Why the Resistance to Defining "English" Culturally?

Photo by John Oswald on Unsplash

(Audio version here)

There is a currently a debate going on primarily about whether Rishi Sunak is British or English. More broadly, it is about whether people whose ancestors have not been all been from the part of this island called “England” for a very long time, especially black and brown people, should be called “English” or “British”. This has included many people acting as though this is a straightforward truth claim that can be proven to be right or wrong, and that this is obvious.

For example, Matt Goodwin said,

To which I responded,

Well, clearly, it is. As demonstrated below, some people define "English" by a rough ethnicity heuristic while others define it as the country one was born in & considers home. Best to accept this reality, clarify definitions when needed & then address substance. Seeing as how the alternative is trying to control the minds and mouths of everybody else in the country, which is both authoritarian and also has never worked in the history of humanity.

I have been making this point repeatedly and it is quite clear that there simply is not a consensus that we call people “English” based on their ancestral genetics and “British” based on their legal citizenship or distinguish between being genetically or legally English. In fact, it seems to be highly counterintuitive to the majority of people who have responded to me to think this way and much more intuitive to think in terms of culture. Their responses range widely and include a Scottish woman saying she had no idea what was going on here and it was clear to her that Sunak is objectively English. The subtext of this, as well as that of some other commenters from Scotland and Wales was “Well, he’s not Scottish/Welsh so why would he be British rather than English?”

A few other people whose genetic and/or cultural ancestry is mixture of the three countries on this island informed me that they call themselves British rather than identify with just one country for this reason. Some black and brown Brits who have always lived in England commented in ways that indicated that “British” resonated more with them than “English” for various cultural reasons to do with connotations (rather than because they because they saw themselves as equally embedded in English, Scottish and Welsh culture). Political scientist, Eric Kaufman, taking a purely genetic lens, informed me that I am not English, because the largest bulk of my ancestry is Welsh, but am part of the “white British pan-ethnic group.” Others taking a purely cultural lens felt that somebody is English if they were born in England, consider it home and are culturally English. White nationalists informed me both that I am English because all my known ancestry is European (white) and all branches of my family have been in England for over a century and that I am not English or white, seemingly because I disagree with them.

This is quite clearly a mess and it simply does not help to assert that one usage is self-evidently right or wrong because people are talking about different things. Today, Eric Kaufman said,

But, if you look at what Mr. Sunak is saying, it’s clear it’s not, "I find it hard to understand the difference between genetic ancestry & legal nationality." He's saying, "When I refer to being English, I am speaking of living in England, being embedded in the culture of England & feeling a sense of belonging to England." He’s addressing neither genetics nor law, but culture. To take issue with that, you'd really have to say, "I don't think you should speak of being English in terms of culture & should instead think in terms of ethnicity vs nationality." Then he can say "OK, I’ll talk about English genetics and legal nationality in future" or "No, I want to continue talking about English culture."

I certainly want to talk about culture. Not only because this is what I have chosen to do with my life, but also because, unlike genetics, it is the thing we can have some influence over. Probably because of the dominance of the Critical Social Justice movement and its tendency to claim everything is a social construct and also socially constructed in a way that conveniently supports their politics, some people now seem to think that if you address issues of culture, you will necessarily argue that everything is culturally constructed. This is not the case. I'm just more interested in the things that are. Genetic ancestry is not a social construct, but it’s also very seldom what I am talking about.

This is what I mean by the need to clarify definitions and then address substance. If you are a geneticist studying the genetic populations on this island historically, you should be able to clarify this and then use terms like “English” (the Anglo-Saxon mix of ethnicities) or “European settlers” (a broader category including the Anglo-Saxons) and “Native Britons” (the populations already living here before the Anglo-Saxon invasions) without being suspected of negative views about the English and wanting them to go home to (roughly) Germany. If you are a geneticist studying the genetic populations on this island now, you should be able to clarify this and do so without being suspected of ethnonationalism and wanting everybody who is not “white” to leave.

If you are speaking culturally in terms of the sense of national identity a person (of any ethnic background) has as English, Scottish or Welsh and/or is perceived to have due to which country they live in and corresponding markers like their language/dialect/accent, sense of history and geography, political leader, cultural norms etc., you should be able to clarify this too without being suspected of believing genetics to be a social construct.

