Lola Adesioye
England to me means home. It means fond memories of school days; Sundays holed up in a pub drinking wine and eating a succulent roast while discussing the state of the weather with good friends; running to catch a train from Victoria station after a hard day’s work and breathing a sigh of relief once I’m on it and as the train rolls out of central London into the leafier suburbs.
England is what I signify to people when I’m abroad. My accent, my sarcastic sense of humour, my values and politeness (such as saying sorry when I really don’t need to) are all products of being brought up in England. “Oh! You’re from England!” people exclaim before asking me whether it really does rain all the time.
England is also a part of me that non-English people sometimes don’t understand. “Are there black people in England?” I’m asked that on a regular basis. Yes there are, but we clearly don’t fit into the idea of what Englishness means to others, nor are we often visible in mediums of communication such as TV and film so some people abroad really do not know that we exist.
The Englishness in me is sometimes an anomaly to people who don’t expect to hear a black woman speaking with an accent which to them sounds like the Queen’s. England is a part of me that sometimes forces people to change their perceptions, to do a double-take and to look and listen to me differently.
England is the ‘green and pleasant land’ described in Jerusalem, one of my favourite songs. At the same time it is also - being that I come from London - inner city and urban; a metropolis of sky scrapers and polluting cars and buses; a landscape dotted with parks which sit alongside historical buildings and cultural landmarks. It is at once inclusive yet at the same time, at times, hostile to immigrants and foreigners. It is both a melting pot and apparently tolerant yet also the country that has colonised and oppressed large sections of the world and gave birth to figures such as Enoch Powell.
What does it mean to be English? Is it interchangeable with being British? That’s a tricky question. I will always have a sense that although I was born and bred in England, I am not considered to be truly English. English is not as accommodating a concept as say, American; being “English” still has a connotation that does not fully encompass black people - I’m not sure that it ever will. It’s very possible to be both an insider and an outsider at the same time. “British” however - thankfully in many ways - is an all encompassing term, meaning everything… and at the same time very little.
In any case, I am proud of having being born and raised in England… I know and am well aware of England’s colonial roots and no doubt England has, for such a small place, created a lot of havoc in the world! As a person of colour I would be silly not to acknowledge that. But for all it’s sins, contradictions and paradoxes, it’s still home.
Lola Adesioye is a regular contributor to the Guardian (and blogger) who hails from London but now lives in New York.
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A touching essay, Lola.
“English is not as accommodating a concept as say, American; being ‘English’ still has a connotation that does not fully encompass black people”
I’m confident that this can change in future, and that nationality in England will be defined in terms of place rather than race.
Charlie Marks
22 May 08 at 6:28 pm
I have lived in Australia for over 35 years and longer than I lived in England. When I open my mouth and speak in my strong North East accent I know I am not accepted as an Australian. It does not worry me in the least, I am happy to be English in Australia.
I regard any body from any ethnic group but speaks with an Australian accent as more Australian than me.
I’m sure if to heard Lola speak in her Queens English I’d
be thinking she’s more English than me.
Tally
23 May 08 at 7:55 pm
Liked your essay, Lola. And you are English! English is not a colour and you don’t have to be Anglo-Saxon - there weren’t many Anglo-Saxons anyway. Yes, the white English have not done enough in the past to make the black and brown English feel welcome and proud to be English. Attitudes have changed over the past three generations and I doubt very much if you are now right to say that being ‘English’ still has a connotation that does not fully encompass black people - I’m not sure that it ever will’. My children have never been bothered by what colour anyone is.
Ian Campbell
28 May 08 at 6:13 am
Colonisation was a British project, Lola - the Scots, Welsh and the whole of Ireland were involved in the British Empire.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s entirely up to you whether you are English or not. The more black people prepared to say that they are English, the less of an issue it will become. We’ve seen a great deal of change in England over the last fifty years.
Being English does not mean that you have to be white, sip tea and listen to The Archers!
