Being almost exactly the same age as you, I remember the 90s very well. Your observations on the ambiguities that were accepted without the attempt to "systematize" them are spot-on. Even more important is the observation that it was precisely the powers that be that deliberately destroyed a state of affairs that was, I would say for everybody involved, not a bad deal at all. They just had to take it to an excess. As they say in my neck of the woods: "Off comes after tight".
I would add that, in practice, any "in-group", be it a family or ethnicity, collectively and intuitively self-organizes by "deciding" who belongs and who does not. That decision does not follow any algorithmic or "scientific" rules, let alone a bureaucratic degree, it just naturally emerges.
That also means that plenty of people, then and arguably even now, do not register as "outsider" at all, though an argument to that effect could _technically_ be construed. Does or did anybody think of Slash, Martin Gore or Rebecca Hall as Black, of Dave Gahan as Asian or of Freddie Mercury as Indian? Different people, on the other hand, may have similar ancestry and _do_ register as outsiders just on account of their associations, behavior and self-presentation.
Yeah. I think there's a temptation on our side of things to rewrite history and pretend people were more racially aware, or selective in their in-group, than they were. Remember Daly Thompson?
At the same time, we also know that mass immigration was always opposed.
Where we are now is immigrants *demanding* to be regarded as the in-group, which will require a whole other post.
Being neither British nor particularly interested in that kind of sports, I had not heard of this gentleman before. But based on what Wikipedia says about him, I can imagine how he was perceived by the general public.
There is also no need on our side of things for coming up with a "system", something like an algorithm that will spit out a clear-cut answer for any odd combination of circumstances, which can be thought of and which exist with arbitrary complexity.
As I think Woes pointed out, we know that some things are repulsive even in the absence of a "logical proof" that they are. It thus suffices to say "we know who ´we´ are" and "we know what we like and don´t like". Neither assertion is arbitrary or without basis.
As for your last point: It indeed makes little sense to demand something which can only be freely given.
I can see how journalists may try to corner him to come up with a definition of Englishness or Britishness and also how they could ask him about specific people and whether or not he thinks they are English.
But would it not possible to answer, which answer would in my opinion even be truthful, that this is for the English people as a collective to decide and that thus what he personally thinks is irrelevant?
There is a group of people which are English without any doubt and which, in a manner of speaking, form the core. Then there are other groups arranged in the manner of concentric circles around that core (people that immigrated from Ireland a hundred years ago being also very close to that core in my book, but what do I know). The question of up to which circle to include then can only be answered collectively.
I should add that in my neck of the woods an intellectual from our side of things gave an answer, which I also find attractive, saying that anybody can become part of the in-group if he ties his fate to that group come hell or high water, without keeping any special attachments to his previous group. I am not sure whether Mr. Lowe or the good people folllowing Mr. Morgoth would appreciate that answer.
That's an interesting point you make about the group deciding who did and didn't belong with retreating to some exact formula.
Perhaps there needs to be a distinction between group decisions Vs regime ones? The way the current discourse is forming, it seems like the situation is so dire that deferring to a formula is increasingly popular, yet is this any less unassailable by the regime?
Frank Bruno and John Barnes make for an interesting comparison. Bruno's Wikipedia entry makes no reference to his Caribbean parents, there's nothing about racism in there, just talks about his unfortunate mental health issues. Barnes on the other hand has written a book on racism and seems to be a low key race grifter. Though his family and the reason he moved here as a child are products of the British Empire, he is Jamaican and was only given a British passport after playing for England in the 1986 World Cup. Which means he technically played for England while not being eligible, but can't blame him for that. But he is quoted as saying "the only reason I played for England was because they were the first to ask ... if Scotland had asked [first] ... You go and play for Scotland."
