"100% English"

What a piece of nonsense was 100% English shown on Channel 4 this week! Predictably, it stated that even those who thought themselves racially pure are to a degree mongrelised. Perhaps Englishness is merely a tick-list of of origin, residence, accent and nationality, rather than the colour of one's skin or the genetic composition of ourselves and our ancestors. Increasingly, the idea of Englishness has more geographical and cultural connotations than a racial one. If one is British, then one must by definition be English, Welsh or Scottish since one must reside or have originated from one of these countries.

Northern Ireland however poses a slight problem of definition. Ulstermen certainly do not want to be called "Northern Irish" and therein lies the difficulty of their identity and belonging to the British family of countries.

Ironically, there would be no such confusion of what to call non-white British citizens residing in England, Wales and Scotland. They would simply be identified with the country they happened to reside in, for example, English Asians or Indians, Welsh Orientals and Scottish Africans, Blacks or Negroes (or whatever is the politically correct term to call these people nowadays).

But perhaps on balance it would be better to call all races by their police identification code names. Thus we would call English whoever is British, residing in England and speaking with one of the English accents and when relevant mention their physical characteristics in coded language. (The key: IC1 is someone of Caucasian appearance, IC2 Mediterranean, IC3 Afro-Caribbean, IC4 Asian, IC5 Oriental, IC6 Arabian and Egyptian) Their political and religious affiliations are only knowable after an in depth conversation, after all.

But I digress. As I was saying, more interesting questions could have been asked on the programme, such as:

(a) What is Englishness?

(b) Who is English?

(c) Can anyone who lives in England and speaks English like a native (with Scouser, Geordie and Brummie accents, for example) be English if they are also British by nationality?

(d) Do these people consider themselves English even though they are non-white?

(e) Do the pale-skinned English people accept the non-white people mentioned in (c) and (d) above as English?

(f) Does it matter?

(g) Why? (Or why not?)

An old Arab saying states that anyone who speaks Arabic [like an Arab] is an Arab - surely a more logical, simple and tolerant way of looking at things than any of this scientific DNA nonsense we have been bamboozled with.