@graham writes, "……is it racism or a strong sense of nationalism?"
Race, birthplace and nation are indivisible in common usage, Graham. The Latin root natio means both race and nation, and is cognate with natus, meaning ‘birth’, natura = nature, naturalis = by birth, natural; and nativus/nativa = created, inborn, natural.
(All definitions taken from Wilson’s Latin Dictionary (1965), Hodder & Stoughton, London)
Nationalism has long included the identification of individuals with a race, determined by place of birth, and, in UK and the USA, historically by identifying ‘natural’ race-members as white-skinned.
This ‘natural’, ‘inborn’ identification defies eradication in people born to it, for whom it is ‘natural’ to identify those who are like them, and to identify others as somehow ‘unnatural’.
But I hope at that age a clever young blade like you might still have had reasonable access to Harper’s Latin Dictionary (1879) Lewis & Short, Oxford University Press, England?
No we lived in South Essex. Mark Francois, choleric mouthpiece for the ERG was/is our MP and as far as our constituency was concerned he walks on water.
I don’t know where you lived, Jane, but the urban ribbon along the estuary from Wapping to Shoebury (it includes pit-bull sanctuaries like Thurrock, Basildon and Billericay) ain’t populated by Guardian-reading lily-livered Remoaners.
Our sons were often accosted in the streets of our small town, cat-called as Bin Laden or now Daesh, or shouldered in the shops. Humiliated in the workplace, bullied at school.
I also find it “remarkable” that you are so reluctant to accept the reality of people of colour who live outside what seems to be a ‘tolerant’, possibly complacent bubble. Where is that bubble, may I ask? Metropolitan London? A Russell group university town?
don’t yah mean furrok Peter? CHAV land indeed
we had the dubious honour of living in Chadwell St Mary ( suburb of furrok up the road from Tilbury) after we got married in 1974 (in one of the 3 sentinel tower blocks, no less - a teachers flat provided by the local authority) until we moved to the more pleasant and salubrious environs of Rochford when I started work at Sarfend hospital.
Excuse me, but these so called ‘fickle’ people are breaking up our family and many others because we are losing freedom of movement.
There is an English lady in our village who wants to move back to UK because of a new grandson, but cannot because her French husband does not enough annual income.
Our daughter lives in Munich and if we become too frail to look ourselves we will have to become French citizens, just to live near our daughter.
I have just deleted what I really think of these people.
If they believe Boris, a proven liar, they will get what they deserve, but at what expense to all UK citizens living in the EU.
I understand your comment but does your daughter know what the future might hold for her?
Our children have their own lives and personally I would never dream of burdening them should I need care in the future, a selfish thought IMO.
We would not be a burden and we have discussed this and our daughter is quite happy about it. Before you make comments about us having selfish thoughts, perhaps you should consider that not all families are the same.
Of course no one knows what the future will hold, but as things stand at the moment that is a sensible course of action.
I haven’t suddenly become ashamed, Tim. I’ve begun to feel ashamed, as I wrote. I’ve had a long life and long exposure to life in England from 1938 to date, give or take a few years of infantile innocence.
One is rapidly acculturated or possibly indoctrinated, take your pick, and one learns to be proud of one’s ostensible heritage, for better or worse. Peer and elder pressure is a factor in establishing some level of willing conformity.
As an adult participant in one’s country’s affairs, in several roles, one refines one’s judgements on all sorts of things, so pride and shame are more considered, and more based on personal experience of what the nation’s values seem to be in practice.
There’s nothing fickle about my judgements on England and the English, but we are seeing it’s worst features of calumny, betrayal and gross deception recently rather than its virtues. And the rise of a corrupt and unaccountable political’ elite IMO, not unprecedented in living memory.
Actually for the last years in the UK I worked across England. I certainly saw and sensed racism. In urban areas this was mostly among poorly educated and disenfranchised young people of all colours and creeds, and I presume your kids would not be in that group. It was in small rural villages that I sensed the worst xenophobia and overt racism among all parts of the community, hence my comment.
I am not reluctant to accept the fact of racism at all, of course it exists. I have my own experience of bigotry. I am merely surprised that your children’s compatriots behave like that - as in fellow citizens who have a relationship with your children rather than some gob-shite in the bus shelter.
I recognise those sentinel tower blocks well, Graham, I worked at Orsett Hospital, at Thurrock Hospital and at South Ockenden in the 1980s. Orsett was a pretty village, the hospital was a total white elephant and has now been erased almost totally. Fobbing and its badlands creeks was a very scary place, known as a den of gangland iniquity.
I’ve also lived in Rochford too, not for the faint-hearted!
I appreciate your comments and your sharing experience sympathetically.
It’s very easy to underestimate the challenges people of colour experience in establishing relationships of any normal kind with white people, because the pervasiveness of racist assumption is so almost total in England, even amongst those who believe themselves to be entirely devoid of racist beliefs, because they are unconscious of them.
They represent the ‘unknown unknowns’ that we all harbour in the inaccessible recesses of all our minds, but show in our microbehaviours, and our language.
I include myself in this category. It is a commonplace admission made by most white parents of mixed race children, one that has to be wrested, not uncommonly, from them by their offspring!
Vanessa’s first teaching post in 1974 after teacher training college in Birmingham (Westhill college) was South Ockenden Hospital SSN school where she later became Deputy Head under Jack Mizra. Small world eh?
Sorry, but I do not think that calling people ‘fickle’ because they are standing up against those who have been swayed by proven liars and are worried sick and upset because their standing in the countries where they have made their homes helps matters.
We are having our very heart snatched away from us, 1.3 million people and when we see a tiny minority of folk with one foot in the grave deciding our future and the future of UK kids who really want to do something with their lives, it makes me ill.
I cannot imagine the state of affairs in UK when people have to live with the real terms of a No Deal Brexit, I think that much harsher words and deeds will follow.
Quite frankly now, I don’t care a damn about brexshit 'cos I just want to get on with the rest of my life (what’s left of it) and I can do without the stress.
If little englanders what to jump off the edge of a cliff behind pied piper BoJo singing yanki doodle dandy then let them get on with it.
I’m fairly convinced that the grown up European political machine will continue to serve us well - France in particular - and if I never live to see the UK again it won’t harm me one iota.
The place is a shit-heap full of self harming idiots, crackheads and drunks and I want no further part of it (other than our pensions, of course)
Being ‘ashamed’ of your country of birth after a change of government is absurd, should BJ call a GE and lose Brexit is likely to be cancelled and life carries on as before, I suppose people will then be proud that British democracy has won the day.
Does the average French man or woman feel constantly ashamed that 30%+ of people here support an openly racist party?