So you've got the well integrated Bruno and the slightly resentful Barnes, despite the enormous success he's gained from this country. Granted he did get abuse. Though some of that will be football fans going after players with whatever just because they're on the opposition team. You see Barnes' attitude to nationality a lot in international sport. He was happy to be 'English' because it suited him, England has a much better football team than Jamaica and he was good enough to get picked for them. You see the reverse. Aaron Wan-Bissaka was born in Croydon, has played for English clubs his whole career and the England youth teams. Yet last year he switched to his ancestral Congo, and ended playing against England at the World Cup. Of course this can happen with the white players too, Harry Kane might have chosen Ireland if that had been better for his international playing career. But then there will be the lads who don't have that grandmother from somewhere else, who like many of us don't have anywhere else to go.
Integration used to be talked about a lot, now we only hear it where some 'success' can be pointed to. Instead of admitting that it hasn't happened at scale (and never happened in more insular communities), their response has been to stretch the definition of British, English, and indeed Scottish Welsh and Irish beyond credulity.
>"twiddling with how those groups are defined does not change the fact that groups exist!"<
Yes, there is the word and the object. Regardless of whether the "word" is eliminated or reallocated, the "object" still exists. What's galling is that the whole diversity project is necessarily predicated on who the English/British are - otherwise, diversity cannot be defined or recognised.
I think the British aspect is both a strength and a weakness:
The strength is that the tendency to see "British" as an expandable or civic identity strengthens the tendency to see the English, Scots and Welsh as ethnic nations.
The downside is that the new "British" cannot live anywhere in England that is not already England. There is no legislative “glass sheet” under which the English live as a distinct people attached to the land. The new British live in England as much as we do, making the English ethnic-national definition ineffectual, even if it were accepted in law. For the English, Scots & Welsh to live, British citizenship must die.
There is a deep and recurring problem for persons who claim English (or Welsh, Scots, etc) is now purely a civic identity unrelated to ethnicity and ancestry and they too can claim it whenever they feel inclined to by the “right” of being resident and having the paperwork. That problem is the ever present need for those who make this claim while being high profile foreigners resident in the UK to also signal their attachment/loyalty to their own identity and ethnicity. In the age of borderless social media, there is always such pressure often driven by foreign language media platforms that cater to those specific identities. So how long will it be before Rishi Sunak is again back fronting for Indian nationals about opportunities for them?
Being almost exactly the same age as you, I remember the 90s very well. Your observations on the ambiguities that were accepted without the attempt to "systematize" them are spot-on. Even more important is the observation that it was precisely the powers that be that deliberately destroyed a state of affairs that was, I would say for everybody involved, not a bad deal at all. They just had to take it to an excess. As they say in my neck of the woods: "Off comes after tight".
I would add that, in practice, any "in-group", be it a family or ethnicity, collectively and intuitively self-organizes by "deciding" who belongs and who does not. That decision does not follow any algorithmic or "scientific" rules, let alone a bureaucratic degree, it just naturally emerges.
That also means that plenty of people, then and arguably even now, do not register as "outsider" at all, though an argument to that effect could _technically_ be construed. Does or did anybody think of Slash, Martin Gore or Rebecca Hall as Black, of Dave Gahan as Asian or of Freddie Mercury as Indian? Different people, on the other hand, may have similar ancestry and _do_ register as outsiders just on account of their associations, behavior and self-presentation.
Yeah. I think there's a temptation on our side of things to rewrite history and pretend people were more racially aware, or selective in their in-group, than they were. Remember Daly Thompson?
At the same time, we also know that mass immigration was always opposed.
Where we are now is immigrants *demanding* to be regarded as the in-group, which will require a whole other post.
Being neither British nor particularly interested in that kind of sports, I had not heard of this gentleman before. But based on what Wikipedia says about him, I can imagine how he was perceived by the general public.
There is also no need on our side of things for coming up with a "system", something like an algorithm that will spit out a clear-cut answer for any odd combination of circumstances, which can be thought of and which exist with arbitrary complexity.
As I think Woes pointed out, we know that some things are repulsive even in the absence of a "logical proof" that they are. It thus suffices to say "we know who ´we´ are" and "we know what we like and don´t like". Neither assertion is arbitrary or without basis.
As for your last point: It indeed makes little sense to demand something which can only be freely given.
Somebody like Rupert Lowe does need a clear and quick answer though.
I can see how journalists may try to corner him to come up with a definition of Englishness or Britishness and also how they could ask him about specific people and whether or not he thinks they are English.
