are not ethnically british, although they may be british nationals.

Genetically speaking, Irish contrasted with British (i.e. English, Scottish, Welsh) are somewhat distinct. After that, there is no real evidence that I know of, probably because genetics is not capable of such fine resolution yet. But I think these ethnicities will make some sense genetically, if not to any great extent.

Due to mixing, I don't think there is very much distinction at all between these populations nowadays, though.