What does it mean to be 'British'?

Pretty straightforward question, right? Not quite.

As someone who has been enamored with what I perceived to be British culture since the seventh grade, I assumed I could easily give a comprehensive and accurate answer to this question my professors proposed before I ever stepped on British soil. But it wasn’t until I began to think about where my answers to this question were rooted that I realized I had no real concept of what it meant to be British at all.

All of my perceptions of the ‘British’ were shaped by two things: the media and history books. Both of these outlets portrayed British people with one blatant similarity: white skin.

The Late Late Show with James Corden, The Great British Bake Off, The Crown, Downton Abbey, The Beatles, One Direction, Ed Sheeran, Little Mix, Simon Cowell, any member of the royal family in all of history, and the history of British Prime Ministers all solely consist of white people. But why? Why is Britain whitewashed in the media? Why isn’t there representation of a plethora of races and ethnicities? Why were black British people in my AP European History class only mentioned when we discussed the slave trade? My ignorant answer to these questions prior to traveling to London and Edinburgh was “well, Britain must not be diverse”.

But Britain is diverse and not just in the eastern corner of London. According to the Migration Observatory (2018), “the size of the foreign-born population in the UK increased from about 5.3 million in 2004 to just under 9.4 million in 2017. During the same period the number of foreign citizens increased from nearly 3 million to about 6.2 million”. In addition, “India is the country of birth for 8.9% of all foreign-born persons living in London” (Migration Observatory, 2018).

My personal experience of meeting and building relationships with six English citizens during my month in Britain verified these statistics. All six were born in other countries in Europe, ranging from Italy, Romania, Belgium, and France, and yet they all stated that they felt as though they were ‘British’. However, their accents, skin tones, and customs all contradicted the ‘British’ accent, skin tone, and customs that are portrayed in the media and history books.

So what does it actually mean to be ‘British’?

This question I’m examining in 2019 was addressed as far back as 1701 with the publication of Daniel Defoe’s poem, The True Born Englishman.

Defoe debunks the notion that there even is such a thing as a “true born Englishman” throughout the poem with his clever use of irony. He explains that the “het’rogeneous thing” of an Englishman was created when “a mixture of all kinds” came together.

And what mixtures created an Englishman? Defoe references Scots, Romans, Welsh, Saxes, Danes, Angles, and Picts. Seems like a pretty diverse bunch if you ask me. Defoe even reasons that such a diverse group in England allows the possibility for a speaker of the Gospel to speak to all of the nations of the world in one stop.

This “Englishman” that resulted wasn’t the epitome of class, either. It’s hard to imagine Lady Mary Crawley from Downton Abbey being born as the result of “eager rapes of “furious lust” as Defoe described, but she is an Englishman afterall.

Defoe even references how the name of an “Englishman” was created with the lines,

“The silent nations undistinguish’d fall,
And Englishman’s the common name for all.
Fate jumbled them together, God knows how;
What e’er they were they’re true-born English now.”

So, if Daniel Defoe, in 1701, was able to understand that British people are not just one race but rather a synthesis of cultures, customs, skin tones, accents, and history, then why are British people portrayed in a fashion that negates any trace of diversity? Why is the royal family, who presumably represents the essence of what it means to be ‘British’, look and sound so dissimilar to British citizens? Ironically, the fragment of diversity that has recently infiltrated the royal family roots from an American.

Why is this flagrant evidence of racism not addressed? There have been a variety of progressive movements in the last century, and yet no movement in media to ensure more representation.

I’m grateful I was able to have the awakening from my ignorance and recognize that what it truly means to be ‘British’ is far more beautiful, intricate, and endearing than the whitewashed version that was portrayed to me since the seventh grade.

I hope that the humming of The True Born Englishman will permeate both the media and our history books so that our world could understand that,

“A true-born Englishman’s a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction.
A banter made to be a test of fools,
Which those that use it justly ridicules.
A metaphor invented to express
A man a-kin to all the universe”.