But would it not possible to answer, which answer would in my opinion even be truthful, that this is for the English people as a collective to decide and that thus what he personally thinks is irrelevant?
There is a group of people which are English without any doubt and which, in a manner of speaking, form the core. Then there are other groups arranged in the manner of concentric circles around that core (people that immigrated from Ireland a hundred years ago being also very close to that core in my book, but what do I know). The question of up to which circle to include then can only be answered collectively.
I should add that in my neck of the woods an intellectual from our side of things gave an answer, which I also find attractive, saying that anybody can become part of the in-group if he ties his fate to that group come hell or high water, without keeping any special attachments to his previous group. I am not sure whether Mr. Lowe or the good people folllowing Mr. Morgoth would appreciate that answer.
That's an interesting point you make about the group deciding who did and didn't belong with retreating to some exact formula.
Perhaps there needs to be a distinction between group decisions Vs regime ones? The way the current discourse is forming, it seems like the situation is so dire that deferring to a formula is increasingly popular, yet is this any less unassailable by the regime?
Frank Bruno and John Barnes make for an interesting comparison. Bruno's Wikipedia entry makes no reference to his Caribbean parents, there's nothing about racism in there, just talks about his unfortunate mental health issues. Barnes on the other hand has written a book on racism and seems to be a low key race grifter. Though his family and the reason he moved here as a child are products of the British Empire, he is Jamaican and was only given a British passport after playing for England in the 1986 World Cup. Which means he technically played for England while not being eligible, but can't blame him for that. But he is quoted as saying "the only reason I played for England was because they were the first to ask ... if Scotland had asked [first] ... You go and play for Scotland."
So you've got the well integrated Bruno and the slightly resentful Barnes, despite the enormous success he's gained from this country. Granted he did get abuse. Though some of that will be football fans going after players with whatever just because they're on the opposition team. You see Barnes' attitude to nationality a lot in international sport. He was happy to be 'English' because it suited him, England has a much better football team than Jamaica and he was good enough to get picked for them. You see the reverse. Aaron Wan-Bissaka was born in Croydon, has played for English clubs his whole career and the England youth teams. Yet last year he switched to his ancestral Congo, and ended playing against England at the World Cup. Of course this can happen with the white players too, Harry Kane might have chosen Ireland if that had been better for his international playing career. But then there will be the lads who don't have that grandmother from somewhere else, who like many of us don't have anywhere else to go.
Integration used to be talked about a lot, now we only hear it where some 'success' can be pointed to. Instead of admitting that it hasn't happened at scale (and never happened in more insular communities), their response has been to stretch the definition of British, English, and indeed Scottish Welsh and Irish beyond credulity.
>"twiddling with how those groups are defined does not change the fact that groups exist!"<
Yes, there is the word and the object. Regardless of whether the "word" is eliminated or reallocated, the "object" still exists. What's galling is that the whole diversity project is necessarily predicated on who the English/British are - otherwise, diversity cannot be defined or recognised.
I think the British aspect is both a strength and a weakness:
The strength is that the tendency to see "British" as an expandable or civic identity strengthens the tendency to see the English, Scots and Welsh as ethnic nations.
The downside is that the new "British" cannot live anywhere in England that is not already England. There is no legislative “glass sheet” under which the English live as a distinct people attached to the land. The new British live in England as much as we do, making the English ethnic-national definition ineffectual, even if it were accepted in law. For the English, Scots & Welsh to live, British citizenship must die.
There is a deep and recurring problem for persons who claim English (or Welsh, Scots, etc) is now purely a civic identity unrelated to ethnicity and ancestry and they too can claim it whenever they feel inclined to by the “right” of being resident and having the paperwork. That problem is the ever present need for those who make this claim while being high profile foreigners resident in the UK to also signal their attachment/loyalty to their own identity and ethnicity. In the age of borderless social media, there is always such pressure often driven by foreign language media platforms that cater to those specific identities. So how long will it be before Rishi Sunak is again back fronting for Indian nationals about opportunities for them?
David Lammy and the reparations discourse are another example.