Here’s a thing: Black and brown people can be born and bred in England, can do and become just about anything in and for England (including making the ultimate sacrifice for their country). But for some, we can be of England, we just cannot be English. Capisce? Because, as they see it and say it, the main ingredient of Englishness is whiteness.
For wisdom on this, as in all things, we turn to the former home secretary, would-be once-upon-a-time Conservative party leader Suella Braverman. Referring to non-white, largely non-Christian communities in England, of which she appears to disapprove, Braverman said: “Some in these communities may hold British passports and be born here. But does that make them English?”
According to most people, it does. When YouGov asked English adults a few years back, 81% of those canvassed said being born in England pretty much does it. Fifty-seven per cent said growing up in England was enough, 29% thought just “considering themselves English” was enough. Which rules out Braverman. All good.“Remember that you are an Englishman and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life,” quipped the genocidal coloniser Cecil Rhodes. You doubt he had Maro Itoje, captain of the England rugby team or young Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, mixed-heritage son of an English prince, or any of their ilk in mind when he proclaimed this.
The belonging-driven desire to prove yourself “worthy” of Englishness is part of why we’re having this debate today. It is probably why the likes of Braverman contort themselves to project a questionable image of who they are and who and what they think other minorities are – or should be.
Poor Rishi Sunak, his English “lottery winnings” were questioned on the rightwing Triggernometry podcast by the host, who cited the disqualifying fact that the former PM, former champion of the English Tory right, is a “Brown Hindu”. Of course, Sunak won the lottery before by marrying an heiress, but money isn’t everything. In this regard, it isn’t anything. Poor Sunak. So, quick pop quiz: what does a Black boy born in London to Nigerian parents and raised in an English village by a (white-appearing) German mother and a (white) Scottish father consider his nationality? The correct answer is, of course, English, though Braverman might wag that finger.
I am that boy. I was born in London, in the same hospital as Prince William (guess he’s English), and spent much of the first decade of my life raised in England, in a small Oxfordshire village called Benson. A place that I often joke is “so white (and cold) that white people don’t know it exists” (most don’t). Even though my father was Scottish, and my mother was German, I was raised an English boy by my foster parents (which passes the YouGov test). Understandably, by the time I came into consciousness of nationality there was no question about it: I was English. Beyond that, I was English to the point that I harboured what would today be considered nationalist tendencies (the Conservative party or Reform would have loved me).
I didn’t become at all “British”, let alone British Nigerian, until I was much older and had been subject to a series of “stay-in-your-place-ism” moments, as well as travelling the world a bit. What happens abroad is interesting. When I open my mouth, I’m considered either English or British (or “oyinbo” in Nigeria). Yet despite polls saying that skin colour and Englishness aren’t inextricably linked, I find I am considered English practically everywhere but in Braverman’s corner of England. Poor little me.
Perhaps there are valid debates to be had about who is English and who is not. What makes an Englishman and what makes a bloody foreigner. What defines Englishness: blood and soil, birth and culture, heritage and ethnicity, who you support during a cricket match or the ability to score a World Cup-winning penalty? Is Englishness a fluid or a stationary concept? Who gets to decide: those who have been English for centuries, those who had Englishness imposed upon them and/or those who chose to embrace the concept?
But be under no illusion why we are discussing this now. It’s not about who to embrace, it’s about who to exclude. It’s part of the erosion of the firewall between mainstream conservativism and ethno-supremacism. There is a disturbing racist effort to delegitimise the place and position of non-white people in Europe, with the hard-right dream of “remigration” as the ultimate end result.
If you can delegitimise Rishi Sunak and mark his card for “remigration”, then everyone else is fair game. Some don’t even need delegitimising: they’re ready to do it to themselves. Imagine Braverman, from her first-class seat on the one-way Remigration Airways flight: “I see nothing wrong with this: I’m not even English. Anyway, the Islamists run Britain now, so what’s to stay for? Steward, when’s dinner? I’ll have anything but tofu.”
The news is bad for blowhard podcasters, desperate politicians and assorted racists, for Englishness is becoming more brown and more beautiful. Englishness is today as much Bukayo Saka, just as Japaneseness is Naomi Osaka, as Yorubaness is Ashleigh Plumptre and South Africaness is Charlize Theron. The world is evolving, and the labels? They’re falling off.
Nels Abbey is an author, broadcaster and the founder of Uppity: the Intellectual Playground
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• This article was amended on 5 March 2025. For its poll on Englishness, YouGov surveyed English adults, not Britons as stated in an earlier version.
