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Being British - is it a racial, national or ethnic identity?
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I believe the term British could have been applied to both the national (political), ethnic (cultural) and racial (biological) characteristics of the United Kingdom.
However, the timespan, as well the "purity" of each of these characteristics is different. A country may exist much longer than the ethnic or racial groups identified with the country (China), or the other way around (e.g. Poland). In either way, people will link the three and thus the identity of a country will also include the culture and biological makeup of it. The problem arises when either of the three changes while the other(s) remain the same.
In many cases including the case of Britain, the political identity of the country hasn't changed for centuries, but the cultural and biological identities have. People tend to stick to old views and reputations of the country, however, and it takes time before these changes - which are often not structural but take shape in the form of adding new, different liquids to the wine in the same glass - are recognized. When recognized, the next problem arises, which is: will we accept each of these specific changes - will we add all sorts of new, sometimes unknown substances to our wine or will we try to keep it as pure as possible?
Sometimes we do not accept these changes and society will split up, and the different chemicals will be separated and sorted into different glasses - different countries. Sometimes society will take everything it gets, and situation exists that the wine becomes a mixture or suspension of many, many substances.
With the age of globalization and increasing intermingling of other cultures, there is a clash between what is defined as British. The glass hasn't changed. But the contents of the wine has. The question is: when we say British, do we refer to the glass, or the contents? When we talk about the contents, do we refer to the original ingredients present when the glass was filled, or do we accept the present situation?
However, the timespan, as well the "purity" of each of these characteristics is different. A country may exist much longer than the ethnic or racial groups identified with the country (China), or the other way around (e.g. Poland). In either way, people will link the three and thus the identity of a country will also include the culture and biological makeup of it. The problem arises when either of the three changes while the other(s) remain the same.
In many cases including the case of Britain, the political identity of the country hasn't changed for centuries, but the cultural and biological identities have. People tend to stick to old views and reputations of the country, however, and it takes time before these changes - which are often not structural but take shape in the form of adding new, different liquids to the wine in the same glass - are recognized. When recognized, the next problem arises, which is: will we accept each of these specific changes - will we add all sorts of new, sometimes unknown substances to our wine or will we try to keep it as pure as possible?
Sometimes we do not accept these changes and society will split up, and the different chemicals will be separated and sorted into different glasses - different countries. Sometimes society will take everything it gets, and situation exists that the wine becomes a mixture or suspension of many, many substances.
With the age of globalization and increasing intermingling of other cultures, there is a clash between what is defined as British. The glass hasn't changed. But the contents of the wine has. The question is: when we say British, do we refer to the glass, or the contents? When we talk about the contents, do we refer to the original ingredients present when the glass was filled, or do we accept the present situation?
Pavlik
OK, last try to show you some sense.
Rewind 100 years, when there were very few immigrants in this country; the only non-indigenous people who lived in Britain in significant numbers were the Jews, who were relatively recent arrivals, non-European in genetic terms, and had remained a distinctive population (i.e. had not interbred to any notable extent).
Then you have the Britons. There are small differences between the Scots, the Welsh, and the English, and also small differences between regions such as East Anglia and Cornwall, reflecting historic population flows; but essentially Britain is genetically a pretty homogeneous place.
Now taking a random Briton, and looking at his genes, having the benefit of present day genetics we would be able to infer the geographic ancestry of this individual within a few hundred kilometres; i.e. we could put him on a map like the one on this page http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008/09/geography-and-genetic-structure-in.html
And adding in more individuals we would see that the Britons are a distinctively Northern European population, and are distinctive to a certain extent even within that race.
There is nothing very messy about this at all. Britons are I believe descended primarily from the ancient ice age populations that inhabited Britain, but we have had genetic input (which tends to be exaggerated) primarily from very closely related populations like the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans etc.
Note: These are not Pakistanis, Chinese and Nigerians - they are people who were scarcely different to the existing Britons in the first place.
Whatever our population history though, the very fact that we plot onto a PC map (such as the one I linked to) in the manner that we do indicates that there is a strong racial meaning to being British - talk of Anglo-Saxon ancestry etc. is basically meaningless, when we are presented with such direct genetic information.
So when I say near-complete British ancestry, I mean having ancestry that is of these Britons, these people who could trace their ancestry back many centuries in Britain.
Although this particular judgement is a little arbitrary (so what, most things in life have to be) I would also say that e.g. a 1/4 German, 3/4 Briton (where a Briton is one of those British individuals, who plots in the British area of the PC map, and can trace his ancestry back as being from the same background of ancient Britons and historic contribution of Danes, Anglo-Saxons etc. that is shared with the other Britons) is an indigenous Briton, and so is an 1/8 Russian 7/8 Briton, and so on and so forth.
If you object to the idea of indigneous Britons, then perhaps you should stop using the word indigenous at all, because in real life no population can claim to be an absolute Platonic race that has always inhabited a given territory and has never mixed with surrounding populations for many thousand of years. The word indigenous is very useful and meaningful, and there simply is no reason to discard it, or the word race, just because it doesn't satisfy some absurdly rigorous criteria that you want to invent.
For example, the category 'age' is pretty unclear/arbitrary; who is old and who is young, is there any clear and consistent demarcation between old and young? No. But clearly this does not mean that we should throw the word 'age' out of the window and let a 50-year-old pervert have sex with an 8-year-old. The only person who would suggest such a thing would be the paedophile himself - someone who had an ulterior motive for dispensing with the category 'age'.
