Billz

Truly shocking culture war on #BBCQT Former Conservative now Reform UK's Suella Braverman who was born in London says, "I'm not an English person" Then suggests you can only be English if you have a lineage or ancestry which dates back a few generations. A black man in the audience says he considers himself English because he was born here, and that she is enforcing a racist view that says being born here does not make you English. Oli Dugmore, "The political function of what she was saying earlier is that you can only be English if you are white.. That is a racist point of view" Fiona Bruce then repeatedly asks Suella Braverman to address Oli Dugmore's allegations, she repeatedly refuses to adding, "I do not call myself English, I am British Asian" At the end, Freudian slip, "I don't consider myself to be white, er er er English. I'm Asian of Asian heritage. I don't see why that's controversial" My view: Braverman is entitled to describe her own identity as British rather than English. But turning that into a definition of who can be English is racial exclusion dressed up as patriotism. A Black or Asian person born and raised here, speaking with the local accent, sharing the life and culture of this country, is no less English than anyone else. England has never been a racial category. It is a country, a culture and a shared civic identity, and trying to make whiteness the entry requirement is both historically illiterate and deeply divisive. Braverman has previously argued that people without generational ties to England should not claim to be English.