Craft a statement. Teach a lesson. Politicians may be the only people in the world who imagine that the creation of identities, or the forging of a sense of belonging, can be reduced to such simple formulas.
What most public debates ignore is the complexity, elasticity and sheer contrariness of identity. Whether personal or national, identities can never be singular or fixed because they are rooted largely in people’s relationships with one another — not merely personal but social relationships, too — and such connections are always mutating.
…. My parents were of a generation that accepted racism as part of life. I was of a generation that challenged it, politically and physically. We confronted far-right thugs, organized street patrols to protect black and Asian families, and stood up to police harassment. And this inevitably shaped our sense of who we were.
My generation did not think of itself as “Muslim” or “Hindu” or “Sikh.” We wanted to be seen as British. When Britain told us, “You don’t belong,” we responded both by insisting on our Britishness and by identifying with those who challenged British identity. Such is the contradictory character of belonging.
… Today, things are different. Neither racism nor racial violence has disappeared, and hostility to immigration has become a defining feature of British politics. Yet the savage, in-your-face racism that marked Britain a generation ago is, thankfully, relatively rare. The nature of Britishness has changed, too. No longer rooted in ideas of race and empire, it is defined as much by diversity as by jingoism. National identity is being recast in a host of new debates, from the fractious question of Scottish independence to the fraught relationship with the European Union.
Blacks and Asians have long since become an accepted part of Britain’s identity, as well as its sporting tapestry. And I have dropped my “anyone but England” attitude. I, too, now feel the pain of penalty shootout defeats and the rare joy of cricket match victories. Yet, if I am now willing to wave the flag at a cricket field or in a soccer stadium, I will not necessarily do so in all contexts. I may be tribal about sports, but I am not patriotic about Britain.
Unthinking, irrational support for one team over another is an essential part of the experience of sports. Patriots wish us to be equally unthinking in our attachment to the nation in every arena, from culture to war. The myth of nationalism is that “Britishness,” just like “Frenchness” or “Americanness,” comes as a single package. But identity does not work like that.
There are many aspects of British life that I admire, and many that I despise. I only have to visit a London street market to be reminded how open Britain is to foods and goods and influences from all over the world; I only have to stand in line in passport control at Heathrow Airport to remember how deep the suspicion of foreigners runs. Many British traditions resonate with me; many I find abhorrent. This is the nation that produced the Levellers and the Suffragettes, radical movements that helped shape the world; it is also a nation that still clings to a monarchy and the unelected, feudal House of Lords.
Many non-British traditions, too, have helped shape my views, values and ideals. To erase this complexity with the myths of patriotism is to diminish the very meaning of belonging.
Multicultural Meanderings 