By the way, my definition of race in this context would be 'a somewhat distinct biological entity emerging as a cluster of similarity from the genetic continuum'.
Rewind 100 years, when there were very few immigrants in this country; the only non-indigenous people who lived in Britain in significant numbers were the Jews, who were relatively recent arrivals, non-European in genetic terms, and had remained a distinctive population (i.e. had not interbred to any notable extent).
Then you have the Britons. There are small differences between the Scots, the Welsh, and the English, and also small differences between regions such as East Anglia and Cornwall, reflecting historic population flows; but essentially Britain is genetically a pretty homogeneous place.
Now taking a random Briton, and looking at his genes, having the benefit of present day genetics we would be able to infer the geographic ancestry of this individual within a few hundred kilometres; i.e. we could put him on a map like the one on this page http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008/09/geography-and-genetic-structure-in.html
And adding in more individuals we would see that the Britons are a distinctively Northern European population, and are distinctive to a certain extent even within that race.
There is nothing very messy about this at all. Britons are I believe descended primarily from the ancient ice age populations that inhabited Britain, but we have had genetic input (which tends to be exaggerated) primarily from very closely related populations like the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans etc.
Note: These are not Pakistanis, Chinese and Nigerians - they are people who were scarcely different to the existing Britons in the first place.
Whatever our population history though, the very fact that we plot onto a PC map (such as the one I linked to) in the manner that we do indicates that there is a strong racial meaning to being British - talk of Anglo-Saxon ancestry etc. is basically meaningless, when we are presented with such direct genetic information.
So when I say near-complete British ancestry, I mean having ancestry that is of these Britons, these people who could trace their ancestry back many centuries in Britain.
Although this particular judgement is a little arbitrary (so what, most things in life have to be) I would also say that e.g. a 1/4 German, 3/4 Briton (where a Briton is one of those British individuals, who plots in the British area of the PC map, and can trace his ancestry back as being from the same background of ancient Britons and historic contribution of Danes, Anglo-Saxons etc. that is shared with the other Britons) is an indigenous Briton, and so is an 1/8 Russian 7/8 Briton, and so on and so forth.
If you object to the idea of indigneous Britons, then perhaps you should stop using the word indigenous at all, because in real life no population can claim to be an absolute Platonic race that has always inhabited a given territory and has never mixed with surrounding populations for many thousand of years. The word indigenous is very useful and meaningful, and there simply is no reason to discard it, or the word race, just because it doesn't satisfy some absurdly rigorous criteria that you want to invent.
For example, the category 'age' is pretty unclear/arbitrary; who is old and who is young, is there any clear and consistent demarcation between old and young? No. But clearly this does not mean that we should throw the word 'age' out of the window and let a 50-year-old pervert have sex with an 8-year-old. The only person who would suggest such a thing would be the paedophile himself - someone who had an ulterior motive for dispensing with the category 'age'.
By the way, my definition of race in this context would be 'a somewhat distinct biological entity emerging as a cluster of similarity from the genetic continuum'.
Right that makes sense.. But does the distinct British group described classify as a race or ethnic group?
In the 2001 census the ethnic options were "White British / White Irish / White Other / Black-British etc.."
Do those even count as ethnic groups or did the government just get it wrong? If the British are a distinct ethnic group then how can Black migrants identify their ethnicity as Black-British?
I had thought that British was a national and to a lesser extent cultural identity. White / Black / Asian or Caucasian / Indo-European are all racial classifcations and I didn't think the British warrented their own category. As for ethnicity I thought that English / Scottish / Welsh were the main ethnicities and these ethnicities were made up from the sub-groups you've outlined, ancient inhabitants of the British Isles combined with Celts, Angles, Saxons, Tuetonic tribes and to a lesser extent Romans.
Now my mind is once again boggled.
dionysia1
Personally, I don't think that Black-English can exist... I know personally that although I was born here and would always refer to myself as Black-British, if I'm asked, I also say I'm Caribbean too.
Nice so you might be able to give some really valuable insight to this question..
If you don't mind me asking how would you describe your...
National identity:
Ethnic identity:
Racial identity:
Cultural identity:
?
MrCharmed
National identity: British
Ethnic identity: White
Racial identity: White
Cultural identity: Welsh
Don't understand the diffrence between racial and ethnical ?
Ethnic identity: White
Racial identity: White
Cultural identity: Welsh
Don't understand the diffrence between racial and ethnical ?
I think they are often used to connote the same thing. However, if that was the intention of the question then they wouldn't both be included.
As a result I'm interpreting race as skin colour and ethnicity as a fusion of racial, cultural and linguistic factors. So your race can be white but your ethnic group might be English / Welsh / German / Jewish.
Then it gets confusing when you throw in Anglo-Saxon / Hispanic / Indo-European etc. What the **** do they classify as?
Ugh god I'm so confused.
Conkermon
Nice so you might be able to give some really valuable insight to this question..
If you don't mind me asking how would you describe your...
National identity:
Ethnic identity:
Racial identity:
Cultural identity:
?
If you don't mind me asking how would you describe your...
National identity:
Ethnic identity:
Racial identity:
Cultural identity:
?
National identity: British
Ethnic identity: Black-Caribbean
Racial identity: Black
Cultural identity: British-Caribbean
With the hyphenated ones, I feel I have elements of both. Obviously I was born and raised here so everything I've experienced around me is British but I also have "Caribbean ways and customs" about me from my household and family.
It transcends ethnicity. Well, for me anyway.
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