I strongly suspect (and hope) that those trying to get people to think and talk about being English in terms of ethnicity are frustrating themselves futilely. It’s not that genetic ancestry is hard to understand intellectually. It just won't seem relevant or meaningful on the level of our daily lives and interactions (which is where those of us who are not geneticists typically engage the topic of being English) because our brains did not evolve to evaluate each other via genetic ancestry. They couldn't do so outside of immediate family. Nobody has to deny that genetic populations exist and also produce distinctive phenotypes to also recognise that our brains are not built to attend to things that have not been a feature of our social environment over evolutionary time. Instead, we have alliance detection mechanisms that look for shared goals, aims and values & find security and familiarity in accents, customs and manners recognisable as our own.

Those who wish people to speak about being English precisely in the context of genetic ancestry would need to bring this into the cultural realm and tie it to an understanding of shared goals, aims and values in order to make it meaningful and relevant. I don’t think that’s a very good idea and advocate not doing that. Instead we must counter those doing it on factually false and illiberal ideological grounds: ethnonationalists. Meanwhile, there are others who would like us to override what is both an adaptive alliance detection mechanism and a perfectly reasonable and ethical way of furthering a functional and cohesive society by not being tolerant of people with radically different and illiberal goals, aims and values: radical multiculturalists. I don’t think that’s a very good idea either and advocate not doing that too.

Multiculturalism is the more difficult to address because it can be used to refer to people who have different racial, religious and cultural backgrounds living together cooperatively and with a sense of shared national identity, responsibility to everybody and a commitment to the same essential values of a liberal democracy. This is a positive vision and has greatly improved both the cuisine and the music scene on this island as well as enabling us to recruit skilled professionals to our industries. However, within the Critical Social Justice framework, there is also a radical concept of multiculturalism which requires not objecting to the values of subcultures within subcultures which do not respect the rights of women or same-sex attracted people or support religious freedom including the freedom to criticise religion. Further, it regards any requirement for new arrivals to integrate into broader society and work cooperatively with all segments of it and uphold basic liberal principles as colonialist, racist or, commonly, Islamophobic. This is not a positive vision and does not work constructively with human psychology.

Ethnonationalism is, at least, simpler, because it refers to a belief that everybody on this island should fit their description of “white.” This is a toxic ideology that regards the nationality of black and brown Brits as illegitimate and calls for the ‘remigration’ of anybody who does not fit ideologues’ concept of ‘whiteness.’ This includes me, allegedly on the grounds of my Italian grandfather, but really, I suspect, because I reject their extreme white identity politics (and all white identity politics, all racial identity politics and all identity politics).

Ethnonationalists, like Critical Social Justice activists, typically conflate goals, aims and values with skin colour, claiming that white people have a certain set of values that are good and everybody else has different sets that are bad. Sometimes, however, they claim to believe no such thing, but simply that all ethnic groups have their own homeland and England is for the ethnically English. Fortunately, the vast majority of people who look as though they could fit that category (white people) regard them as abhorrent fringe lunatics and continue to recognise their black and brown countrymen and women as their countrymen and women. Ethnonationalists who expect us all to just look past our common customs of language and manners and imagine that, say, a black Londoner will have more in common with Rwandans and a white Londoner with Hungarians than they do with each other also have a vision that does not work constructively with human psychology.

Almost nobody can naturally feel a bond with others who live beside them but do not associate, integrate, care about or make common cause with them, and few can fail to naturally feel a bond with people who do all of those and whose ways are familiar to us as that of 'home,' but who have a different skin colour. However, we are also tribal animals prone to creating ideological narratives that attach meaning & relevance to race and ethnicity rather than where it belongs with individuals, ideas, ideology and culture. Recent history has shown us that well-intentioned people can be persuaded into believing that they should be tolerant of siloed sub-communities that hold illiberal views and are hostile to some segments or all of wider society and that to raise concerns about this is racist. A very long and broad history tells us that ideological narratives can arise that attache meaning and significance to ethnicity and result in a certain group become second class citizens, a subclass or even seen as subhuman.

We need to work with human nature and not against it and we need to work in ways that bring out the best aspects of human nature and not the worst. We also need to care about what is true. That genetic ancestry exists is true and can tell you useful things like whether being screened for Cystic Fibrosis or Sickle Cell Anaemia is likely to be more useful. It can’t tell you who your people are in any meaningful way. Their ideas, their values, their culture and the relationships you have with them will do that. That culture exists is also true. Considering that it is on a cultural level that England needs to address cultural conflicts and work to form a cohesive and functioning culture, I do not see how pestering people to speak of being English as an ethnicity rooted in genetics or as a legal status and not to speak of it as a culture can possibly be of any benefit to the culture of England.