To make Englishness fully accommodating the Government and Opposition Parties must stop demonising and scapegoating us for the perceived sins of Britain and give us back our nationhood.
Then we can all be English citizens - whatever our creed, colour or culture - and get on with living without the West Lothian Question, health apartheid, etc, etc.
I sometimes think that England is the last colony of the British Empire!
Chris Abbott
30 May 08 at 9:23 am
Well said Lola, you wrote in your own terms without some political diatribe which unfortunately accompianies some of the essays here
Barry (The Elder)
21 Jun 08 at 4:10 pm
Being black and English is fine with me as long as Anglo-Saxon based culture is upheld by the said English person.
Karl O'Connor
30 Jun 08 at 7:56 am
I am white, born in England, but have never considered my self English first. I always though that I was born British, this is what it says on my passport, and that is what I still tell people.
Goko2008
11 Jul 08 at 3:54 am
Just read your thought-provoking essay and found myself indentifying with most of what you wrote. I think that being English or British and being perceived English or British are poles apart when you live in England. I was born in London and have mixed heritage ancestry, which is English and Guyanese.
Moving to Northamptonshire at the age of 13 was a real eyeopener. I was asked the usual ‘Where are you from?’ When I said, ‘London’ I was then asked ‘No, where are you really from?’ As if the word ‘really’ would reveal some hidden truth. When I did offer more e.g. ‘My mother is English, my father is Guyanese’, I heard ‘So you’re Guyanese’.
As soon as I could I moved back to London, where I felt more like myself, more like the person I believed I was. In Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, I was under the spotlight swimming in a sea of whiteness. In London, I am always swimming in a sea of rainbow colours.
Travelling is also where you somehow become misplaced and misrepresented depending on where you go. However, when say I travel to Jamaica, I am definitely perceived as English (or American until I speak).
Having said all this, London is my home and this is where I belong whether others perceive me as English or British!
Nicole
5 Aug 08 at 5:10 pm
Well, it seems that, whatever else the English are good at, moving on from their past is not part of that. The Empire was at it’s height 100 years ago, in a very different world from our own. The first major populations from Pakistan, the Carribean and so on only really arrived 50 years ago (although of course there were coloured people here previously), and white English who have a thousand years of history on this land have been remarkably welcoming to these new groups, looking on at events such as 7/7 with confused bewilderment. Yet we are told that we should be ashamed of figures such as Enoch Powell - a man who has been vilified on a single speech he gave, which may yet turn out to be prophetic.
This essay seems to be not so much to be about England, but about being black in a majority white population.
Donna
7 Oct 08 at 2:48 am
Hello Lola. I’m just catching up with this website and I enjoyed reading your essay very much. There is one point that I’m interested in. It seems that most black people born in England choose to identify with being British. Why do you think this is and what do you think makes you identify with being English rather than British? Best wishes, Jack.
Jack Cropper
12 Feb 09 at 9:13 am
I am so intrigued by what you said. I always wanted to know what other ethnicity were called and England. I am African-American and my dream is to actually go to England and live there one day of study courses there for abroad. I love how you describe you love for your home and also specifying the significance of the terms/labels “English” and “British”. All in all, your essay was amazing and congratulations.
Amber
Amber Charles
5 Apr 09 at 11:13 am
Lola, if you were born in England and want to be English then that is your choice. No one can deny you that. I have two son who’s mother are Arabic, they are English and have no problem in saying so. If you want to be British then at the moment that is OK but it is a politcal statement not a cultural one. The Union was a political expedient and has failed. The Union is finished almost everyone seems to know that. The only thing we have to do now is give our awful politicians a lesson in democracy. It is interesting that most of our senior leaders are not English, this tells you volumes, they simply don’t understand democracy. Please, if you feel English then say so otherwise you will play into the hands of our undemocratic partners in these islands.
Alan Bailey
31 Jan 10 at 5:09 pm