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

This question is boggling my mind! I'm certain that being British is a national identity (although one in decline with the growth of English/Scottish/Welsh nationalism)... I don't think the British are a distinct race as was once believed by Empire builders who felt they were on a divine mission to civilize the world. I beleive race today is more to do with skin-colour and visual characteristics.

So that leaves ethnic identity.. In my mind the most confusing. At first you'd think being British does not constitute an ehtnicity as the British are multi-ethnic. So there are the main ethnic groups; English / Scottish / Welsh and then ethnic minorities.

But after time if the ethnic minorities come to view themselves as British but not English / Welsh / Scottish then does that make the British a distinct ethnicity? If Britain were to cease to exist and Scotland and Wales became independent, does the formerly Black-British Male become Black-English? Confusing since in the dictionary it links ethnicity with race + language + culture so can Black-English exist in the same way Black-English can?

Then there is the confusion over Anglo-Saxon / Celtic / Tuetonic.. Are they ethnicities or races or neither?

Help!!

I'm British and proud. Don't let the sun go down on this beautiful nation.

Look at the US... Italians, Russians, Germans, English, Irish, French, Spanish... we all mixed together and within America we classify European background generally as "white" because the ethnic background distinction has dissolved. "Whiteness" is an integration and visual thing. Then again, look at Sicilians. They have darker features and when they first immigrated to New York, everyone called them "black" and denigrated them. After the Sicilians integrated, now no one can tell the difference between a Sicilian and a German. They become "white" together.

Others gain pick up the other ethnicities as well. I don't know if it is derogatory to say in the UK or not, but we joke with are "whitelike" friends in the states that they are "twinkies" or "oreos". Something else on the outside, but white on the inside.

Also, in time, we all become one depending on what we are compared to. Londoners strangely all become one thing when compared to Parisians right?

Well, I think the first step to answering the question is to agree on a working definition for race and ethnicity. Unfortunately, that initial step is bound to be unsuccessful given the number of conflicting ideas, concepts and theories about the nature of race and ethnicity. Because of that, I think you should take a different approach: throw the terms race and ethnicity away, and describe what you think it means to be British without using either of those words. By doing that you are likely to come closer to the meaning of Britishness than if you were to attempt to categorize Britishness as being an instantiation of some fuzzy, loaded class that means wildly different things to each person.

That would be my suggestion,
K.

It's for a university level history essay. I wonder if it would be ok to just ignore the irrelevant/overlapping classifications and say what I think being British is?

No, because you would have no way of distinguishing a Briton with reference to descent.

Of course, that is just what you'd like though, so then you can claim that the only possible idea of a Briton is as the citizen of a 'concept nation' rather than invoking any idea of ancestry.

I've been looking at the US but the classifications you guys use confuse me. Supposedly ethnicity and race are interchangeable in the US? (and based on some of the stuff i've found on the net that seems the case). Also the US is the archetypal 'melting pot' so it's easy for ethnic identities to merge there under umbrella terms such as European or British.. Although it seems in the US census many identified their ancestry (is that ethnicity?) as English/German.

I guess it is a good parallell though.. American is an umbrella term in the same way British is. Although I'd imagine the ethnic differences in the UK are far more pronounced with the three constituent countries long histories.

What are you proud of though? I'm proud of British historical accomplishments but aside from that what does Britishness stand for? I suppose the monarchy but it was the English Monarchy originally..

What do you mean by 'loaded term'? If someone says that Britishness is racial descent, i.e. as a somewhat genetically distinctive ethnic group within the wider Northern European, European and Caucasian races, then there is no ambiguity at all as to what they mean, as far as I am concerned.

Therefore I can only conclude that you wish to dispense with the word race because you simply don't like the idea of it.

How else could this be expressed - perhaps by saying 'Britishness is ancestral descent from populations indigenous to Britain, and also signifies relatedness to other Northern European, European and Caucasian descent groups'.

But, this to me is just a less articulate way of expressing the same thing using the word race; I would feel hindered by having to be so mealy-mouthed.

I think you just proved my point, why the use of the word race makes things clearer and more articulate.

I meant near-completely of British ancestry, of course - with recent non-British admixture graded by genetic distance (e.g. German ancestry weighs less than negro ancestry). The word race incorporates this point.
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And of course 'British ancestry' incorporates historic Anglo-Saxon contributions etc. to the general British gene pool.